3 Takeaways™

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.