Franklin Leonard: The Realist's Guide To Changing the World

While in college, Franklin Leonard was convinced he was going to change the world. “I went to college debating between pursuing the sciences, where I was sure that I was going to cure cancer,” he says. “And going into politics where I was sure I was going to find, nurture, help elect, and run policy for the next great liberal president.” The stint in politics didn’t work out, and Leonard was left adrift before eventually moving to Hollywood.

He soon realized once more how difficult it can be to enact global change. That’s when, almost accidentally, he founded The Black List, a collection of the industries top-unproduced scripts. Today, films on the list have been seen by millions of people around the globe, earned over $25 billion dollars, and have been nominated for 223 Academy Awards (and have won 43). In his 99u talk, Leonard explains a shift in his perspective on what it really means to change the world, and why it’s better to start small.

Rethinking Work

Barry Schwartz explores what motivates us to work in The New York Times: 

Of course, we care about our wages, and we wouldn’t work without them. But we care about more than money. We want work that is challenging and engaging, that enables us to exercise some discretion and control over what we do, and that provides us opportunities to learn and grow. We want to work with colleagues we respect and with supervisors who respect us. Most of all, we want work that is meaningful — that makes a difference to other people and thus ennobles us in at least some small way.

...

Work that is adequately compensated is an important social good. But so is work that is worth doing. Half of our waking lives is a terrible thing to waste.

A complement to this essay is Daniel Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. 

Oliver Sacks, Casting Light on the Interconnectedness of Life

It’s no coincidence that so many of the qualities that made Oliver Sacks such a brilliant writer are the same qualities that made him an ideal doctor: keen powers of observation and a devotion to detail, deep reservoirs of sympathy, and an intuitive understanding of the fathomless mysteries of the human brain and the intricate connections between the body and the mind.

Dr. Sacks, who died on Sunday at 82, was a polymath and an ardent humanist, and whether he was writing about his patients, or his love of chemistry or the power of music, he leapfrogged among disciplines, shedding light on the strange and wonderful interconnectedness of life — the connections between science and art, physiology and psychology, the beauty and economy of the natural world and the magic of the human imagination.

That's how Michiko Kakutani's examination of Oliver Sack's life begins in today's The New York Times. Sacks was the very embodiment of smarter creativity. 

Wil Reynolds: The Hidden Danger of Confusing Outputs for Outcome

Reynolds started Seer Interactive—a leading SEO and online marketing agency—in a small apartment back in 2002. Since then, the company has grown to more than 100 people. But scaling the company was not without its growing pains. In this energetic talk, Reynolds shares how he learned to put a "lid on his hustle" and made sure his values weren't compromised as his company grew. "Getting things done means giving things up," he says. "It can't all fit. You need to have the border."

Time To Fix Patents

The Economist on innovation: 

Patents are supposed to spread knowledge, by obliging holders to lay out their innovation for all to see; they often fail, because patent-lawyers are masters of obfuscation. Instead, the system has created a parasitic ecology of trolls and defensive patent-holders, who aim to block innovation, or at least to stand in its way unless they can grab a share of the spoils. An early study found that newcomers to the semiconductor business had to buy licences from incumbents for as much as $200m. Patents should spur bursts of innovation; instead, they are used to lock in incumbents’ advantages.

The patent system is expensive. A decade-old study reckons that in 2005, without the temporary monopoly patents bestow, America might have saved three-quarters of its $210 billion bill for prescription drugs. The expense would be worth it if patents brought innovation and prosperity. They don’t.