Pages

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

The Book Review : Bad Blood

Author: John Carreyrou

Genre: True Crime

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 339

Year of Publication: 21 May 2018

Business vs Ethics has since ages been a question raised by many intellectuals worldwide. Can ethics be defined and what are the actions that can be considered unethical in a business is a subject which traverses thin water. The term "vaporware" which describes a new computer software or hardware that is announced with great fanfare only to take years to materialize or never to go beyond conception phase has been attributed to several companies launches or promise to launch. Can it be considered ethical, if the company doe not walk the talk or if the company from the start knew there was hardly any chance of the concept materializing.



Questions are many but there is no hard bound rule that can be followed in the game of business. This is where the book Bad Blood written by John Carreyou comes into picture. The book, based on a real life story, is a story of a Silicon Valley start up and an entrepreneur who got so consumed with her success or desire to succeed that she forgot what was ethical and what was not. A Stanford dropout had a dream of building a technology which would disrupt the medical world and make a better place to live. Did it? It disrupted a lot of lives but they were mostly of the employees who had worked there, employees who were humiliated and mentally tortured when they raised a question, employees who actually wanted to make a difference. An extremely intriguing book on how an entrepreneur hoodwinked the smartest brains in the valley through charm represents the key loopholes of how the system works worldwide. The protagonist of the book through her charm casted a hypnotic spell on seasoned investors and politically influential people such as Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger.

Her beguiling concept of getting blood test results of several diseases just through a single pin prick on a small device was extremely intriguing and many fell for it. However, what might have started with a novel idea turned into one of the biggest shams with the technology not working as it should have been yet Elizabeth Holmes pursuing it and presenting it to several investors and super stores as workable. They went to the extent of fooling the FDA by showing wrong lab reports and threatening employees who tried to raise a concern. Her judgement clouded by greed eventually led to millions of tests conducted in Arizona and California being corrected.

The author's description of Holmes leadership is apt for many veteran leaders who want something in life, feel their judgement is right and do not realize when is the right time to pull the plug. Idolising Steve Jobs, she always said that "Theranos was the most important device that humanity had built". However in building the device she conveniently forgot what humanity is and lost her conscience in the process.

The book is a must read for everyone to understand that what happens behind the walls of a big company is not always right and beautiful. Not every data can be trusted and not every person is humane.


No comments:

Post a Comment