Besides being an inditement of Elizabeth Holmes’ and Sunny Balwani’s management capabilities and their moral compasses, Bad Blood provides several real-world important lessons for all of us.
- A healthcare company dealing with people’s well-being should not be managed like an internet/media company.
- Board of Directors should be experts in the business subject matter.
- Intimidation is not a best-in-class management style.
- Cross functional teams are important for speed and quality of results.
- From concept to end during the product development process flexibility is important.
- Trust your experts.
- Formal approval processes are important and they should not be ignored when results are not favorable.
- Higher education is important – Theranos made several mistakes that were avoidable if only Holmes stayed in school at Stanford, took the associated coursework, and applied the knowledge.
- A free press is important to hold bad actors accountable.
- There are consequences for unlawful behavior.