Building Bridges

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm delighted to share my interview of Azeem Azhar, tech investor and creator of the successful Exponential View newsletter and Harvard Business Review podcast (of which I was one of the lucky guests nearly two years ago).In a new book titled Exponential: Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It, he explains that while technology continues to develop at an exponential rate, our institutions (norms, policies, organisations) only change slowly, incrementally (if at all), which results in an exponential gap that can explain many of society's problems.Azeem and I talked about his life story, his EV newsletter, the process of writing a book, the exponential gap, tech pessimism, the winner-take-all mindset, the future of work, the skills of the future and much more. On the one hand, there are technologies that develop at an exponential pace—and the companies, institutions and communities that adapt to or harness them. On the other, there are the ideas and norms of the old world. The companies, institutions and communities that can only adapt at an incremental pace. They get left behind—and fast. The emergence of this gap is a consequence of exponential technology (…)For all the visibility of exponential change, most of the institutions that make up our society follow a linear trajectory. Codified laws and unspoken social norms; legacy companies and NGOs; political systems and intergovernmental bodies—all have only ever known how to adapt incrementally. Stability is an important force within institutions. In fact, it's built into them (…)The gap leads to extreme tension. In the Exponential Age, the divergence is ongoing—and it is everywhere. (Exponential)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm thrilled to share my interview with Chris Bruntlett, Marketing Manager at the Dutch Cycling Embassy.He and I talked about the impact of the pandemic on urban mobility, the Dutch model and its genesis, Paris, London, Berlin, and many other things. I found Bruntlett's case for more bike lanes very convincing. Urban mobility is not a zero-sum game! We should focus on positive externalities.Chris and his wife Melissa are urban mobility activists who wrote two great books about cycling: Building the Cycling City and Curbing Traffic. Two years ago they moved from Vancouver, Canada to Delft in the Netherlands to experience the joys of the cycling lifestyle. Chris even made it his day job to champion cycling around the world! Working at the Dutch Cycling Embassy, he spreads the word about the Dutch model, sharing his new country's “expertise on building what supports the Dutch cycling culture to those interested”, thus building (cycling) bridges between cities, countries and cultures.

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm excited to share my interview with Roy Bahat, who as the Head of Bloomberg Beta has been “obsessed with how we make work—the thing we do with more waking hours than any other—better”. He's been an inspiration for me at least since I watched this video in which he speaks about two key drivers for workers: “stability and dignity”.Roy is used to making short, insightful and actionable pieces of content about work, careers, entrepreneurship and personal development. I recommend his series of to-the-point #thisisnotadvice interviews which you can watch on Twitter. They cover a wide range of topics like “Should I mentor someone and, if so, how do I do it?” or “How can I be the type of founders that VCs want to fund?”. But I confess I wanted more time with him. I wanted to hear him in a longer format so he could tell his career story, what it means to be a VC specialised in the future of work and so we'd still have time left to speak about the future of work and how we can prepare for it. I'm so grateful he accepted!As he explains in this podcast, he hadn't planned to become a VC, let alone one who focuses on the future of work! But after doing tons of reading, talked to thousands of people and given the subject a lot of thought, you could say he's become quite the expert. (More exactly, he's reached that level of expertise where you become humble again. It's a bit like Japanese martial arts: when you reach the highest level, you can wear a white belt again like a beginner!) I simply love how he adresses the most simple yet profound questions. Here's how he sums it all up neatly on his LinkedIn profile:I've had a messy, hand-wringy career (in non-profit, professional services, city government, big media, video games, academia, day-zero startup, investing), where I was never hired for any job for which I was qualified (including starting a company, where I guess I sort of co-hired myself and was still unqualified). Only later did I realize the one thread that tied it all together -- making work better.In 2013, Bloomberg L.P. gave me the opportunity to turn my obsession with the future of work into my job when we created Bloomberg Beta. I believe the fastest way to make change is to build extraordinary technology companies (and, these days, machine intelligence companies in particular).We talked about a lot of things, including feminism and why it's important to embrace it. Among the many themes covered were also the skills of the future. How do you make yourself “futureproof” in a fast-changing world? I asked him because in his book Futureproof, NYT journalist Kevin Roose thanks Roy profusely for the inspiring conversations he had with him. (Check out this article I wrote about the book.) Here's Roy's conclusion:How do we prepare? Most of the past thinking about preparation for the future that I learned growing up what “point preparation”—”here's what the world's going to be like: prepare yourself for it” (…) But if you believe that the pace of change is going to be more rapid, then learning is the most essential skill, rapid reinvention… In the tech world, I call this being the CIO of your own life… constantly looking for new tools and trying to integrate them and experiment with them. Another one is setting your own priorities. We don't learn in school that this is a skill. The third one is the scientific method applied to everything around us. If the world is going to keep changing, scientific method is our best way of understanding how.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested

Today's episode of Building Bridges is my conversation with Saul Klein, a venture capitalist based in London and a prominent figure in European tech.I've been connected to Saul Klein for quite some time, because he was a partner at Index Ventures when the VC firm invested in my firm The Family in 2013. But I really got to know him after I moved to London in 2015. His name simply kept coming up as the person I should meet.Someone even told me “Saul is the London version of you”. I must say I'm lagging far behind in terms of track record, but it's true Saul and I have many shared interests: not only startups, but also ecosystem building, the geography of entrepreneurship and venture capital, and the many (and overlooked) interactions between the worlds of tech and policy.There's a reason Saul's name is mentioned so often in London, indeed. He was present at the creation of the contemporary UK tech system, as the founder of Lovefilm and an active angel investor. He then joined Index Ventures, arguably the most accomplished European VC firm, as a partner, before founding his own firm, LocalGlobe, with his father Robin Klein—another prominent figure in London tech.In between, Saul was also instrumental, as a cofounder, in launching projects as diverse and impressive as Seedcamp (one of Europe's most successful seed funds), Zinc (a mission-driven firm that aims to tackle societal challenges), and Newton (a training program for VCs, LPs, angels, accelerators, and tech transfer officers worldwide).Needless to say he and I talked quite a lot over the years about many tech-related topics. Our conversation in this podcast, however, is focused on something that really stands out in my view: LocalGlobe's investment thesis, which I wrote about in On Trains and Geography (October 2020), Part of Saul's investment thesis is that his firm should invest in tech startups within a 4-hour train ride from London—which includes cities as diverse and interesting as Cambridge, Manchester, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Here are his arguments:4 hours is far from being a random number. It's enough time to reach a given destination without being away from the office for too long. You can travel 4 hours to your destination, have a 2-hour meeting, and then travel back to sleep in your own bed, back with your team the next morning. (A bit extreme, but it's doable.)You can actually be productive when traveling by train. Not only is it easier to get an Internet connection when on a train (either through wifi or 4G), but traveling by train also comes with many fewer interruptions than traveling by plane.Finally, Saul's is a bet on the future. From what he told me, he expects plane travel to be less and less tolerated in a business context due to climate change, and at some point governments could decide to revisit the whole cost structure (from tax and other perspectives) so as to make planes more expensive...and trains cheaper.A key implication of this thesis is that tech people in London and Paris, which despite Brexit are still well connected by the Eurostar, can work on building The New Entente Cordiale

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm thrilled to share my interview with Sophie Wade, a speaker, writer (and podcaster) about the future of work who is the author of the book Embracing Progress: Next Steps for the Future of Work. She is adamant: working with empathy is the future!Sophie was born in England but now she lives and works in the US. She lived in many countries before that, therefore she has a multicultural approach to the subject that I was especially drawn to. She worked as a consultant with numerous executives and acquired a broad, deep knowledge of work-related issues, such as corporate culture, recruiting talent, leadership, transformation and now “hybrid work” and how to make it right. We talked about all these subjects that are part of my own daily research too.What's the most unexpected work-related transformation brought about by the pandemic? What does “hybrid” look like? What are the challenges associated with it? How do we make the workplace more inclusive in this day and age? How should leadership evolve? How does one change their mindset to become “future proof”? And how much of all this talk about the future of work is determined by culture? What can intercultural comparisons teach us?A few years ago she published this book titled Embracing Progress in which she presents empathy as the solution to a lot of the problems faced by organisations. When it comes to leadership, for example, the battle between ego and empathy is the single most decisive battle. It involves “shifting identity and choice”:The “ego” of the emerging brand of leadership is not the “command and control” type of autocrat that this word has evoked in the past. Now, it's more about empathy—creating an environment based on trust and respect—in order to engage the workforce and improve employee ego, stimulating self-awareness and self-worth. Ego here is also about the company's identity, the values and purpose that the leadership aligns with.When leaders understand the identity of their company and the workers that comprise it, leading people is more about engaging and guiding them. Values echoed by the leaders of a company offer a clear and more “natural” direction for the workforce to follow in their own actions, relating to everything from daily tasks to long-term goals and career planning.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm happy to share my interview with Simon Kuper, a British author, Financial Times columnist, and cosmopolitan intellectual whose latest book The Happy Traitor deals with the story of a British spy, George Blake, who defected to the Soviet Union.Simon lives in Paris but is about to move to Spain with his family for a new experience of cultural immersion. We talked about building bridges across cultures, his multicultural life and identity, multilingualism, mobility… and a few other fascinating subjects (among which football).Many years ago, he moved from London to Paris surreptitiously because he thought his life had become “too comfortable” and he needed a bit of foreignness to make things more challenging. Thus he became a working-from-home pioneer, paving the way for future generations of mobile workers in search of foreign adventures.Born in Uganda, raised in the Netherlands, educated in the UK, Kuper is convinced there's no point in learning a language badly and sticking to superficiality. Instead you should go for excellence:If you do learn a language, go for excellence. If you have children, immerse them in it from birth. Wall Streeters sending their kids to Mandarin-speaking preschools may be hilarious, but they are choosing the most efficient route (…) A multilingual person can be multiple people, inhabiting multiple worlds. As the linguist Nick Evans wrote, “we study other languages because we cannot live enough lives. It's a multiplier of our lives.”Incredibly productive during the pandemic, he has worked on multiple books. His latest book The Happy Traitor was published a few months ago. It deals with George Blake, “a one-man Netflix series, whose life tracked many of the dramas of the 20th century”:When the 98-year-old double agent George Blake died in Moscow on Boxing Day, my biography of him was long since ready. (…) A Briton raised in the Netherlands, he was a teenage courier in the Dutch resistance, joined the British secret services, converted to communism while a prisoner in North Korea and became a spy for the KGB. He then sent dozens of agents working for Britain to their deaths. His crime so shocked Britain that when he was finally unmasked, in 1961, he was given the longest sentence in the country's modern history — only to escape in a jailbreak so spectacular that Alfred Hitchcock spent his final decade trying to turn it into a film.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested

Today's episode of Building Bridges is my conversation with Byrne Hobart, an investor based in Austin, Texas, and a writer at the popular newsletter The Diff.I have Eugene Wei to thank for recommending Byrne Hobart's newsletter The Diff early during the lockdown in 2020. Byrne was already on my radar somewhat, so I jumped on the occasion and immediately subscribed to the extraordinary, dense, 5-email a week product that is The Diff.I'm still enjoying it almost one year later because it spans the many different topics I'm interested in, from finance to economic development to industry deep dives to country focuses—with a few powerful recurring ideas and all the depth & breadth we should be looking for in our everyday reading. Should I mention that Byrne's has become one of the most popular paying newsletters on Substack?Before you go and explore The Diff, however, listen to the podcast

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm happy to share my interview with Anton Howes, a “historian of innovation”, whose book Arts & Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation tells the story of a remarkable British institution, the RSA, of which he became historian-in-residence. We talked about the industrial revolution and how innovation works.Anton Howes is fascinated with the process of invention and what fuels it. I recommend his Substack newsletter, Age of Invention, which is full of interesting pieces about “the origin of patents”, “the birth of the business corporation”, and the maritime technology of the late 16th century.His current research focuses on why innovation accelerated in Britain in the 18th century, i.e. why the Industrial Revolution happened there and not elsewhere:One of my key findings is that innovation is a practice that spreads from person to person. I argue that people became innovators because they adopted an improving mentality - and that Britain experienced an acceleration of innovation because its innovators were committed to evangelising that mentality further.I asked Anton why Britain became the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, if it could have happened elsewhere, who were the entrepreneurs of that time, what motivated them, and what Britain's institutional recipe was. Of course he talked about the RSA, this “extraordinary society that has touched all aspects of British life”: From its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way imaginable. It has sought to influence how Britons work, how they are educated, the music they listen to, the food they eat, the items in their homes, and even how they remember their own history.If Britain prospered the way it did, it's because it developed powerful institutions—norms, best practices & organisations like the RSA—to sustain that prosperity. That history is full of lessons for today as it helps to understand how innovation works and how we can encourage it.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested

Today's episode of Building Bridges is my conversation with Lillian Li, a former venture capitalist in Europe who now writes the highly successful newsletter Chinese Characteristics.I'm not really sure how our paths initially crossed, but I discovered Lillian's work about technology in China in the course of last year—first on Twitter, and then through the insightful and enlightening essays on Chinese tech companies published on her acclaimed newsletter Chinese Characteristics.I had all the reasons to dive in. I think China is a critical area on the global map, one that none of us can afford to ignore. And I think that tech entrepreneurship is one of the things that make China matter even more. On the other hand, we Westerners have to be humble when it comes to China: it's a very large and diverse country, with a culture that's very different from ours, and where people speak a language that's extremely difficult for most of us to master.Needless to say I had to have Lillian on the podcast: as someone who grew up and worked in Europe, she can relate to the kinds of questions we're facing on this side of the world; but as a native of China who went back there last year, she has the unique ability to share the details and nuances that elude most of us who are seeking to understand how China is positioning in the Entrepreneurial Age.Here are the topics Lillian and I covered in our 45-min. conversation:Why she decided to go back to China, how life in China compares to that in the UK in the context of the pandemic, and her assessment of China's economic prospects.What makes tech entrepreneurship in China different from that in the US or Europe, and what European entrepreneurs can learn from their Chinese counterparts.Why Westerners should focus less on powerful Chinese individuals and more on systems and institutions if they really want to understand what's happening in China.What really happened in the runup to Ant Financial's interrupted IPO and her explanation of the setbacks encountered by Jack Ma following the fateful speech he made in October 2020.The sources she recommends for all who want to learn more, including Rui Ma's podcast Tech Buzz China and the book China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know by Arthur R. Kroeber.This podcast and the related article were originally published at Chinese Tech w/ Lillian Li. Founder Control w/ Bill Janeway. Daniel Ek, Arsenal & the Super League as part of my newsletter European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there's Laetitia Vitaud's Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit buildingbridges.substack.com

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm thrilled to share my interview with Deborah Copaken, an American author whose next book Ladyparts: A Memoir is to be released this summer (August 2021). We talked about the various dimensions of her work as a writer, living in Paris, and how the healthcare issue had played such a big part in her life and career decisions.Deborah Copaken started off as a war photographer and travelled to Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Haiti… while being based in Paris (and Moscow) in between her assignments. She wrote a book about that part of her life titled Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War (2001). She also wrote novels like The Red Book and was part of the team of writers on several TV series, the last of which was Emily in Paris (Netflix).I first discovered her through some of her poignant articles about motherhood, divorce, ill-health, abortion and sexual harassment in The Atlantic, the New Yorker and The New York Times. With a great sense of humour, she often uses her own life as the raw material to say things about politics and culture. Her brand of feminism is rooted in the body.As I asked her questions about her adventurous life and successful career as a writer, I was struck by one thing: healthcare (or the lack thereof) has been the main driver of most of her career decisions for over two decades. This has led me to come up with this title for our podcast. What's the point of feminism if you have no access to a proper healthcare system? Can one lead a free life without it?We compared European (and in particular French) feminism with American feminism. And I came out of this conversation with one certainty: because of our more accessible healthcare system (and cheaper childcare services), we Europeans have it better. But it can't be taken for granted. Healthcare is what we should continue to fight for. The rest is almost anecdotal…Healthcare is all the more topical a subject as it's at the heart of her next book, which I've just pre-ordered and look forward to reading. Deborah has undergone so many medical procedures over the past few years (hysterectomy, adenomyosis, tachelectomy…) that the expression “keeping it together” can be understood quite literally. As her body was falling apart, she wrote this book as a “cri du coeur”. Here's what you can read about her new book on the Penguin Random House website: Part cri de coeur cautionary tale, part dystopian tragicomedy, Ladyparts is Copaken's irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America. With her journalist's eye, her novelist's heart, and her performer's sense of timing, she provides a frontline account of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, lack of healthcare, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her father's death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and just plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one on top of the other, which provide the book's narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. She keeps bouncing back from each bum body part and finding the black humor in every setback, but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net.Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there's my Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and Nicolas's Colin European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit buildingbridges.substack.com

Today's episode of the Building Bridges podcast is my conversation with Tyler Cowen, an economist, director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, blogger at Marginal Revolution, and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler.I first met Tyler back in 2019 when my colleague Zineb Mekouar and I spent a few days in Washington, DC to promote my book Hedge and to connect with John Dearie's Center for American Entrepreneurship. We had lunch with Tyler and his colleague and co-author Alex Tabarrok in a Chinese restaurant near George Mason University. Most of our conversation that day was about exchanging ideas and impressions about the relative situation of America, Europe, and the rest of the world.Since then I've kept reading everything I could find about the political situation in the US, the state of the transatlantic relationship, and recently how COVID-19 was impacting the distribution of power and wealth across the world. Then last year, I realized something: Americans are, by far, the most inspiring contributors to this conversation—yet alas they're mostly speaking about America, leaving the rest of the world untouched, uncommented on, almost undocumented!In this context, how about launching a podcast series in which I'd interview American thinkers, but having them focus the conversation on Europe?Fast forward to today: my 2020 idea has morphed into the Building Bridges podcast which I'm co-hosting with my wife Laetitia Vitaud. The value proposition of our podcast is to provide a platform for anyone who has interesting ideas to share with our vast community of “unapologetic globalists” (to quote my recent guest Chris Schroeder).Not everyone that's part of this roster has much to say about Europe. But whenever I catch one who does, I make sure to focus our conversation on that very subject—and I must say Tyler is one of our recent guests who has the most to say and to share about the Old Continent!And so if you're interested in Europe, economics, libertarianism, or the prospects of various other regions in the world, I urge you to give my conversation with Tyler a listen. Here's what you'll hear:What Tyler likes and dislikes about Europe, and the various countries he's lived in or traveled to here (which is most of them!).Why he thinks Europe is one of the least fragmented regions in the world—which is the exact opposite of how I view Europe!Why Americans should be present and invest in India if they want to retain some influence in the future.What advice he would give to young Europeans and young Americans who want to prepare themselves for our coming world.Why he expects Europe to remain a wealthy and prosperous region, despite, well, everything. And many, many more interesting topics and ideas.This podcast and the related article were originally published at Around Europe w/ Tyler Cowen. Lobbying. Startups Across Borders. Biden's Global Tax Reform. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there's Laetitia Vitaud's Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit buildingbridges.substack.com

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm excited to share my interview with Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of several books on human behaviour. His latest book, Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes should be made compulsory reading in all the schools of the world. Disagreement improves our decisions, sparks new ideas, and, counterintuitively, brings us closer together — but only if we do it well. Right now we're doing it terribly. We either get into fights or, more likely, avoid disagreements altogether, because we find them so stressful. This is a hard skill that neither evolution nor society has equipped us with, but it's one we all need to learn, because it's critical to the success of any shared enterprise, from a marriage to a business to a democracy. Isn't it high time we gave more thought to how we disagree better?Like a lot of other animals we humans respond to threat with two tactics: fight or flight. Either we become very hostile or we do everything we can to avoid any kind of argument. But both these reactions are completely dysfunctional. The internet isn't helping: social media are designed to turn what could be productive exchanges into useless cockfights in a public arena.The counterintuitive truth is that we need conflicts to move forward and live and work together more happily. Conflicts can bring us closer. “Couples and teams are happier when they are in the habit of passionate disagreement. Conflict can draw people together.” That's why the author devotes the second half of the book to his 10 “rules of productive argument” to help us get better at disagreeing with others.Establish a relationship of trust with the other person, accept them for who they are, try and make them feel good about themselves, consider that you might be perceived as “weird” by the other person, be curious about their point of view and actually listen to what they have to say...and above all else be real and honest when you interact with them. The stories told in the book and the insights shared show this guide to productive disagreement is indispensable reading. I found this conversation with Ian fascinating. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed having it! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested ⚔️

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm thrilled to share my interview with Diana Lind, a writer and urban policy specialist whose book Brave New Home: Our Future In Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing I devoured a few months ago. In her book, Diana explains that the ‘American Dream'-like single-family home so typical of the 20th-century has become “a lonely, overpriced nightmare”. Even though nuclear families are no longer the norm, housing hasn't yet caught up with changing social norms and demographics. Diana champions new, more ambitious housing policies and she is adamant that we need more options to solve the biggest problems of our times: climate change, loneliness and insufficient healthcare. In this podcast we discuss the emerging trends, the housing crisis, the impact of the pandemic and why there's some reason to be hopeful about the future of housing.

I'm delighted to share a conversation I had with Chris Schroeder, an American entrepreneur, global investor and author of the book Startup Rising about the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Middle East. Chris and I met 2 years ago when I was visiting Washington, DC, where he lives, all thanks to my friend Ian Hathaway (co-author of The Startup Community Way with Brad Feld).Chris, Ian, and I share a deep interest in entrepreneurship as a global phenomenon, specifically the fact that as technology becomes available across the globe, founders can succeed not only in Silicon Valley, but in every entrepreneurial ecosystem that's emerging on the global map. Chris was led to write his book (whose first edition dates back to 2013) after attending a startup event in Dubai where his mind was blown by the sheer scale and passion of the startup community he encountered there.His background was also a contributing factor, however. Before becoming an entrepreneur in the media industry and later focusing on investing in startups around the world, Chris worked as a staff member for then-Secretary of State James Baker, right when the world was undergoing the most radical transformation in our lifetime. He criss-crossed the world with his boss, practically witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first Gulf War that the US waged against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, and many other (incredible) things.As he tells me in our conversation, Chris emerged from this experience with an unapologetic global outlook and a deep interest in what is happening in the rest of the world. It was only a matter of time before this interest converged with his passion for entrepreneurship, and now he's one of the best experts and practitioners I know when it comes to knowing entrepreneurial ecosystems and working with founders based all over the world—a rather unusual positioning for an American.I hope you like this podcast! If you want to dig deeper into Chris's thoughts and works, check out his newsletter as well as his book, now in its second edition, Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East.This podcast and the related article were originally published at Investing Across the World w/ Chris Schroeder. Stripe. Consulting. IPOs. Digital Government. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there's Laetitia Vitaud's Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit buildingbridges.substack.com

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm happy to interview Kelly Hoey, a networking expert, author of the book Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships In A Hyper-Connected World.“Networking needs a rebranding”, says Kelly. We've long seen it as this (mostly male) activity that consists in “schmoozing at boring parties or scrolling through LinkedIn” and wondering how you can benefit from others.But that's not what networking is really about! The pandemic and the social distancing that comes with it have proved one thing: more than ever we need strong relationships to survive and thrive. Our careers but also our mental and physical health depend on the strength and authenticity of the relationships we cultivate. Perhaps we've let loneliness become the epidemic of this century because we've not learned how to genuinely connect with others in this hyper-connected world.Dissatisfied with the business-card-minded definition of networking, Kelly looked to the definition of ‘net' for more inspiration—“an openwork fabric made of threads or cords that are woven or knotted together at regular intervals”—because, she writes,For me networking is an ongoing process of establishing and strengthening relationships. It is not confined to a single activity such as email introductions or cocktail receptions in the lobby of a corporation's headquarters.Kelly wrote this book a couple of years ago. But her messages sound more relevant now than ever before. We need a better ‘net'. As the line between life and work gets blurrier and blurrier, it seems more obvious that a new approach to networking will help us in both. The first thing we could do is stop presenting “digital” networking as “inferior” or less “real”. Online and offline connections complement one another. The former are no less real than the latter. In fact the two are deeply intertwined. There are so many things we can do to get better at cultivating meaningful relationships, both online and offline.I loved meeting Kelly (online) and chatting with her. It felt empowering! Thank you for this, Kelly! I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed recording it. Do not hesitate to share it with people who you think would be interested (yes, that's “networking” and it's a good thing!)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm delighted to interview Dr Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist from Austin, Texas, who's dedicated her career to studying video games and gamers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've spent more time playing video games than ever before in the history of video games. But what if it wasn't a bad thing?I discovered Rachel's work in one of my favourite newsletters, Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study. That particular edition was titled: "Parents deserve so much more when it comes to the ways video games are discussed in our popular media." A few days before, the New York Times had just published yet another gloomy piece about the dangers of games and parents' “alarm”.In a fantastic Twitter thread following the publication of this lazy piece of journalism, Rachel showed that it was “far more moral panic than actual information”. When the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger, especially if it can generate more clicks and views.It's high time we stopped blaming games (and screens) for everything. In her Parent's Guide to Video Games (which I couldn't recommend enough: it's the shortest, most effective read on the subject!), she writes: “First it was the radio. Then it was film, television, rock and roll, and comic books. Today, video games have become the scapegoat of choice for a variety of societal problems, including gun violence, obesity, and addictive behaviours. The fears surrounding the potential negative influence of video games have become more exaggerated and widespread as they have become more popular, more realistic in design, and now, as they are networked online.”In this interview, Rachel shares fascinating lessons from decades of video games research. What is video games addiction? What's the link between games and crime? What's their impact on cognitive development? What about physical and mental health? Do they help us connect better with others or not? In these times of pandemic and social isolation, many gamers see video games are a lifeline. Their experience of games is more relevant than the “moral panic” of clueless video games detractors…I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not hesitate to share it with your friends and colleagues, gamers and non gamers alike!

I sat down for a conversation with Bill Janeway, an economist, faculty member at Cambridge University, and author of the landmark book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy.It's a book that really has had a profound influence on me—basically containing everything you need to know about how venture capital came to be and why it's so relevant today in the context of the transition to the digital economy.Bill's long career in venture capital, primarily with Warburg Pincus, and his academic work let him comment on today's economy from both a business and an institutional perspective. And I consider myself, and the world at large, really, to be quite lucky that he is also such an affable person and generous with his time and thinking.Our conversation spanned how he's experienced the very strange year that was 2020, his thesis regarding the retreat from hyperglobalization, the consequences of Joe Biden's election on America, the world at large, & the tech industry specifically, how he sees Europe's future, and much more.This podcast and the related article were originally published at The Digital Economy w/ Bill Janeway. Reinvention. Bezos. Musk. Communications. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there's Laetitia Vitaud's Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit buildingbridges.substack.com

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm delighted to share the (long) conversation I had with Toni Cowan-Brown, a European in Silicon Valley, whose newsletter I've followed since the beginning.Toni is a true European at heart (albeit with a British passport) who's lived and worked in San Francisco for a few years. She's one of those few people who loves to compare and confront cultures the way I do. Perhaps it's why we just couldn't stop talking!She used to work for a startup called NationBuilder which develops software for political campaigns. (She was in charge of its European expansion). And she continues to see herself as being at “the intersection of tech and politics”. At this intersection we had a long chat about how she experienced the pandemic in San Francisco, her view of the US healthcare system and how the Valley was impacted by everything that happened in California and the world in 2020.Toni has a weekly newsletter called Idée Fixe, a podcast called Unapologetic Women (with Sorcha Rochford), and Another Podcast (with Benedict Evans).I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not hesitate to share it with your friends and colleagues!

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm so pleased to share the conversation I had with Hilary Cottam, an author and social entrepreneur whose ideas about reinventing the welfare state everybody should hear. Relationships should always come first, and we should design every social service around that. I met Hilary in London a little over two years ago. Before meeting her I had been very impressed by her TED talk “Social Services are broken. How we can fix them” (and so I was intimidated to meet her in person!). Then I read her amazing book Radical Help: How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionize the welfare state (2019) which influenced my own work enormously (I cited her book extensively in my own Du Labeur à l'ouvrage about the future of work).Radical Help is about new ways of organising living and growing that have been developed with communities across Britain.The British welfare state transformed our lives.  The model was emulated globally, setting the template for the ways we think about social change across the world.  But this once brilliant innovation can no longer help us face the challenges of today.Radical Help argues that our 20th century system is beyond reform and suggests a new model for this century: ways of supporting the young and the old, those who are unwell and those who seek good work   At the heart of this new way of working is human connection.  When people feel supported by strong human relationships change happens.  And when we design new systems that make this sort of collaboration feel simple and easy people want to join in.Radical Help shows how we can make change and how we can make a transition now towards a new system that can take care of everyone.In this podcast we talk about the welfare state, healthcare, the future of work, the pandemic and its impact on workers, families (and women in particular). Covid-19 has made Hilary's message even more urgent and topical. Now's the time to innovate and give people what they need to flourish in this century.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Please share it with every social entrepreneur, politician and designer you know

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm thrilled to share the conversation I had with Nina Goswami, the BBC's Creative Diversity Lead.For over two years now this journalist has been the project lead and most ardent evangelist of the 50:50 Project.50:50 The Equality Project is committed to inspiring and supporting the BBC and organisations around the globe to consistently create journalism and media content that fairly represents our world.The initiative, born in the BBC's London newsroom, uses a methodology that is rooted in data, creativity, practicality and passion to fundamentally shift representation within the media.There really couldn't be a more attractive subject for someone like me who despairs over the lack of diversity in French media. During this pandemic, an overwhelming majority of all “experts” interviewed by French journalists on TV and mainstream newspapers have been male (and white). Maybe this interview can inspire them to change the way they work.For Nina, the best way to spread the word is to make the business case for 50:50:Then there's the business element. And I think this is the most powerful one for people who feel that there's no need to increase women's representation. We as women make up 50 percent of the world's population, actually, 51 percent of the world's population. And if you are not reflecting women on your content, then you are not likely to be attracting women to your content. One of the really interesting things that we've seen over the past couple of years that 50:50 has been in existence is that people are noticing an increase in women's representation on BBC content, and that's having a really positive effect. 32 percent of women aged 24 to 35 are actually consuming more BBC online content than they have ever before.We've seen in our target audience because we're trying to attract more young people to the BBC (16-to-24-year olds) that 40 percent of them are enjoying content more as a result. So if they're enjoying content more, they are likely to be returning to BBC content. Even if you don't care about women's representation, there's still a business case for doing it.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Please share it with someone else who you believe might like it too

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm happy to share the conversation I had with Andrew Scott.I discovered Andrew's work (and that of his co-author Lynda Gratton) a few years ago when I read their book The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. This book influenced my own work profoundly as I became more and more convinced that increased longevity and ageing of the population play a huge part in shaping the future of work.The second book they wrote together was published in 2020. The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World is as good as the first. It offers a more practical roadmap for individuals and governments. Adapting to the age of longevity involves all the dimensions of our lives (love, leisure, family life, savings, training, health….). It would be much too shortsighted to be content with just forcing people to postpone retirement.I read the second book during the pandemic and couldn't help but wonder, “What does the pandemic change?”, “Doesn't it make this book all the more relevant?”. That's why I'm thrilled to share this conversation I had with Andrew in which I asked him all my questions about the books he wrote with Lynda Gratton, and the impact of the pandemic.Andrew J. Scott is Professor of Economics at London Business School and a consulting scholar at Stanford University's Center on Longevity. He is co-founder of The Longevity Forum, an organisation aimed at achieving healthier longer lives, and member of the Cabinet Office Honours Committee (Science and Technology).How you age isn't destiny. It is profoundly influenced by your actions and beliefs. If you take a chronological approach to your age, then this encourages you to believe ageing occurs at the same fixed, invariant rate for everyone — one year every year. But from the perspective of the malleability of age, this is far from the case. It is fascinating to realise that only a quarter of how you age is genetically determined. That leaves considerable scope for your own actions, as well as events beyond your control, to exert an influence.The natural rhythm and structure of your life narrative is marked by calendar time and the passing of the years. In the face of longevity, if we want to reimagine age then we must first decouple the idea of a simple link between time and age. That requires imagining your age is malleable — as you live longer and with a greater chance of good health, then what it means to be forty, sixty or eighty years old will change in profound ways. It is the malleability that underpins the redesign of life stages. I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Please share it with someone else who you believe might like it too

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm happy to share the conversation I had with Vaughn Tan, author of the book The Uncertainty Mindset.Vaughn is one of the people I met “miraculously” online during the pandemic. I found out about his book in a newsletter this summer, and thought, “a book about cuisine and uncertainty? I have to read it!” And I did. I loved the book and started chatting with Vaughn via Twitter. Sometimes, there's some magic left in social networks

For this new episode of the “Building Bridges” podcast, I'm happy to share the conversation I had with Professor Mariana Mazzucato.Mariana is a professor at University College London in Economics of Innovation and Public Value and she founded (and directs) their Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), which she talks about in this podcast.Her book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths was published in 2013, and was translated into many languages. It was (finally) also translated into French and released in France in September 2020 (L'État entrepreneur : Pour en finir avec l'opposition public-privé, Fayard). The Entrepreneurial State, as well as her most recent The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy feel more relevant than ever in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. Indeed, public services (in particular health services) were put under strain in this crisis while their “value” was made more obvious to all. Most governments are now spending on a massive scale to save industries and mitigate the economic consequences of several lockdowns. Mazzucato argues there should be no more “free lunches” (public debt / privatised gains). Governments should use this opportunity to position their economies for a more sustainable future.Here's what she wrote recently in a Foreign Affairs article titled “Capitalism After the Pandemic”:“For too long, governments have socialized risks but privatized rewards: the public has paid the price for cleaning up messes, but the benefits of those cleanups have accrued largely to companies and their investors. In times of need, many businesses are quick to ask for government help, yet in good times, they demand that the government step away.”I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Please share it with someone else who you believe might like it too

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I'm happy to share the conversation I had with Bruno Maçães, a political scientist, former Portuguese minister, and author of several books.His latest is titled History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America. It contends that although people believe America to be in decline, it may actually enter a new era of self-reinterpretation. America's unique strength is its ability to general “virtual reality”, stories—from pilgrims to cowboys to social media and reality TV—which makes it uniquely adaptable.Here's how it's summed up on the book's back cover:Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History's great civilisations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, the US was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn't the end? Bruno Maçães offers a compelling vision of America's future, both fascinating and unnerving. From the early American Republic, Maçães takes us to the turbulent present, when, he argues, America is finally forging its own path. We can see the birth pangs of this new civilisation in today's debates on guns, religion, foreign policy and the significance of Trump. What will its values be, and what will this new America look like?But before writing about the US, Bruno Maçães published a book about China, and one about the “dawn of Eurasia”. He's quite unique in that he brings together experience and extensive knowledge about three continents. That's why I asked him questions about geopolitics and his understanding of the state of the world, China's ambition, today's American and the future of Europe.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Please share it with someone else who you believe might like it too

Today I'm delighted to share a conversation that I recently had with James Crabtree, author of the landmark book The Billionaire Raj

I'm very happy to start this new series of podcasts with an interview of Leslie Kern, whose book Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World (2020) I found so inspiring. Leslie is an associate professor of geography and environment and director of women's and gender studies at Mount Allison University, in Canada. With the pandemic and much political, economic and social chaos, 2020 generated lots of questions about cities, urban life, and activism. Many people wonder whether cities still have a future. I'm sure they do. But maybe more so if they are “feminist cities”. And that's why Leslie Kern's ideas are even more relevant than ever.She is “proud to call [herself] a feminist geographer”. Twenty years ago, people may have mocked the idea that geography could be sexist or feminist. Today more people understand that urban planning does indeed have consequences on gender equality, and that we need to take more diverse points of view into account to make housing and infrastructure better for all. As I wrote in a Laetitia@Work newsletter on the subject of feminist cities:This means we can't let urban planning be designed by default for the nuclear family. First, the nuclear family default is not great for feminism. Second, the traditional nuclear family is no longer the norm: there are so many single-parent families, single people, same-sex couples, and all sorts of alternative family arrangements that the traditional 1950s nuclear family is now in the minority. A “feminist city” is an inclusive city that makes life easier for more people.I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast as much as I enjoyed recording it. Please share it with someone else who you believe might like it too