In this issue of the HBR Executive Agenda, editor at large Adi Ignatius talks to Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati about how leaders can act with clarity amid rising social tension and rapid technological change.
Ben Horowitz is a big fan of tiny teams. On an episode of the A16z podcast, the Andreessen Horowitz cofounder shared how his venture capital firm maintains a lean operation despite being one of the world's largest. "An investing team shouldn't be too much bigger than a basketball team," he said, referring to advice he got from famed American investor David Swensen in 2009. He added, "A basketball team is five people who start, and the reason for that is the conversation around the investments really needs to be a conversation."
That's the term data scientists from Stanford's Social Media Lab and BetterUp, an online coaching platform, recently coined to describe "AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task." It's the workplace equivalent of the cutesy videos and obviously fake photos filling up your social feeds, which have become known as AI "slop."