Here's the deal: Give 10 minutes of your time and get three big takeaways regarding a major issue affecting companies and people around the world. That's the premise of Three Big Points, a podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review. Hosted by Paul Michelman, the publication's editor-in-chief, the series focuses on taking wisdom from the world's leading experts and making it digestible, manageable, and ready for use.
The show relies on a simple format. Michelman presents a topic, introduces the episode's expert, and then jumps into the interview. The host and expert discuss the topic for several minutes before the show's signature ending: the three big points. In that part of the episode, Michelman helps the episode's guest frame three short takeaways that are easy for listeners to remember and act upon.
For example, episode 11, "Can We Escape the Technology Trap?," features an interview with Oxford economist Carl Frey, author of The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation. Michelman and Frey mull over an ongoing characteristic of technology discussions: Resistance is technology's constant, natural companion regardless of the technology.
Frey suggests that countries with strong safety nets lessen this resistance because they mitigate the short-term damage technology does to those it replaces. The reduced resistance, in turn, helps those societies capture more of technology's long-term benefits. The episode's three big points are:
- Over time, societies benefit enormously from technology.
- New technologies haven't always been equally beneficial for everyone, especially in the short term.
- Resistance is futile.
