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When Steve Jobs wanted to motivate his Mac team at Apple, he didn’t give them corporate pep talks or send them to management retreats. Instead, he told them they were “pirates” fighting against the “navy.” The message was clear: stay scrappy, stay rebellious, and don’t let the corporate machine slow you down. That pirate mentality worked. The Mac team moved fast, took risks, and delivered something revolutionary. But here’s the irony: Apple was itself the navy they were once fighting against. Today, with over 160,000 employees and a market cap exceeding $3 trillion, Apple faces the same challenge that confronts every successful companyhow do you stay pirates when you’ve become the fleet? The challenge as you grow, is not just survival but scaling the pirate playbook itself. Having built products at Pixar, YouTube, and Google, I’ve learned that startup DNA is not a luxury; it is an essential mechanism to continue to thrive as you grow. Ive identified five ways to do this, but first, you have to realize this is about more than thinking like a startup. The Glacier vs. Snowball Dilemma: The Stakes Have Risen The difference between a small and a large company is not just size, but physics. Small companies are snowballsfast, gaining unstoppable momentum down the mountain. Big companies are like glaciersmassive, powerful, but moving at a glacial pace. This is the innovation paradox: the big guys have the resources, but the small guys have the speed. Today, with the rise of AI, the stakes have been dramatically raised. A single, AI-empowered nano-startup (a tiny “snowball”) can now deliver an impact that previously required hundreds of engineers. The trick is to stay as nimble as a snowball while deploying the resources of a glacier. So how do you solve this dilemma? You don’t just mimic a startup; you design an internal ecosystem for relentless piracy. Here are five learnings for moving at breakneck speed, even at scale. 1. Headline with a Deadline: The North Star That Cuts Through Noise At Pixar, when we were creating Toy Story, everyone from the animators to the accountants understood our mission. We were making the world’s first full-length computer-animated film, and we were going to prove that this technology could tell stories that would move audiences to tears and laughter. That clarity kept us focused. Trust me, there is nothing like a press release and booked theaters to keep you focussed on delivery. But mission clarity becomes harder as you scale. With thousands of employees working on hundreds of projects, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. This is where the “headline with a deadline” mentality becomes crucial. Every team, no matter how large the company, should be able to articulate their work as a newspaper headline with a specific deadline. Not “improve user engagement metrics” but “Launch AI-powered personalization that increases daily active users by 30% by Q2.” Not “enhance platform capabilities” but “Enable creators to monetize live streams within 90 days.” Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” has guided everything from search algorithms to YouTube’s creator ecosystem. When we were building Google TV, that mission clarity helped us see that television wasn’t dyingit was just another way to organize and deliver information to users. That north star kept our small team focused, even as we launched the first GoogleTV streamer during Covid! 2. Flatten the Pyramid: Management That Enables (No Dilbert Syndrome) The biggest enemy of startup speed isn’t bureaucracyit’s the Dilbert manager. You know the type: they think their job is to manage people rather than enable great work. They attend meetings about meetings, create processes that solve yesterday’s problems, and somehow always seem to be the bottleneck in getting things done. At Google, I learned that the best managers don’t just understand what their team is buildingthey understand why it matters and how it connects to other teams’ work. They can see the 1+1=3 opportunities where collaboration creates exponential value rather than additive effort. They are close to the work and heck, many times roll up their sleeves and do the work themselves. The key is keeping management layers lean and purposeful. Every additional layer doesn’t just slow communicationit slows decision-making exponentially. When I worked on YouTube’s creator tools with just three people, we could make product decisions in a hallway conversation. As the team grew, we had to work deliberately to preserve those short communication paths. The solution isn’t to eliminate management, but to ensure every manager is deeply involved in the product and technology decisions. They need to be translators and connectors, not just people-processors. 3. The Reverse Hierarchy: Bottom-Up Innovation in the AI Era Plot twist: Your best AI innovations aren’t coming from the C-suite. They’re coming from individual contributors who understand their workflows intimately and can see exactly how AI can improve them. These innovations bubble up organically because the people closest to the work have the clearest vision of how to improve it. This is the bottom-up innovation that Google’s famous 20% time was designed to capture. While that specific program has evolved, the principle remains vital: the best ideas often come from unexpected places, and big companies need formal mechanisms to surface and scale them. The challenge is creating systems that can recognize these grassroots innovations and turn them into company-wide capabilities without crushing the entrepreneurial spirit that created them. 4. Permission to Fail: The Failure Budget is Your Growth Capital Startups take risks because they have tosurvival depends on finding something that works. Big companies often become risk-averse because they have a fleet to protect. But without intelligent risk-taking, you lose the very innovation that made you successful. When I joined the Google TV team, television was considered antiquated technology. But we believed that TV wasn’t dying; it was transforming. We created a vision for how television could embrace the future of streaming and on-demand content. Today, Google TV is recognized as a leading streaming platform. That success required maintaining a startup-like tolerance for risk even within a company where failure could affect thousands of jobs, and we continue to take risk by bringing TVs (and the company) into the AI era. The solution is the “failure budget”an explicit acknowledgment that a certain percentage of initiatives must fail. It’s not just acceptable; it’s a necessary investment in your next breakthrough. When your teams know they have te permission to fail intelligently, they are free to take the bold, calculated risks that lead to platform-defining success. 5. The Pirate Code: Direct Lines, Bold Moves Speed is irrelevant if you cant integrate the results into the main fleet. This is the final paradox: How do you move fast on innovation while maintaining stability in your core products? The challenge is that a scrappy pirate crew can move fast, but if their efforts are not designed to integrate with the enterprise architecture, the snowball melts before it can cause an avalanche. Users become accustomed to process and resist change, requiring a delicate balance. The modern pirate must be an intrapreneursomeone who looks for opportunities where their disruptor mindset can expand existing structures rather than competing with them. This requires building deliberate bridges between the startup-mode teams and the enterprise operations. Maintaining startup DNA at scale requires deliberate choices about structure, culture, and leadership. Pirates need direct communication channelsat Google, we continue to maintain TGIFa forum where everyone in the company is invited to hear what is on executives’ minds and to directly ask questions. Leaders need to think like founders, taking personal ownership of outcomes and making decisions quickly. And successful intrapreneurs learn to pick their fights carefully, looking for opportunities where their disruptor mindset can expand existing structures rather than competing with them. Choosing to Stay Pirates The choice to maintain Startup DNA is not about company size; it is a deliberate design choice about mindset, systems, culture, and leadership practices. The companies that will dominate the next decade won’t be the ones that perfected the corporate playbook. Theyll be the ones that figured out how to scale the pirate playbook. They will be the ones that cracked the code on how to be pirates at navy scale. In a world where change is moving at startup speed, corporate thinking gets left in the wake. Only the modern pirates will keep up.
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E-Commerce
In January 2025, Los Angeles suffered an unspeakable wildfire tragedy, destroying at least 17,000 structures, and with tens of thousands of people forced out of their homes. Almost immediately, government officials declared a state of emergency and laid out a path to rebuild like for like. However, in the aftermath of such disasters when rebuilding from the ground up, is like for like the best way to proceed? These disasters provide an opportunity to future-proof our neighborhoods for the next generation of environmental challenges. In face of seemingly endless, floods, fires, rising temperatures, and energy crises, we must take the time to rethink our way forward. PLAYING WITH FIRE In L.A. alone, just over quarter of a million homes are located in hillside high-fire hazard zones. The allure of views and exclusivity often comes with increased risk as most flames, especially wind-driven ones, spread much faster uphill. Any upslope overhanging structures, such as wooden decks, provide perfect fuel for upslope fires and once ignited, the flames easily transfer to any connected structure. So, how does one capitalize on the hillside views but simultaneously manage the danger? Having a fuel modification zonea clear area of land around structures that essentially removes fuel for wildfiresis a definite first step. The use of noncombustible materials should be encouraged including wood composites, standing seam metal roofs, and noncombustible claddinglike plaster, or Hardie panelsmade from a combination of cement, sand, cellulose fibers, and other additives. These remain intact for several hours before beginning to break down, even when exposed to high heat. For a recent project in a risk-prone canyon, we also designed a perforated metal fire shield, separated from the house by a couple of feet. It provides a layer of protection against the sun but also repels flying embers. A fire shield is also a straightforward modification for existing homes, and a consideration for new construction. We can build additional safety nets through landscaping by using water-retaining plants like cacti and other succulents strategically around the property. Drought-tolerant planting is both environmentally sound and practical, as these plants retain water to provide another barrier of protection between the outside and the home. A FLOOD OF QUESTIONS With increasingly frequent hurricanes and flooding, home design needs to finally begin to respond to these recurring events. Mies van der Rohes Farnsworth house in Plano, Illinois is located in a flood zone but designed so that the living quarters were raised above flood levels at that time. This resulted in one of the most iconic home designs of the 20th century, essentially proving that great design can be achieved while solving for extreme environments. In addition, all essential infrastructure should be raised above flood levels. Construct permanent barriers around the home, especially if adapting existing buildings to respond to environmental pressure. Sites should be graded to slope away from the structure. Use concrete piers for foundations or, better still, permeable foundations to relieve hydrostatic pressure. Install sewer backflow valves to prevent sewage flow into the home in the event of flooding. People looking to insulate existing homes against environmental stressors, like frequent flooding, who cant fully modify an older property can introduce an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) designed to be entirely flood proof, providing a safe place to land if the original propertys defenses are breached by water. These ADUs can be constructed to be entirely off grid and raised above flood level, using nontraditional materials like concrete to insulate against fire and wind events. RECHARGE YOUR BATTERIES During the Palisades and Eaton fires in L.A., due to power shut offs plus damages from wind and fire, nearly half a million residents lost power. In a time when many jurisdictions are aggressively moving toward exclusively electric power, hardships are compounded by loss of power as people are left unable to heat their homes or cook their meals even if they have not been directly impacted. It is imperative that homes can weather a crisis by having enough independent energy to power their essential services. Electric power, especially when obtained from renewable sources like solar panels, is a more economical and environmentally responsible option. If this is coupled with adequate battery storage to power the homes essential services, it is easier to weather a crisis. Rolling power shut offs are also becoming increasingly common in response to scorching temperatures around the country, so energy independence should become a priority for homeowners to insure themselves against an outage that is a direct result of environmental stress. BETTER, STRONGER, SMARTER After the January wildfires, the City of Los Angeles released an emergency declaration to clear the way to rebuild homes as they were and allow rebuilding like for like. While well intentioned and sweeping in its reach, this declaration should be strongly resisted. We must oppose the temptation to recreate exactly what was lost and instead focus on creating a model for development that minimizes the chance of destruction occurring again. With climate change and extreme weather events happening with increased frequency, we need to adjust to this new reality by hardening our homes, both existing and new, and embracing the opportunity to rebuild better, stronger, and smarter for future generations. Nerin Kadribegovic is founder and principal at Kadre Architects.
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E-Commerce
We are fully committed to AI adoption, the CEO told me, proud of the companys recent employee training initiatives. But is AI just another tool in their toolbox, or a new way of working? I asked. Silence. Your number one enemy is the lack of an answer to this question, I continued. Your employees are hearing doomsday predictions about how AI will soon eliminate their jobs, so they resist and reject these technologies. Most importantly, they have no idea who they will become after AI is adopted, I concluded. This isnt the first time Ive witnessed this overly enthusiastic, roll-the-dice approach to AI. Once again, technologists are scaring business leaders into embracing the latest technologywithout any business context or strategy. The results are always the same: high resistance, early failures, disappointment, and no real return on investment. Gartner has rightfully crowned this as the hype cycle. The AI world is now divided into fans and foes. The fans cite endless statistics, insisting that adopting AI is absolutely criticalotherwise, extinction looms. (Case in point: the CEO who famously fired 80% of his staff for failing to embrace AI. A masterclass in fearmongering.) The foes, meanwhile, wave a recent MIT study as proof that the benefits of this technology are overstated. That study found only 5% of task-specific AI tools were successfully deployed in organizationsclear evidence of the challenge in specialized AI rollout. In contrast, 40% of generic generative AI tools (LLMs) succeeded, often driven by employee initiative rather than top-down directives. The foes refrain: Leave us alone. Well get there when we get there. URGENCY WITHOUT STRATEGY Both camps wield data devoid of context or direction. They pursue technology for technologys sake, forgetting that organizations do not exist simply to use the latest tools. Tools are just thattools. Its strategy that should be steering the companys investments and efforts. But what if we dont have the answers yet? What if we are navigating uncharted territory, still assembling the puzzle? Sometimes, the unknowns far outweigh the newly discovered. Welcome to the world of real strategy. Strategy, by definition, is not an insurance policy. It comes with no guarantees. A real strategy embraces riskthe possibility of failure from both external changes and internal missteps. Competence in strategy means being able to say, I dont know, and still move forward. Strategies do not need all the answers up front; they need built-in flexibility to adapt as the unknown becomes known, and to guide the organization toward its goals. Absent a strategy, AI becomes a patchwork of experiments with no clear success metrics. With strategy, every effort is framed by the possibilityand definitionof success. BEYOND CORPORATE STRATEGY: PERSONAL STRATEGY Given the fear AI stirs among workers, organizations must consider an additional layer: personal strategy. The World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, 39% of workers core skills will be different. The most importantand fastestgrowing skills include: AI and big data Analytical thinking Creative thinking Resilience, flexibility, and agility Technological literacy Leadership and social influence Curiosity and lifelong learning Systems thinking Talent management Motivation and self-awareness Networks and cybersecurity With so much reskilling ahead, employees need their own personal strategy, a thoughtful approach to letting go of outdated skills and embracing new ones. They need to design their roles in the context of these new capabilities and chart a path to their next career milestone. Just as companies challenge employees to automate tasks with AI, they should also challenge them to envision how they will evolve, and what new talents they must develop. THE 3 PERSONALITIES While technology changes rapidly, the human response to change remains remarkably consistent. I am not referring to resistance, but to the varied ways people adopt change. Looking back at past transformations, we can identify three distinct personalities of change adoption: The efficient adopter: Do less, betterThis employee leverages new technology to reduce routine workload, focusing on accuracy and quality. They use technology to deepen their organizational competence. The effective adopter: Do more, fasterBy embracing automation, this employee increases both capacity and output, positioning themselves as creators of greater value. The evolving adopter: Do differentlyThis employee uses the technology not just to improve, but to redefine their role completely. They explore new responsibilities and avenues previously unavailable. The technology may be identical, but employees will utilize it according to their comfort and strategy, each seeking a different outcome. All three types enhance performance and contribution, but through individually tailored strategic approaches. Giving employees a choice reduces fear, fosters control, and allows progress at their own pacewithin the companys broader AI adoption journey. FROM PERSONALITIES TO A JOURNEY In my experience, empowering people to select their personal path accelerates adoption. Often, these three personalities become a sequence of milestones. Employees may start as efficient adopters, progress to effective adopters as confidence grows, and ultimately become evolving adopters. Freedom from fearmongering about job loss fosters a human-centric, resilient approach to technologyand to change more broadly. In Next Is Now!, I argued that the true measure of competitiveness is not in skills or products, but in the speed and scope of adapting to change. Recent World Economic Forum reports reinforce these as essential skills for thriving in our new realitycapabilities that transcend AI and will remain relevant through future upheavals. When steel-based construction emerged in 1890, cities like London and Paris limited building heights to 10 stories, clinging to the old world of concrete-based construction. New York City, on the other hand, had the visionand the strategyto embrace skyscrapers, accelerating technology adoption and surpassing its European rivals. The fear of change, and the hype surrounding new technologies, is nothing new. The lesson: Provide strategic context and human compassion; skip the unnecessary fights and harvest the benefits faster. Lior Arussy, author of Dare to Author! and chairman of ImprintCX.
Category:
E-Commerce
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