Little Bets and Black Sheep: The Revolution Will Be Improvised

The world is being disrupted by globalization and technology.  What will fill the gaps — in government, business, and culture?  It all begins with little bets: small, affordable risks taken to discover problems, needs, and opportunities in order to find big bets.  What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, and the story developers at Pixar films all have in common?

Best-selling author Peter Sims found that all of them have achieved remarkable results using a surprisingly similar approach: methodically taking small, experimental steps. Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan a whole project out in advance, trying to foresee the final outcome, they make a methodical series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures and from small but significant wins that allow them to find unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.

Presenter(s)

Peter Sims is an entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, and award-winning author.  He is founder & a ‘sir’ of the BLKSHP (pronounced “black sheep”) and his latest book is "Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries", which grew out of a five-year collaboration with faculty at Stanford’s Institute of Design (the d.school), as well as his previous work in venture capital with Summit Partners, including as part of the team that established Summit’s European Office in London.  He was also the coauthor with Bill George of the best-seller True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, a member of General Electric’s Innovation Advisory Panel, an Innosight Fellow, one of the “core influencers” advising and supporting #GivingTuesday, and cofounder of Fuse Corps, a social venture that places entrepreneurial leaders on year-long grassroots projects with mayors and governors to tackle some of America’s most pressing problems.