Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever
Alex Kantrowitz
Portfolio/Penguin (April 2020)
“What got you here won’t get you there.” Marshall Goldsmith
Goldsmith correctly suggests that whatever enabled a company to enjoy success today by no means ensures it can sustain it. In fact, that “whatever” could lead to its eventual demise. Charles Darwin described this process in 1859 as “natural selection.”
To what does the title of the title of Alex Kantrowitz’s book refer? As he explains, the phrase “‘Always Day One’ at Amazon is code for inventing like a startup, with little regard for legacy…in today’s business world, where Day Two is death, it’s the key to survival.” Kantrowitz suggests that what he calls the “Engineer’s Mindset” is the key to success within inventive cultures at companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
“The Engineer’s Mindset is a way of thinking — not a technical aptitude — that underpins a culture of building, creating, and inventing. It’s based on the way an engineer typically approaches work, but it’s not exclusive to any one occupation or level inside a company. The Engineer’s Mindset has three main applications: Democratic Invention [inventive ideas are encouraged at all levels and in all areas of operation], Constraint-free hierarchy [anyone can approach anyone else to discuss ideas], and Collaboration [between and among relevant constituencies].”
More people must get more involved in creating something new, something better, “dreaming up new things, figuring how [they’re] going to make them, and [then] going out to create them.” On Day Two, John Donne’s “bell” tolls for them.
These are among the passages of greatest interest to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Kantrowitz’s coverage:
o Amazon’s Day One culture (5-7)
o Robots (Pages 11-14 and 30-35)
o Automation (11-14, 35-40, 198-202, and 223-224)
o Engineer’s Mindset (14-18)
o Amazon (21-53)
o Culture of invention at Amazon (22-30)
o Facebook (55-91)
o Invention at Facebook (58-60)
o Michael Sayman (71-74)
o Mark Zuckerberg and artificial intelligence (75-79)
o Google (93-128)
o Cross-country collaboration at Google (96-97, 114-116, and 118-119)
o Sundar Pichai and Chrome (102-107)
o Dissension at Google (119-128)
o Apple (129-161)
o Invention at Apple (136-137, and 160-161)
o Microsoft (163-190)
o Microsoft and cloud computing (167-171)
o Collaboration at Microsoft (183-189)
o Tech giants and erosion of meaning (198-202)
In this lively and eloquent as well as informative account, Kantrowitz shares his thoughts about the potential value of lessons to be learned from Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft “at a transformative moment” when most other organizations are struggling to compete in a business world that is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.
Fortunately, business leaders today have technologies — such as artificial intelligence (AI); the Internet of Things (IOT); autonomous machines; distributed leaders and blockchains; virtual, augmented, and mixed reality; and connection networks of everything and everyone — that can do much to help complete the adaptations that must be made. The most important and most urgent change, in my opinion, is to embrace the Engineer’s Mindset throughout the given enterprise.
Thank you, Alex Kantrowitz, for the abundance of invaluable information, insights, and counsel provided in Always Day One. It is a brilliant achievement. Bravo!