June 6, 2016
Hello, NewCo Shift readers. Thanks so much for reading. I’d like to share with you some of my favorites on our site right now:
Scott Rosenberg has a terrific piece on The Idea That’s Killing Mission-Driven Companies. If profit isn’t your only goal, congratulations. You’re now at odds with neoliberalism, the economic consensus of the last three decades (Lady Thatcher, above, was a severe proponent). Rosenberg dives deep into this much-cited but little-understood economic philosophy and shows what NewCos can do about it.
May I drop my professional voice for a moment? The interview that our founder and editor in chief John Battelle conducts with Grail CEO Jeff Huber conveys a moving, ambitious story of Grail’s mission to solve one of humanity’s greatest problems — cancer — and how it dovetails with Huber’s personal experiences. It’s very NewCo but also very human. Read it. And if that isn’t enough Huber for you, we’ve also published a commencement address he delivered recently.
For those of you following our Spotlight profiles on NewCos, our newest are BioLite, which makes for better camping and saves lives in emerging markets, and Greentown Labs, which incubates next-generation green technologies. These come courtesy of our Lon Koontz.
Two older pieces are still getting a lot of attention. R.U. Sirius talks to Douglas Rushkoff about how growth became the enemy of prosperity — and how to fix it. And I interview Foundry Group’s Seth Levine about what it’s like turning a venture firm into a B Corp.
We’ll be back next week with plenty more from NewCo Shift, covering the biggest shift in business and society since the industrial revolution.
– Jimmy Guterman, executive editor
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