Standing on Their Shoulders

The thinkers behind the ideas.

MacSays does not invent. It synthesises rigorously. Every idea on this site has lineage — and credit goes where it is due.

Primary Featured Thinker

Karan Girotra

Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management. Cornell Tech and Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Founding faculty at Cornell Tech.

His current research is specifically on how AI automates and augments cognitive work to radically improve individual, team, and organisational productivity. The "Abundant Intelligence" framework and the steam-engine analogy that anchors Episode 2 both come from his work.

Specific research drawn upon:

  • "Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea" — Management Science, 2010 (with Christian Terwiesch and Karl T. Ulrich). The brainstorming bombshell.
  • "Using Large Language Models for Idea Generation in Innovation" — Wharton Working Paper, 2024. The 35-of-40-top-ideas finding.
  • The "Abundant Intelligence" framework — eCornell programs and Cornell Tech research.
  • The Steam Engine analogy — Cornell Executive MBA Summit, March 2025.
  • The Five Rules of Making AI Automation Work.
Other Thinkers

Concepts and frameworks used

Georgetown
Cal Newport

Concept of Deep Work. Source: Deep Work, 2016.

UC Irvine
Gloria Mark

Two decades of attention research. The 23-minute interruption recovery.

Energy Project
Schwartz & Loehr

Energy management. The four dimensions of human energy. Source: The Power of Full Engagement, 2003.

Methodologist
David Allen

Getting Things Done. Externalise everything from your head. Source: GTD, 2001.

FranklinCovey
Stephen Covey

Popularised the Eisenhower Matrix. Urgent vs important. Quadrant Two as the locus of long-term value.

Google
Project Aristotle

Two-year study of 180 Google teams. Identified psychological safety as the top predictor of effectiveness.

Harvard
Amy Edmondson

Pioneer of psychological safety research. Safe for interpersonal risk-taking.

Netflix
Reed Hastings

Talent density. Context, not control. Source: No Rules Rules, 2020.

TOC Founder
Eli Goldratt

Theory of Constraints. Every system has one constraint. Source: The Goal, 1984.

Nobel Laureate
Robert Solow

The Productivity Paradox. "You can see the computer age everywhere except in the productivity statistics." 1987.

Wharton
Ethan Mollick

Practical AI adoption. Source: Co-Intelligence, 2024.

SE Pioneer
Melvin Conway

Conway's Law, 1967. Systems mirror the communication structure of the organisation.

Studies and Research Cited

The empirical evidence

  • BCG & Harvard study on GPT-4 and consultant productivity — 800 consultants. 12.5% more tasks, 25% faster, 40% higher quality.
  • Microsoft / GitHub Copilot productivity study — 55% faster code completion.
  • Stanford & MIT customer service AI study — Brynjolfsson, Li, Raymond. 14% average gain. 35% for novice agents.
  • MIT idea generation study — Noy and Zhang. AI-augmented writers produced 4.8× more output at equal quality.
  • Wharton-Cornell idea generation study — Meincke, Girotra, Nave, Terwiesch, Ulrich. 35 of 40 top ideas from AI.
  • Gallup workplace productivity research.
  • McKinsey Global Institute productivity research.
  • MIT Sloan research on meeting effectiveness.