🔮 Rewarding breakthroughs; pandemic supply chains; TikTok, Jio, QAnon++ #290

I’m Azeem Azhar. I convene Exponential View to help us understand how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies. 

This week, I asked members how they judged Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s public memo that political activism is a distraction for mission-driven companies. A fruitful discussion ensued.

The near future

😉 Two academics looked at what compensation schemes best spurred breakthrough innovations. Their conclusion: outsize rewards for the best results mattered most.

Providing sizable rewards for only the very top performers appears to inspire the sort of risk-taking required to encourage the requisite creativity that delivers scientific and technological novelty. Moreover, since the additional risk under the winner-takes-all compensation scheme did not appear to reduce output levels, it appears that this more radical innovation can be obtained at relatively low cost.

Interesting implications for both corporate R&D and publ…