Here’s what to do instead “Pursue your passion” is a modern, career advice mantra. From (person) to (person), the career advice that best exemplifies our modern culture is “pursue your passion”. This advice is dumb and immoral. “Pursue your passion” is dumb and immoral because of its natural consequences and some massive flaws in its…

Lawyers are annoying. I would know: I’m one of them. We are so annoying in fact that they are the subject of endless jokes, some of which are quite funny. But lawyers will not be replaced by blockchain technologies. Neither will accountants, bankers, or any other job role. Rather these…

Note from John: I’ve been on a break from writing on Medium for a bit, but here’s some thing short that I put together this afternoon. Enjoy! It used to be that if you produce oil, you competed against other oil companies. If you make movies, you compete against other…

Exam time always brings out a great deal of stress in my students. This is especially true of my undergraduate students. The list of stressors around exams are numerous: parental pressure, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of missing your alarm and being late to the exam (okay…

A bribe is “something that serves to induce or influence”. When Amazon amounted that it would split its new second headquarters between New York and Crystal City, VA, it also announced that it would receive over $2 billion in “subsidies” from both localities. Sounds like something that might have induced…

Why the rest of the world would do well to look at the sustainability challenges of living in the desert. When I speak with sustainability professionals outside of the UAE, many chuckle at the idea of the UAE trying to be sustainable. How can country dependent on oil exports be “sustainable”? How can country with no natural water resources be “sustainable”? How can a place in the desert be “sustainable”?

It’s all about the customers. In business strategy, one of the key components is the Theory of the Business: What is the purpose of the business? Who are its customers? How does it make money? Often, companies answer these questions publicly in downright flippant fashion. But these questions do have…

Tesla is widely viewed as one of the world’s most sustainable companies. When someone tells me that Tesla is a sustainable company, I often must excuse myself from the room. The very suggestion is laughable. Yes, Tesla produces electric cars. Yes, they are working toward a “sustainable energy future”. …

Earlier this summer, the diamond company deBeers, which sells about 35% of the world’s mined diamonds and is owned by the massive mining company Anglo American, piloted a blockchain network called Tracr. It’s purpose? Track diamonds from the mine to the consumer. …