Issue #7: Ben Horowitz reflects on his bestseller

This special edition of the Big Think Business newsletter focuses on our Hindsight special issue — a curated series of articles featuring some of the world’s most insightful thinkers and thought-leaders. Explore philosophical, strategic, and practical ways of connecting our knowledge of the past to our plans for the future.

In a Nutshell

The hard thing about hindsight: Why looking back has its limits

With tech entrepreneur, author and a16z co-founder, Ben Horowitz

1. Hindsight can be dangerous // Especially in venture capital, because timing is always crucial — in hindsight, “Friendster was a stupid idea but in time it became a great idea called Facebook.” It often pays to keep an open mind.
2. Beware of case studies // It’s easy to read a business case study to figure out how a decision should have been made — but in the real world you have to make decisions with “maybe 5% of the total information that you’d like to have.”
3. Get to the next move // You can’t let the company dwell on past mistakes — if you have people in your organization who are doing that, they “probably need to be fired, because at that point they are sabotaging the future.”

Read the full article here.

Top stories you may have missed from the past week

How hindsight can take us to a new level of “wisdom management”

Chip Conley — founder and CEO of JDV Hospitality — maps out an inclusive path from hindsight to understanding. Read here.

Ask “hindsight questions” to truly learn from past experiences

Carving out time for useful reflection is among the most valuable of leadership disciplines, explains “questionologist” Warren Berger. Read here.

How to free yourself from “hindsight bias”

Josh Kaufman, best-selling author of The Personal MBA, explores an essential truth about all decision-making. Read here.

If greatness cannot be planned, why worry about hindsight?

AI researcher Ken Stanley wonders how our rear-view perspective on success fits into a serendipitous mode of innovation. Read here.

Moneyball on steroids: Can AI grant us 20/20 foresight?

Hindsight can cloud our predictive abilities but big data can de-mist forecasting — now AI is sharpening that focus. Read here.

How the Kierkegaard view of hindsight can help us reframe our work-lives

The Danish philosopher’s simple paradox — living forward while looking backward — can be translated into golden business insights. Read here.

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