Read time: 2 minutes

1Tech, Lies, and Nanotainers
In his new book — Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup —  Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou details the rise and fall of Silicon Valley blood testing startup Theranos and its now disgraced founder, Elizabeth Holmes. While rightfully touted as the biggest corporate scam since Enron, this book is equally a powerful example of the wages of a toxic leadership and a dysfunctional culture.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou


2Corporate Apology Ads
In an interview with WCCO (CBS affiliate) in Minneapolis, Media Minefield CEO Kristi Piehl explains the value of advertising dollars spent apologizing for corporate screw-ups, from Facebook to Uber to Wells Fargo. Of course, as she points out, it’s much cheaper and more effective to be accountable sooner rather than later.


3Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report 2018
Attendees to this year’s Code Conference were once again treated to “the most highly anticipated slide deck in Silicon Valley.” Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker delivered her rapid-fire presentation of a mind-boggling amount of data on the macro-level trends of the internet and tech worlds. In Meeker’s words, the information in this powerpoint file is meant to be read, not presented, so Kleiner Perkins makes the entire 294-page slide deck available to all on Slideshare.


4Ask Better Questions
In this “HBR Ideacast” episode, Harvard Business School professors Leslie K. John and Alison Wood Brooks talk about the powerful but underutilized leadership skill of asking great questions. From their Harvard Business Review article on the topic: “unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed…”

Kramer: "That's True"


5Stress and Genetic Legacy
There’s an Old Testament concept of the consequences of the “sins of the father” being felt far into the future by the third and fourth generations. I couldn’t help but think of this when I came across this fascinating article in The Economist describing how stressful life experiences like childhood abuse and neglect can alter a child’s DNA in ways that then get passed on to the next generation. The method of passing these changes on? — two specific microRNA molecules within the male sperm.