Inspiration Time
I’m writing from New York’s Catskills, where I’ve been running a month-long math, music and mountains camp for 12 girls. If you’d told me in February that I’d write that sentence, I’d have countered with about a trillion more likely ones. But my daughters (and their friends, it turned out) needed acceleration and opportunity. And so here I am, and here they are, along with two teacher-counselors, a dog, a trampoline and more cereal, pasta and avocados than I can count. We’re calling it DIY Camp, as in Dad Innovates, Yo!
With or without the yo!, success or sometimes even just normalcy demands innovation right now. Forbes has celebrated that word for more than a century, but never has the need for entrepreneurs to rethink, reinvent and reimagine been more urgent. Aside from the human tragedy of some 200,000 deaths in the U.S. and counting, thousands of large companies and small businesses have tanked. Millions have lost their jobs. Yet if history has shown us anything, it’s that moments like this—even cataclysmic ones—offer incredible opportunity.
You can see that throughout this issue. Yes, Netflix was already an all-time success story, but Reed Hastings, our front cover subject, built a culture that is leveraging this moment to change how people consume content (page 76). We’ll never go back. Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz is leaning into the workfrom-home shift with his Asana software suite (page 43). Again, we’ll never go back. One of the world’s richest doctors, Patrick Soon-Shiong, is using his cancer-treatment regimen to attack the coronavirus (page 110); new billionaire Tyler Perry is showing how an outsider can upend the Hollywood model (page 116); Amy Novogratz is using capitalism to make seafood sustainable (page 54). And so on, and so on.
Amid this horrible year, as you’re reading this the next great wave of transformative companies is being generated, and we’ll never go back. Whether you’re contemplating how to reinvent workplace software or just sleep-away camp, there’s inspiration aplenty here.