Safi Bahcall
person on 3 shows · 10 statements across 2 episodes · said 16 times in 3 episodes since 2022
the Knowledge Project 15 
Lenny's Podcast 1 
the a16z Podcast
On the record as a speaker too: Safi Bahcall across every show, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
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the Knowledge Project 15Lenny's Podcast 1
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 15 mentions in 2 episodes 8 per episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
10 statements about Safi Bahcall, every show
Goldsmith: Happiness and achievement are independent variables
“And he said, I finally realized happiness and achievement are independent variables.
You can achieve a lot and be happy.
You can achieve a lot and be miserable.
You can achieve nothing and be happy.
You can achieve nothing and be miserable through independent …”
Bahcall: Prioritize innovative ideas that threaten your core belief system
“I think you want to find the ones that challenge your belief system, because those are the ones Which are most dangerous to you and your business.”
Bahcall: The transistor was originally an incremental innovation at Bell Labs
“It was developed at Bell Labs, although it was based on a lot of federal research, but it was developed at Bell Labs while they were looking for better switches. By every definition, it was an incremental innovation, not a quote disruptive.”
Bahcall: Market projections kill early-stage innovation, especially in drug discovery
“Nothing kills a great idea faster and has been more of a disaster to innovation, certainly in my industry in drug discovery, than the idea of market projections.”
Bahcall: Leaders control company behavior through four structural design parameters
“It turns out when you work out the mathematics of this, of the incentives, the two forces, there are four control parameters inside organizations, elements of organizational design, and that the CEO, the executive team, the board has control over, just like yo…”
Bahcall: Company growth shifts employee incentives from innovation to corporate politics
“So somewhere between small and large, as you grow and you grow and you grow, all of a sudden the balance of incentives suddenly shift, and the same person, the same sonal, Would go from pounding the table, this is the most awesome idea, to kind of making fun o…”
Bahcall: Companies reliant on top-down visionary leaders eventually fail
“So all the companies across history that have done that have failed spectacularly. They may survive for a while, you know, when there's a Moses on the mountain with a staff anointing the next holy loon shot. They may survive for a while, that's the hysteresis …”
Bahcall: Corporate innovation fails in transferring ideas, not generating them
“Because where innovation fails is not in the supply of new idea. It's in the transfer of those new ideas to the field.”
Bahcall: Sustained tech success requires valuing operators and creators equally
“And only by evolving and learning to love his artists and shoulders equally, that's when Things really took off. And that's why Vannevar Bush succeeded, and so many scientists before him failed, because soldiers love soldiers, artists love artists. He not only…”
Bahcall: Innovation teams need wide management spans; operational teams need narrow spans
“If the group that's assembling planes, you want one kind of system, one kind of metric, you want narrow spans, you want high quality controls, the group that's creating crazy new technologies for those planes, you want those spans as wide as possible with very…”