Scott Hartley is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He has worked for Google, Facebook, Harvard's Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, and the White House as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. He holds three degrees from Stanford University and Columbia University. He is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and has traveled to over seventy-five countries.
Scott Hartley first heard the terms 'fuzzy' and 'techie' while studying political science at Stanford University. If you had majored in the humanities or social sciences, you were a fuzzy. If you had majored in the computer sciences, you were a techie. This informal division quietly found its way into a default assumption that has misled the business world for decades-that it's the techies who drive innovation.
But in this brilliantly contrarian book, Hartley reveals the counter-intuitive reality of business today: it's actually the fuzzies-not the techies-who are playing the key roles in developing the most creative and successful new business ideas. He looks inside some of the world's most dynamic new companies, reveals breakthrough fuzzy-techie collaborations, and explores how such associations are at the centre of innovation in business, education and government, and why liberal arts are still relevant in our techie world.
This is a revelatory and original book, of particular importance in India where students are unduly pressurized to gain admission into institutes of technology in the hope that they will be at the forefront of change and innovation in the VUCA world.
A bouncy read by the venture capitalist that suggests sociology and philosophy graduates might be the real winners of the robot revolutionHartley's book tells us why the humanities will produce some of our most important leaders during this timeThis terrific book clearly articulates the importance of the liberal arts in our technocentric world, a view I have long supported. In the end, technology is about making the lives of humans better, and, as the author argues, it is the humanities and social sciences that teach us about the human condition and how it might be improved. A delightful read!
