3 Takeaways

Former Commander of Afghanistan General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal shares lessons from Afghanistan, the impact of the withdrawal, what makes a great leader and what he is most proud of in his career. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has described General McChrystal as, "Perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I have ever met." Learn what General McChrystal believes to be the biggest risk facing the U.S. and the solution.

Gen. McChrystal rose to four-star general in the U.S. Army and Commander of both the International Security Assistance Force and Commander of the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. He previously served as Director of the Joint Staff and as Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command. 

He is the author of several books, including Leaders and Risk, and is currently a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and co-founder of the McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm.

Steven Pinker shares why there is so much irrationality in the world – including conspiracy theories, and belief in fake news and medical quackery. Learn why he is optimistic about the future of democracy and the world, despite so much negativity and partisanship happening today. 

Steve is one of the world’s most renowned thinkers. He is a Harvard University psychology professor and author. Bill Gates called one of Steve’s  books his new favorite book of all time.

His most recent book is Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.

NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum shares on the future of sports, enhancing the audience experience, virtual reality, gaming and e-sports.

People are interested in what their favorite athletes and teams are doing off the court as well as on. Mark shares how entertainment driven strategies enhance the overall experience while growing the audience. 

Under Mark’s leadership, the NBA has formed NBA Africa, launched NBA Academies around the world, and created the Jr. NBA Global Championship.

In 2016, Mark was named to Forbes’ list of the Top 25 Most Influential Minorities in Sports.

Have you ever wondered how you could change someone’s mind  or make something go viral? Jonah Berger shares what works to change people’s minds – even under almost impossible conditions – and how to make things “catch on.” 

Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an internationally bestselling author. He is a world-renowned expert on change and on word of mouth, social influence, viral marketing, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. He has taught tens of thousands of students and executives, and advised hundreds of companies including Apple, Google and Nike.

He is the author of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind and Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Michael Clinton, former President of Hearst Magazines, provides practical advice on creating the life you want. 

Michael has created an extraordinarily rich and multi-layered life. He is the part owner of a vineyard in Argentina, a private pilot, and has traveled to 124 countries. Additionally, Michael has run a marathon on all seven continents. While at Hearst he helped create Food Network Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, and HGTV Magazine.

In addition, Michael is the author of the book Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It’s Too Late).

Learn how Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey successfully created and built Square, how (as a start-up) Square beat Amazon, and other tips he has for the 3 Takeaways audience. Jim shares why sometimes doing nothing is the best response.

Square lets anyone with an iPhone, iPad, or Android mobile device and a bank account accept credit card payments. Jim McKelvey co-founded Square in 2009 with Jack Dorsey. 

Jim is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist, artist, and author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. 

Co-founder of BlackRock Barbara Novick shares how she and her co-founders built the largest investment management firm in the world with $9 trillion under management and clients in over 100 countries. Learn the keys to BlackRock’s success. Barbara transitioned from Vice Chairman of BlackRock to Senior Advisor in 2021.

Happiness expert and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Arthur Brooks shares how you can get better at, practice and share happiness and live a better happier post pandemic life. He also talks about how he managed to accomplish three complete job changes over his career. 

Arthur is a Harvard professor, PhD social scientist, bestselling author, and columnist at The Atlantic whose focus is providing a roadmap to living a happier better life. Before joining the Harvard faculty, he was president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the world’s leading think tanks, and before that he was a classical French hornist. He is the author of 11 books.

Arthur is the host of the podcast “The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks.” His next book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, will be published in 2022.

Peter Wendell founded Sierra Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested more than $2 billion in a wide variety of successful technology companies. Peter co-teaches Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, “Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital” course with former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. He is a trustee of Merck and was chairman of the board of Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), which manages Princeton University’s endowment.

Peter provides an insider’s perspective on venture capital. Find out how start-ups can secure funding and grow to become unicorns – start-ups valued at over $1 billion. There are currently more than 800 unicorn start-ups worldwide.

Paul Polman is the former CEO of Unilever, one of the largest companies in the world with over 300 brands. Paul helped redefine what being a good company means long before it was acceptable to think about anything besides profits. Paul shares how Imagine, a movement that he co-founded, brings together a critical mass of CEOs across the value chain to move industries toward sustainable impact goals such as climate change and inequality. Learn more about what a good company is and how your business can thrive by giving more than it takes.

Paul is the author of the highly anticipated book Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take.

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb gives an inside account of the system wide failure across the U.S. government that left the country blind amidst the global covid pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, he was in regular contact with all the key players in the government and the drug and diagnostic companies. Find out how we can better prepare for the next health crisis – be it a deadlier covid variant, a flu pandemic, or a man-made biological threat. 

Scott is the author of Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic.

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton shares what he thinks good policing looks like, reforms needed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the arc of policing and the reasons crime is up in many major cities.  He talks about different approaches to policing including broken windows, rapid response and community policing as well as the crisis in relations between the Black community and the police. While he and his team slashed crime rates and created the revolutionary data-driven program CompStat, his career has not been without controversy.  He is the only person to have led the police departments of the United States' two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles.

Bratton is currently the chairman of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council and author of The Profession.

Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, shares on cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, digital assets, and the possibilities of blockchain. Learn how the first Tweet, a single sentence by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, sold as an NFT for millions of dollars and why it was worth so much. He also shares how blockchain can even be used for social good. In prisons, for example, it could be used to record solitary confinements and make criminal justice more transparent. 

This discussion should not be relied on for investment advice. 

Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor at Large, U.S. of the Financial Times uses her perspective as an anthropologist to explain a wide variety of business and cultural phenomena. She predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Discover how she sees the world today including new phenomena such as crypto currencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), artificial intelligence and gaming. 

Her new book is Anthro Vision: A New Way to See in Life and Business. Anthropologist Ralph Linton said, “The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.” 

Meat production is one of the world’s greatest contributors to climate change. Patrick Brown, the creator of the Impossible Burger and the Founder of Impossible Foods, wanted to figure out how to make delicious, affordable meat from plants that is better for the environment and consumers. Learn about his journey from Stanford University professor to creating the Impossible Burger and how he built Impossible Foods into the multibillion-dollar company it is today. 

Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard and one of the founders of behavioral science. He has written two books with Nobel Laureates, including Nudge with Richard Thaler. We are unknowingly influenced by our environments, by how choices are framed, by the people we are with, and a myriad of seemingly insignificant factors. Learn the latest findings in behavioral science and how they can be used by everyone - governments, businesses and individuals - to make people's lives better.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discusses the greatest threats, cyber, surveillance, the information being collected on each one of us and individual rights to privacy. Learn how we can protect ourselves against future health or biological threats. 

Angela Duckworth is the Character Lab Founder and CEO and a University of Pennsylvania Professor of Psychology. Angela studies the character traits and habits which predict success. She has studied West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists, teachers, sales people and students to determine who is successful and why. A few characteristics emerged as significant predictors of success. Angela shares what the character traits for success are and how we can nurture them.

Former American Express Chairman and CEO and current General Catalyst Chairman and Managing Director Ken Chenault, shares his thoughts on leadership, race, creating diverse workforces, responsible innovation, and his hope for the future. Ken covers his early life, growing up, his experience leading American Express for nearly two decades through crises and digital transformation, and the advice he gives founders and CEOs building innovative, enduring companies backed by General Catalyst.

Upon Ken’s retirement from American Express, Warren Buffett, the company’s largest shareholder stated, “Ken's been the gold standard for corporate leadership and the benchmark that I measure others against.” Ken is recognized as one of the business world’s experts on brands and brand management. He has been honored by multiple publications including Fortune Magazine, which named him as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in its inaugural list in 2014 and, most recently, in 2021.  

Ken serves on the boards of Airbnb, Berkshire Hathaway, Chief, Guild Education, and the Harvard Corporation. He is a co-founder of OneTen, a coalition of leading executives coming together to upskill, hire and advance one million Black Americans over the next 10 years into family-sustaining jobs with opportunities for advancement. He also serves on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Advisory Council for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Manager of Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets, Steven Rattner, shares what he is investing in now and how he views the opportunities and risks in the market. As a former Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and former head of Obama’s Auto Task Force, he also provides insights on government.

Steve is also the Economic Analyst for MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a Contributing Writer for the The New York Times Op-Ed page. 

Iris Bohnet, the Academic Dean of the Kennedy School and co-Director of the Women and Public Policy Program, shares how simple, evidence-based changes can reduce and neutralize the biased behaviors in classrooms, police departments, and boardrooms; and in hiring and promotion. She is a behavioral economist, combining insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society.

Imagine homes that can grow themselves whenever and wherever they’re needed or buildings that can adapt to their environment.  We’re limited only by our creativity in designing materials that physically sense, adapt to their environment, heal themselves and grow. Skylar Tibbits shares how we can design simple and elegant materials that harness nature without electronics and batteries.

Elizabeth Nyamayaro is the author of I Am A Girl From Africa, Special Advisor at the United Nations World Food Programme and founder of the HeForShe movement.  She shares her near death experience and how she used adversity to create an opportunity to do greater things. 

Boeing’s fall from grace didn’t happen overnight. Sandra Sucher shares five key mistakes made by the CEO and the board of directors.

Secret Service Director James Murray is responsible for the Investigative and Protective missions of the Secret Service. He shares how the Secret Service trains its agents and protects against new types of risk such as the cyber physical nexus. He also shares how we can protect ourselves from cyber risk.

James Collins, co-inventor of the technology behind Covid vaccines, shares a revolutionary approach to drug discovery. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, he discovered an amazing new class of antibiotics, which he named halicin after Hal, the murderous robot in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Professor Collins' patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech, pharma and medical devices companies. He is known as one of the founders of the new field of synthetic biology and is a professor at MIT and affiliated with the Broad Institute and the Wyss Institute.

Ellen Bennett created a multi-million dollar business with clients ranging from 2 star Michelin restaurants to Martha Stewart and Google, without any design or business experience. She shares her hard won and unconventional wisdom of what worked. Her new book is Dream First, Details Later.

Warren Buffett recommends Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, which has sold over 5 million copies, as one of the best business books of all time. Dr. Cialdini shares his latest findings on how we can all use the tactics of influence and persuasion to get people to say “yes” to us. 

Wall Street Journal best-selling author Katy Milkman shares science-based ways to create change in our lives. She is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

William Green shares investing and life lessons from the world’s legendary investors. Learn the surprisingly simple rules they follow to stack the odds in their favor in both investing and in life. Discover their common approaches to investing, such as sublime indifference to crowd sentiment. William Green is the author of Richer Wiser Happier.

Founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self Sherry Turkle shares her personal discoveries with empathy and how tech changes our relationships. She also reveals the implications of constant connection and artificial intimacy.

Yuval Levin, Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and founding editor of National Affairs, talks about the collapse of trust in our institutions – public, private, civic and political ­– and its surprising consequences. He explains why it has happened and how we can rebuild lost trust. 

Learn from Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of Social Finance, about using impact investing and social impact bonds for a wide range of social purposes from improving high school graduation to reducing recidivism. Social Finance has mobilized over $150 million to transform the lives of more than 20,000 individuals across a wide range of issue areas including workforce development, education, and health.

“Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” Arne Duncan exposes the lies and the broken system that have caused American kids to fall behind. He also shares what really works.

The Wyss Institute For Biologically Inspired Engineering accounts for 25% of Harvard’s intellectual property startups each year, with discoveries and startups ranging from healthcare to energy, robotics, architecture, and manufacturing. Find out from Wyss founding director Don Ingber how their unique model works and how they make breakthrough discoveries in such a wide range of fields and bring them to market so quickly.

Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management with $150BN under management, talks about the most important things in investing and how the real accomplishment is to have profit potential disproportionate to the risk. Learn how to get the odds on your side and find out why diversification is not a magic elixir and why stock prices could go much higher.  

Of the 10,000 business plans Bill Sahlman has read, only 3 companies met their plan. Find out what it takes to succeed.  Entrepreneurs have to be really good at running tests and execution trumps idea. Jeff Bezos is the most effective experimentalist in history. Bill Gates did not invent word processing, the spreadsheet, or presentation graphics; rather he took ideas and out executed everyone else.

Former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard Larry Summers talks about the defining trends of the 21st century, including how we are going to achieve collective solutions, the shift in the center of gravity of the world’s economy and culture to the east, the upcoming transformation in education, the hard choices facing the leading universities, and the exponential growth in what information technology will be capable of.

Former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd, who has known China’s leader Xi Jinping for decades, reveals how Xi Jinping sees China and the world, and what he really wants. Find out why America needs its allies more than ever before and what the U.S. and its allies can do.

Did you know that Antarctica used to be ice-free and earth used to be 20 degrees warmer than it is now? Find out why climate change then wasn’t a problem, and why it is now with Princeton University’s Daniel Sigman.  Also find out how climate change caused horses to grow from the size of large house cats to their size today. 

97% of people plead guilty, they plea bargain, even if they’re innocent. No one can take the risk of going to trial, even innocent people, because if they're convicted they'll face huge amounts of time in prison. The possibility of being acquitted by a jury is almost gone. Find out why the innocent plead guilty and why the innocent no longer have trials from Judge Jed Rakoff, who’s seen it from all sides as a judge, former prosecutor and former criminal defense attorney. 

With nearly 30 years of combined Amazon experience, former Amazon Vice Presidents Colin Bryar and Bill Carr reveal the proven way Amazon innovates and scales businesses. Colin spent all day every day with Jeff Bezos for 2 years as his technical advisor. Bill led the launch and growth of the Kindle, Amazon Music, and Prime Video. Find out how Amazon’s success is due to a well-defined set of principles and practices which they reveal here and illustrate with stories. Find out also what Jeff Bezos is really like and why his siblings hated to go to movies with him. 

Learn about Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s latest findings on “noise” and how there is more noise and flaws in human judgement than you think — Find out why you should see a doctor in the morning and go to court after lunch.

Tom Friedman, author, New York Times columnist, and winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, talks about the world getting flatter and more fragile; abolishing recessions and interrupting the natural laws of capitalism; why the U.S. needs a healthy Republican Party; and how the world AC (After Corona) will be very different from the world BC (Before Corona).

We all think we know what’s right and wrong but we don’t because right/wrong changes over time. Our great grandchildren might be shocked by people eating meat, and the risks of pregnancy, childbirth and unedited genes. Find out which things we're doing now that will be viewed as wrong, and learn about the almost inconceivable things that will become “right" because of new technology.  Will genetic engineering of humans for space travel become acceptable? Bigger brains? More compact bodies? Different species of humans to increase our odds of survival?

Learn how scarcity of anything — money, food or social connections — affects our daily lives and leads us astray. Scarcity reduces both intelligence and control. Having too little preoccupies and taxes the mind, making life much harder.  "Even smiling and being pleasant is hard when your mind is taxed. The employee snaps at rude customers ... The parent snaps at the child ... The server rings up the wrong item.” Learn about the latest cutting edge behavioral science to find out how the poor can escape the scarcity trap and how we can all manage scarcity for better satisfaction and success. 

Find out why Harvard’s Chair of Astronomy Avi Loeb says we are not alone in the universe and that there are more intelligent and sophisticated civilizations than ours. Learn about the evidence that we aren't the “smartest cookie in the jar.” Find out when we were visited by another civilization and how we can create life on other planets by launching what he calls "Noah's spaceship.”

Find out why platform companies dominate traditional businesses and why 7 of the 10 largest companies in the world are platform companies. Learn how they outcompete traditional companies while employing just a tiny fraction of the number of people, how they are completely different from companies of the past, and why platforms beat products all the time.

Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico, provides a unique perspective on America and the world, including American interventions abroad, American exceptionalism and how it has changed over time, and how Latino immigrants are changing the US. Learn how transforming inventions into consumable goods continues to be an almost uniquely American talent and capability.

Find out what the good life actually looks like based on Harvard's 75 year study of over 700 men from when they were teenagers through old age, with director of the study, Robert Waldinger. Learn the single most important thing that keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life and predicts who will stay healthy longer and live longer. To learn more about Robert Waldinger and the Harvard Study of Adult Development, visit https://robertwaldinger.com.