The fuzzy and the techie : why the liberal arts will rule the digital world / Scott Hartley.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Boston, MA : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, c2017Description: xi, 290 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780544944770
- 0544944771
- 384.301/12 23
- HD53 .H3765 2017
| Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book
|
Bedford Public Library Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction | 384.3 HAR | Available | 32500001724070 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Financial Times Business Book of the Month
Finalist for the 2016 Financial Times/ McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize
A leading venture capitalist offers surprising revelations on who is going to be driving innovation in the years to come
Scott Hartley first heard the terms fuzzy and techie while studying political science at Stanford University. If you majored in the humanities or social sciences, you were a fuzzy. If you majored in the computer sciences, you were a techie. This informal division has 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 counterintuitive 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. They are often the ones who understand the life issues that need solving and offer the best approaches for doing so. It is they who are bringing context to code, and ethics to algorithms.They also bring the management and communication skills, the soft skills that are so vital to spurring growth.
Hartley looks inside some of today's most dynamic new companies, reveals breakthrough fuzzy-techie collaborations, and explores how such collaborations are at the center of innovation in business, education, and government, and why liberal arts are still relevant in our techie world.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [237]-279) and index.
The role of the fuzzy in a techie world -- Adding the human factor to big data -- The democratization of technology tools -- Algorithms that serve: rather than rule - us -- Making our technology more ethical -- Enhancing the ways we learn -- Building a better world -- The future of jobs.
"One of the nation's leading venture capitalists offers surprising revelations on who is going to be leading innovation in the years to come Scott Hartley first heard the terms fuzzy and techie while studying political science at Stanford University. If you majored in the humanities or social sciences, you were a fuzzy. If you majored in the computer sciences, you were a techie. This informal division has quietly found its way into a default assumption that has mistakenly led the business world for decades: that techies are the real drivers of innovation. But in this brilliantly contrarian book, Hartley reveals the counterintuitive 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. They are often the ones who understand the life issues that need solving and offer the best approaches for doing so. They also bring the management and communication skills that are so vital to spurring growth. Hartley looks inside some of today's most dynamic new companies, reveals breakthrough fuzzy-techie collaborations, and explores how such collaborations work to create real innovation"-- Provided by publisher.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Hartley, a venture capitalist with a Stanford political science degree, doesn't actually spend much of his full-length debut attacking the straw man presented in his introduction, the "dire warnings of certain tech titans" that only STEM degrees matter to the technically-oriented business market of the 21st century and that liberal arts smarts are being undervalued. His actual focus is demonstrating that modern innovation still addresses essentially human problems, and that human-centered design is still central to the development of products that will be successful in the future. Hartley highlights the human skills needed to find the "novel patterns" in big data, shows how high-tech tools such as satellites have become much more accessible to breakthrough thinkers of all backgrounds, and offers case studies of and shout-outs to blended businesses such as StitchFix, which utilizes both algorithms and skilled stylists, and Talkspace, which provides access to lower-cost therapy via an online platform. He also dips into the idea of design ethics, such as those involved in programming self-driving cars or providing people with default choices that affect behavior. Hartley's perspective is clear but not particularly original; he's preaching solidly to the choir rather than presenting a radical perspective as he claims. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.Author notes provided by Syndetics
SCOTT HARTLEY is a venture capitalist and startup advisor. He has served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, and a venture partner at Metamorphic Ventures. Prior to venture capital, Hartley worked at Google, Facebook, and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is a contributing author to the MIT Press book Shopping for Good, and has written for publications such as Inc. , Foreign Policy , Forbes , and the Boston Review.Hartley has been a speaker at dozens of international entrepreneurship events with the World Bank, MIT, Google, and the U.S. State Department's Global Innovation in Science and Technology (GIST) program. Hartley holds an MBA and an MA from Columbia University, and a BA from Stanford University. He is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations.