It's Time To Do Things Differently...

Welcome to?The?Art?of?The?Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces?of?content which I hope will both inspire?and?embolden you.

Here goes…

PODCAST

Using Living Cells to Make Biological Robots: MIT Engineer Ritu Raman on Her Pioneering Work (on The Big Question Podcast)

Can biological robots be used to benefit society without inviting dystopian scenarios commonly portrayed in science fiction? Ethicist and Philosopher Insoo Hyun asks this big question to mechanical engineer Ritu Raman.

Ritu’s research is focused on restoring mobility for individuals who've lost it due to illness or trauma using an innovative approach that merges living cells with engineered structures to build muscle-powered robots. Ritu believes biological robots can play a role in helping to restore ways in which humans rely on a combination of skeletal muscle and the nervous system to navigate our dynamic world. Interestingly, Ritu draws inspiration from science fiction, especially comic books. This fusion of biology, sci-fi and engineering has the potential to produce a wide range of applications in medicine and beyond. This conversation offers a thoughtful and enlightening perspective on this pioneering research.

Ritu Raman, PhD is the d’Arbeloff Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her lab is centered on engineering adaptive living materials for applications in medicine and machines. She has also been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 lists, and is the author of the MIT Press book Biofabrication.

Prof. Raman received her BS from Cornell University and her PhD as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed her postdoctoral research with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT, funded by a L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Insoo Hyun is Director of Research Ethics and a faculty member of the Center for Bioethics and senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also Director at the Center for Life Sciences and Public Learning at the Boston Museum of Science. As a Fulbright Scholar and Hastings Center Fellow, Dr. Hyun's interests include ethical and policy issues in stem cell research and new biotechnologies.

Watch the full, fascinating, interview here.

QUOTE

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

INTERVIEW

Mark Zuckerberg on Llama, AI, & Minus One

Mark Zuckerberg seems to have come out of his media shell in recent years and is actually a great interview to watch. In this one Mark discusses how he turned Facebook into Meta, why he thinks open source is the future of AI, and how he maintains a Minus One mindset at his founder-led company.

South Park Commons Partners (and early Facebook employees) Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agarwal interview Mark so watch on for a deep dive into how the early Facebook team operated, how Mark has kept his company at the cutting edge of innovation, and why the most important variable of success is the people you build with.

Watch the full interview here.

BOOK

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

The paperback is out now.

It's time to do things differently. Trust your team. Be radically honest. And never, ever try to please your boss.

These are some of the ground rules if you work at Netflix. They are part of a unique cultural experiment that explains how the company has transformed itself at lightning speed from a DVD mail order service into a streaming superpower - with 190 million fervent subscribers and a market capitalisation that rivals the likes of Disney.

Reed Hastings, Netflix Chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries. With INSEAD business school professor Erin Meyer, he will explore his leadership philosophy - which begins by rejecting the accepted beliefs under which most companies operate - and how it plays out in practice at Netflix.

From unlimited holidays to abolishing approvals, Netflix offers a fundamentally different way to run any organisation, one far more in tune with an ever-changing fast-paced world. For anyone interested in creativity, productivity and innovation, the Netflix culture is something close to a holy grail. This book will make it, and its creator, fully accessible for the first time.

Buy the book here.

WATCH

Success, Failure & Numbers

"Often founders think, 'I'm the founder. I need to trust my intuition and I'm special.' And I would say you are special and I think founder led companies are dramatically more successful than when founders don't lead the company. But if you overlay quantitative analysis on your intuition, it is better than your intuition." David Weiden on the importance of numbers when building a successful company

A great talk by David Weiden of Khosla Ventures, who has been on both sides of the table.

David is a Founding Partner and Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, where he focuses on internet software and services. A number of his investments have led to significant exits including Okta, RingCentral, and Upstart.

Prior to joining KV, David spent five years at Tellme Networks as VP of marketing and business development. Using the quantitative decision making framework RIFLE, the company drove revenue to over $100 million, and was ultimately acquired by Microsoft for more than $700 million. Previously, he led AOL’s communications, community and instant messaging product divisions as they surpassed 50 million users worldwide. After being told by his employer Morgan Stanley that email would never be used for business, David jumped at the chance to join Netscape, where he learned many lessons in product management. David’s career began in door to door sales, where one sales pitch led to his new career in technology via McCaw Cellular, now AT&T.

Watch the full talk here.

Finally, if you are looking for some respite this weekend, I highly recommend The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare which depicts the true story of how Britain’s secret special services operation was first conceived.

The film is loosely based on the 2014 book, Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII by Damien Lewis - In the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death. Churchill's Secret Warriors tells the story of the daring victories for this small force of 'freelance pirates', undertaking devastatingly effective missions against the Nazis, often dressed in enemy uniforms and with enemy kit, breaking all previously held rules of warfare. Master storyteller Damien Lewis brings the adventures of the secret unit to life, weaving together the stories of the soldiers' brotherhood in this compelling narrative, from the unit's earliest missions to the death of their leader just weeks before the end of the war.

Trailer here.

Thank you so much for reading?the?newsletter?and?for listening to?the?podcast, and?if you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too. And if you have two minutes, please do leave a review for the podcast - it would mean the world to me and helps others to find it too.

Danielle