Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. Today's episode features a Q&A with Charles Koch,

chairman and CEO of Coke Industries, one of the largest private companies in the U.S.

with over $100 billion revenue, as estimated by Forbes.

Coke also invests philanthropically in mostly education and communities, as well as in politics and policy,

which we touch on briefly in this episode. The interview conducted by Mark Andreessen covers everything from measuring talent

and risk to the business of conglomerates, change, and innovation. The conversation took place

in November 2017 at our annual summit event. Other talks in the series can be found on our website at

A6NZ.com slash summit. You went to MIT in the 1950s received three degrees, general engineering,

nuclear engineering, and chemical engineering. Why did you decide to study those fields?

I didn't think I was good at anything, and I found at early age I was good at one narrow field,

and that was math and logic. And so I wanted to go to a school that had math as a language,

and I decided, okay, that I needed to learn a technical skill, and that'd give me a better

chance of being successful as an entrepreneur than just studying business.

I got MIT, and I quickly found out that, yeah, I was good at math and concepts,

but I wasn't very good at applying them to, like, operate devices or create devices.

So I maximize courses that were in science and math or theory. And I became fascinated with the history of science, the philosophy of science, the

scientific method, and the principles of scientific improvement.

That was really the foundation for everything I've done.

And I learned innovations come from mixing existing ideas in new ways.

And later learned something from Bologna called the Republic of Science,

which was that there is a scientific

community that you all learn from each other, but there can't be anybody in charge that dictates

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