1119:  What It’s Like to Create Business EcoSystems With John Wolpert, Tacitpath [Main T4C Episode]

John Wolpert is a Chief Product Officer, speaker and the author of The Two But Rule: Turn Negative Thinking Into Positive Solutions. He is also the founder of several companies including Tacitpath, Flywheel and Layer2.  At his heart, John is a creative innovator, known for spearheading industry-changing projects such as the Baseline Protocol. During his career John has held three roles at IBM including as a global product executive. His writings on open source and open innovation have appeared in Harvard Business Review. John got a B.A.with Honors in Humanities with a focus on Linguistics, Anthropology and Neuroscience from UC Berkeley.  He later got his MBA at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business.  WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE:  How to choose your own learning path in school (12:40) What the best advice is for problem-solving in a startup (23:26) How creating a startup helped John land a job at IBM (28:57) How to swallow your pride, when appropriate (32:20) How the “Two But Rule” works (41:20) What the distinction is between breaking the rules and making new rules (49:39) To preorder The Two But Rule: Turn Negative Thinking Into Positive Solutions