World Economic Forum Book Club discussion

"In the future, innovation cannot advance in a positive direction unless it's grounded in genuine and continued efforts to lift up all of humanity."

Hello everyone! Welcome to our new Goodreads group. Let's discuss Chapter 1.

The first chapter in this book opens at Davos, at our Annual Meeting back in 2018. Our author was participating in a session called "In Technology we trust?" and participants were asked to discuss this issue. As we have seen in our October pick, the author says that technology presents wonderful opportunities to foster a "more open, diverse, trusting and inclusive society" but that there are new difficulties to face as well. The one value our author said to be essential to his company is trust: "Trust has to be your highest value in your company. And if it's not, something bad is going to happen." When he said this in Davos, people had a mixed reaction. Regulations were a tough subject in the tech world. But he insisted - companies need to adapt.

We then get a glimpse into Benioff's childhood, and his family. We learn that he graduated from college, majored in business and that his father was key in helping him form the ideas for Salesforce. His father owned dress shops, and they would spend all of their Sundays together moving merchandise. Seeing his father being the CEO, the CFO, the chief buyer, director of marketing, and head of sales was a lesson in hard work and perseverance. This showed our author that he wasn't a fan of this business, and that instead he was fascinated by electronic equipment.

Marc Benioff started coding at the age of fifteen, and writing programs. He founded his first company "Basic Computers" and started programming games. His parents "not only tolerated my eccentric behaviour, but gave me enough independence to fully indulge it." He earned more than 5000 dollars in six months, and bought his first car. The main observation he took from working from his father was that he was boggled down with the "rudimentary tasks of commerce" and didn't have time to focus on the big tasks. He quit his job in 1999 at Oracle and set up Salesforce.

"I wanted small-business owners like Dad to be able to pay one flat subscription fee to access the latest software instantly in their Web browser with no more effort than it takes to buy a book on Amazon."

The author speaks about his various family members and how they inspired him, and how they helped him set up a company based on specific core values.

What do you think? Post your comments and questions below.