Business, Innovation, and Managing Life (June 22, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Are periodic boom and bust cycles of the economy inevitable, or should we by now be capable of managing national economies better, simultaneously avoiding both recessions and excessive inflation? - What modes does Stephen Wolfram have? - What are the personality traits of Stephen Wolfram that have made him become an entrepreneur? - Have you ever questioned your competence? If you did, what did you do in that situation? - What methodology do you use when you have to solve a problem you don't know how to solve but that has to be solved fast? - How does Stephen stay organized, in general? And specifically, how does he organize and write his papers and books? - Are there specific questions/audits that you routinely run on your business, life or thought process to facilitate innovation? - Problem solving with other people requires understanding other people's psychology. How do you go about understanding how to influence others to be efficient at solving problems? - Good banter can enhance the conversation. - How do you deal with multiple smart people on your teams disagreeing with each other, e.g. team member A proposes doing f() while team member B proposes g()? - Did you know Paul Graham between 2002 (NKS) and 2005 (Y Combinator founded)? Was NKS implicitly/explicitly why he ran many different "programs" (startups) to see what happened empirically? - It's mind blowing how many of the important points in time of modern innovation Wolfram was in the room for.