Stanford eCorner

Actor Harrison Ford shares his longstanding commitment to preserving nature through Conservation International, joined by the organization’s CEO, M. Sanjayan. In conversation with Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig, the environmental leaders urge entrepreneurs and engineers to build disruptive innovations, while describing how strategic thinking is at the heart of the self-sustaining s...

The key is understanding your own tolerance for risk in what you do for work, and how you pay the bills at home. At the firm Forerunner Ventures, founders must have three traits in spades to get funding: magnetism, discipline and vision. Eurie Kim, general partner at the firm, explains what it’s like to work at companies of different sizes, and what skills and strengths make you best suited for ea...

The tale of 3D Robotics starts in the garage of a teenager in Tijuana, Mexico, who launched a drone-making factory with a $500 check from entrepreneur Chris Anderson, who then flooded the American market with their unmanned aerial vehicles and disrupted the aerospace industry through grassroots, open innovation. Then, China caught on and drove U.S. drone makers into the ground. Anderson, 3DR's CEO...

Choose co-founders based on their core values. Pick investors who will be there in your darkest hour. Make hiring the best people your top priority, and treat them like owners — not employees. Sameer Dholakia, CEO of business email service SendGrid, discusses the most important strategies for a startup's success, including the concept of "servant leadership."

Entrepreneur Leila Janah describes how her social enterprise Samasource allows people in Africa and elsewhere to lift themselves out of poverty through dignified, fair-wage digital work like photo tagging for companies in Silicon Valley. She celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit in those who survive on next to nothing and explains how giving work is more effective than charity.

On the racetrack, the checkered flag goes to the car that’s driven to its limits and maneuvered decisively in the moment. On a two-lane road, the split-second act of passing a vehicle stopped in front of you becomes a way more complicated call when algorithms are in control. Autonomous-vehicle maker and Stanford Professor Chris Gerdes applies these findings and more to business and life.

Make beef out of plants instead of cows and you can begin to save the planet. That's what inspired award-winning scientist Patrick Brown to leave his professorship at Stanford University and found Impossible Foods. In conversation with Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig, Brown describes how his singular passion for impact prompted him to leave academia and become a food-tech entreprene...

Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of the popular DNA-testing company 23andMe, discusses how providing people with their own genetic data empowers consumers to make better health decisions and advances science. In conversation with Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig, Wojcicki explains how the intense scrutiny that the DNA-testing company has received is a sign that it is disrupting the...

As the person who helped launch and then lead Google Analytics to 70 percent coverage of the web, Amy Chang had accomplished a lot in eight years. But then, she left to launch her own tech startup, a relationship-intelligence platform called Accompany. In conversation with Matt Harvey of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Chang talks about getting out of one's comfort zone and laying the gr...

How good are you at limiting your screen time? Because of the way humans evolved, our brains are no match for the engineers, designers and companies that collectively create the devices and apps that demand our attention all day long, according to technology ethicist Tristan Harris. A former tech entrepreneur himself, Harris is now co-founder of Time Well Spent, a nonprofit movement to create an e...

Industry disruptors, it stands to reason, tend to be outsiders. But how comfortable are you not being an outlier? Serial entrepreneur Catherine Berman shares her story of coming to terms with the traits and experiences that set her apart from friends and colleagues throughout adolescence and early in her career. Embracing her uniqueness emboldened Berman to launch several social ventures, the late...

There was a time, not long ago, when information we desperately wanted wasn’t at our fingertips. What’s the best deal on flights to New York? How much does that home down the street cost? Serial entrepreneur Rich Barton has made a career out of providing all those juicy details by launching platforms such as Expedia, Zillow and the company-review site Glassdoor. He shares his journey and advice fo...

Even as adults, we still have to deal with bullies, at work and otherwise. Stanford Professor Bob Sutton has devoted his career to studying organizational behavior and dysfunction, and lately, figuring out how we can avoid or deal with people who demean, disrespect and drain those around them. The professor of management science and engineering draws on academic research and anecdotes included in...

Entrepreneur Sandy Jen has lived with self-doubt and insecurities throughout her life: in college, at her first startup, and later as a working mother. But facing the risks she feared each time gave her confidence that a shy, little girl from the suburbs can grow up to improve people’s lives through technology and a passion for impact. She co-founded the senior-care startup Honor, and this is her...

For our wrap-up of FRICTION, Stanford Engineering’s Bob Sutton returns to the premise of the podcast - work doesn’t have to suck - and shares his top five takeaways from all the lively and frequently raw discussions he’s had over the summer with fellow experts on management, organizational behavior and other aspects of today’s work environment. A professor of management science and engineering, Su...

At the end of our live recording of the final FRICTION episode, which you should listen to first, Stanford University business Professor Hayagreeva “Huggy” Rao took to the stage and shared some closing thoughts on podcast host Bob Sutton’s raucous conversation with Kim Scott about her new bestselling book “Radical Candor.” In scholarly, dulcet tones, Rao observes how we can't be brutally honest wi...

For our final full episode, Stanford Engineering’s Bob Sutton sits down with Kim Scott, author of the New York Times bestseller “Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.” Before a live audience in San Francisco, they discuss how we can all develop the courage to tell co-workers when they can do better, as well as face critical feedback ourselves. Do you pull punches just be...

This special episode gives you a taste of eCorner's new podcast for the summer, FRICTION. Stanford Engineering Professor Bob Sutton interviews acclaimed leadership consultant Patty McCord. The former chief talent officer of Netflix speaks bluntly about how backstabbing, passive-aggressive behavior and overall coddling of employees are all bad for businesses — and how actual grown-ups can hear and...

Professor DeCelles studies settings that are rife with friction, frustration, and fatigue. In this episode, Stanford Engineering’s Bob Sutton interviews the University of Toronto’s Katy DeCelles about how people deal with the constraints and stresses of prison and airports.  Employees in both settings are required to enforce strict rules, which can inflame the often distressed, manipulative, and o...

We could all use a little structure — in our lives and, yes, at work (maybe they’re one and the same). The projects we work on get more complex by the day, whether it's the technology, timezones or that sudden call from the school nurse. In this episode, Stanford organizational psychologist Bob Sutton speaks with his colleague Melissa Valentine, an assistant professor of management science and eng...

When we’re at work, we recognize them instantly. But what type of asshole are they? Are they just a stunted playground bully, or perhaps the dreaded petty tyrant? Stanford Engineering Professor Bob Sutton, author of the forthcoming “The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt,” and eCorner’s Rachel Julkowski discuss the different kinds of office jerks who make life...

As kids, it worked every time: Out of sheer greed, you claim the last Oreo by licking it and grossing out all your friends. As adults, it’s your colleague who tells everyone he plans to work on something just so no one else does - halting productivity and progress. In this episode, Stanford Engineering Professor Bob Sutton and his co-conspirator Rebecca Hinds crack open a recently declassified Wor...

They look and smell alike, but there is a difference between the two types of messiness in the workplace. That difference is intention. In this episode, Stanford management expert Bob Sutton discusses how organizations achieve a balance between structure and anarchy, like allowing for heated debates within constraints designed to fuel creativity. He speaks with Dom Price, head of R&D and “work fut...

In order to understand how friction helps and harms work, Stanford’s Bob Sutton, author of the forthcoming “Asshole Survival Guide,” interviews management expert Michael Dearing, a former senior vice president at eBay who has done corporate strategy for the Walt Disney Co. and now heads Harrison Metal, a VC and education firm that focuses on general management, business leadership and product deve...

Startups may want to downplay the free food, beer and haircuts and start hiring and treating workers like the adults they need to thrive long term, according to acclaimed leadership consultant Patty McCord. In this episode, the former chief talent officer of Netflix speaks bluntly with host Bob Sutton about how backstabbing, passive-aggressive behavior and overall coddling of employees are all bad...