This was recommended to me and my classmates on our learning expedition to San Francisco, so I decided to give it a go. Imagine my surprise when in the introduction, Elizabeth Holmes (aka the lady behind Theranos) is mentioned approvingly as someone who has cracked the creator’s code and called “the next Steve Jobs”. Especially since I finished watching The Dropout (based on the book Bad Blood by John Carreyrou) just before reading this.
To be fair to the author, the book was published in 2015, before people realised/exposed how toxic Elizabeth was and what a scam Theranos was. It just calls into question the accuracy of the principles for me, even though I suppose one data point shouldn’t affect it too much. The Creator’s Code, according to Wilkinson, is formed from these six principles:
- Finding the gap – Why do some problems persist? Can they be solved if solutions from another domain were used? (aka: see the world from different perspectives)
- Focus on the long-term mission while navigating around immediate obstacles
- Use the OODA loop: Observe-Orient-Decide-Act
- Learn to fail: failure provokes learning and it’s better to learn to fail fast than to persist in something that’s still going to fail anyway
- Learn to use the power of the network (aka pull a bunch of different people together and get synergy out of them)
- Give back to the community and they will support you too (this feels a lot like how some people describe the Silicon Valley culture of paying it forward)
The six principles all seem sensible to me, but it feels like there’s an element of chance in all of this, especially when it comes to learning to use the power of the network and finding the gap. I think there may be a sweet spot in finding the right solution at the right time (where the tech is advanced enough or is cheap enough to apply to that specific problem) and for finding people with the skillsets you need (especially if you have a smaller social circle). Starbucks, for example, worked but were there other similar stores that failed? Did they fail because of location, because they couldn’t time the market or because they didn’t utilise the other six principles? One problem with focusing on success stories is that we don’t know if these principles can fail (and if they fail more often they succeed or vice versa).
Other principles felt a lot like a judgement call. Learn to fail quickly and wisely, but what about keeping your eyes on the long-term mission? How do you decide when something is an obstacle and when something is a cause for failure? It might have been good if the book looked at how the principles would interact with one another as well.
Personally, it feels like out of the six principles, the only ones that you could implement were the one on giving back and probably the OODA loop. Others seem more like something you use instinct on/chance on rather than a skill you can develop day by day.
Overall, this was an interesting and definitely very Silicon Valley-vibe type of book. Some of the examples in the book probably hurt its argument more than it helped; Theranos is the main one but I also saw other companies that haven’t done well since the publication of the book. Still, if you’re looking to start a business and you have completely no idea where to start, you may want to read this.
Featured Image: Photo from Canva
This sounds like a book that just didn’t quite hit the mark in its execution, especially with the poorly chosen examples
Yup! It was an interesting concept, but I guess one thing is that you never know if a company’s success will last… or if a certain factor actually led to its success.