Person
Every book Andrew McAfee recommended on podcasts
Andrew Paul McAfee is a research scientist at MIT and cofounder and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies how digital technologies are changing the world. On an episode of EconTalk, Andrew McAfee recommended the book The Knowledge Machine by Michael Strevens because it nailed what science actually is for him, providing an accurate description of what science fundamentally entails. In the same podcast conversation, Andrew McAfee cited No Rules Rules: Netflix and the culture of reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer to discuss how Netflix's leadership learned to accept pushback from employees, noting that Hastings candidly shared stories about times he was completely wrong and built a company culture that challenged bad ideas.
Books recommended by Andrew McAfee
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The Knowledge Machine
The Knowledge Machine by Michael Strevens is a philosophical exploration of how modern science operates and why its unique methodology has been so profoundly successful.
Recommended“I came across this amazing book called The Knowledge Machine which which nailed what science actually is for me.”
Where to get it
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No Rules Rules: Netflix and the culture of reinvention
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer details the radical management philosophy and unconventional corporate culture behind Netflix.
Discussed“And Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer talk about this in the book No Rules Rules about Netflix where Hastings very candidly tells a few different stories about when he was dead flat wrong and the he eventually built a company that would learn to push back against his bad ideas which is rare and really important.”
Where to get it
Books Andrew McAfee wrote
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew McAfee on the Geek Way | EconTalk | 2023-11-20 | 2 |
Other mentions (4: passing, ad reads, own books)
“Eric and I wrote The Second Machine Age in 2014. And at that time, I thought that a lot of white collar workers”
“And then, as you see in the book, I finally found a body of research that really solidified and made super concrete and pragmatic this notion of culture and and gave me a better way to look at the topic.”
“So I think about the Geek Way. As far as I can tell it's the first applied book of cultural evolution.”
“One of the most interesting stories I learned when I was researching The Geek Way was the fact that early in its history, Amazon was a classic top-heavy, top-down direction from the top bureaucracy to the point that if you had an idea for an innovation, you submitted it to the Amazon innovation bureaucracy and they vetted it and then”