"Palantir's Alex Karp is not the typical tech CEO. It makes sense then that one of the big data company's foundational principles is rooted in the lessons of a 1970s Toyota executive. Karp is a firm believer in the Five Whys, a simple system that aims to uncover the root cause of an issue that may not be immediately apparent. The process is straightforward. When an issue arises, someone asks, "Why?" Whatever the answer may be, they ask "why?" again and again until they have done so five times."
"At the time, Karp was a Stanford law school grad who, instead of practicing, went on to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy in Germany. The same things that made Peter the world's best value investor-he finds people that understand the sixth, seventh, eighth derivative of a problem in a business context. And we were friends. I do think there's a Germanic overlap, in our aptitude for understanding the consequences of a decision very far out," Karp told Wired in November."
""We have found is that those who are willing to chase the causal thread, and really follow it where it leads, can often unravel the knots that hold organisations back," Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, Palantir's head of corporate affairs, wrote in "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West" which was published earlier this year."
Alex Karp embraces the Five Whys as a foundational principle at Palantir to identify root causes by repeatedly asking why up to five times. The method traces back to Taiichi Ohno, a Toyota executive from the 1970s. Karp emphasizes chasing causal threads and following them to their consequences to unravel organizational knots. Peter Thiel entrusted Karp to lead Palantir in 2003, when Karp transitioned from a Stanford law degree to a philosophy Ph.D. in Germany. Palantir was co-founded with Peter Thiel, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, and Nathan Gettings.
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