How do great teams come together? How can a small group of people accomplish an extraordinary effort in a short amount of time? How might we cultivate a culture of excellence? These are the questions of progress studies, an emerging discipline that seeks to formally study progress and what underpins in it.

Organizing Genius is a book club that explores progress studies specifically through the lens of teams and organizations. We’ll dive into case studies of the most prominent examples of organized genius, such as the Apollo Mission, Enlightenment Movement, and the first companies that kickstarted Silicon Valley. We’ll also discuss how the ways in which we organize genius might be changing and how to leverage this information moving forward.

This book club is based off of Matt Clifford and Arnaud Schenk’s own reading group but adapted for the United States.

PURPOSE

We hope to create a space for people to come together each week, make friends, and engage in interesting conversations surrounding progress studies.

Everyone is welcome—unique viewpoints are especially encouraged.

FORMAT

Sessions will take place weekly on Thursdays at 7pm (PT) for 1.5 hours each, hosted by Wes De Silvestro. Please register on Eventbrite ahead of time and you will be sent a Zoom link to join each week's session virtually.

There is no need to have attended a previous session to join a given week—all sessions are independent of one another, so please hop into our community at any time!

Check out the reading list and see what we’ll be discussing!

Progress Studies Book Club - The Manhattan Project