Assertion Partly supported
Feifer: Russia has used the same election interference playbook for 100 years
“For 100 years, Russia had run the same exact playbook on American elections, and that was to utilize the dominant mode of communication at the time, which could either be newspapers, or radio, or television, or social media, to exacerbate existing tensions in …”
Insight
Feifer: Facebook, not the digital camera, ultimately killed Kodak
“What killed Kodak wasn't the digital camera. It was Facebook.”
Insight
Feifer: Society routinely mistakes 1% problems for 100% problems
“Number four, we mistake a one percent problem for a 100% problem.”
Insight
Feifer: Cutting 'inefficient' meetings for four-day workweeks damages company culture
“How do you get to a four-day workweek? Well, what you do is that you eliminate meetings and colleague chit chat and basically anything that feels inefficient so that everyone's just focused on efficiency. But it turns out all those inefficiencies had a purpose…”
Opinion
Feifer: Silicon Valley routinely fails to connect revolutionary products to familiar concepts
“I mean, I think that Silicon Valley is guilty of this all the time, of introducing very revolutionary ideas without doing the groundwork of connecting this new idea to something that people are already comfortable and familiar with.”
Insight
Feifer: Consumers reject net-new innovations in favor of better existing products
“People hate that because people hate new things. What they like is better versions of old things.”
Opinion
Feifer: Traditional media reports technology in an excessively alarmist manner
“I'm often deeply frustrated by the way in which I see traditional media cover technology. I, and, you know, the kind of alarmist look for the worst possible outcome and then report it as if it is as if it is you know, fact or at least certain outcome.”
Opinion
Jason Feifer: AR, VR, and metaverse lack a killer use case for mass adoption
“I don't think that the killer use case for AR VR or the metaverse has been introduced yet, and so what people are hearing is a lot of hype, and then if they get the oculus, I got an oculus, you know where it is? It's in my closet. And the reason is because I d…”
Insight
Feifer: Everyday norms prove innovation wins despite initial opposition
“We really are the products of change, and we forget that. We, we're actually the argument for change because the things that we grew up with were the things that people had previously opposed.”
Insight
Feifer: Solving operational crises yields more goodwill than smooth, disruption-free operations
“When something breaks, it gives you an opportunity to Fix it or to do something nice. And then people are kind of more grateful to you than if you had just been a normal person and things worked fine.”
Insight
Feifer: Repeated questions from others reveal what they value in you
“If you listen to the questions that people ask you discover that what they're really doing is telling you what they think your value is to them.”
Insight
Feifer: Intelligence has shifted from memory retention to rapid information processing
“A sign of intelligence decades ago would be the ability to be able to easily retain information. So the ability to read something and retain it the quick recall of that information, that was a sign of intelligence. Now a sign of intelligence would be the abili…”
Insight
Feifer: Evaluate innovation by whether its problems are better than old ones
“So the better question to ask is, is this new problem better than my old problem? Because once we start tracking progress through problems, one, we just create the space for problems, which are inevitable, and therefore, when a problem arises, it doesn't shock…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Feifer: Commercial spaceflight currently lacks purpose but utility will emerge
“Right now you know, Richard Branson can send people into space, but there isn't really a point to it at this point, right? It's just a kind of joy ride for wealthy people. But it's very possible that at some point in the future, there will be a true purpose fo…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Feifer: Early automobiles were dismissed because modern commuting did not exist yet
“When the car was introduced, people often didn't know what to do with it because the very idea of a commute didn't really exist. People didn't, they weren't commuting long distances, so they were mostly joyriding with these things, and a lot of people were say…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Feifer: Entrepreneur Magazine's print edition remains profitable today
“We do still make money on the print magazine. To be clear, it doesn't lose money. Just doesn't make the kind of money that it probably did 30 years ago.”
Assertion Supported
Feifer: Rebranding 'chicken chips' to 'protein chips' unlocked a snack company's sales
“It did really well in taste tests. People really liked the product. Nobody was buying it. Because chicken chips sounds disgusting. So after a bunch of kind of consumer insights research, they changed from talking, from calling it chicken chips to protein chips…”
Assertion Supported
Feifer: A Michigan priest sparked a national moral panic over teddy bears
“There was a national moral crisis over the teddy bear in 19 or seven. It started in Michigan with a Priest named Michael G. Esper, who had given this sermon about how damaging teddy bears are, and how dangerous they are.”
Assertion Supported
Feifer: John Philip Sousa published 'The Menace of Mechanical Music' in 1906
“He wrote this piece called The Menace of Mechanical Music in 19 oh six, I think.”
Assertion Contradicted
Feifer: Female voice prompts drove consumer adoption of automated elevators
“But anyway, you know, one of the ways that, one of the ways that the elevator industry found could get people inside the doors was by recognizing that what people needed wasn't necessarily a actual human. What they needed was the feeling that there was a human…”
