It’s now four years since venture capitalist Hemant Taneja took to the pages of the Harvard Business Review to declare an end to the “move fast and break things” era. The phrase had been Facebook’s mantra during its startup years, but the company abandoned it in 2014, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying a shift to a “move fast with stable infrastructure” attitude had become more appropriate.
Zuckerberg’s words were somewhat belied by the subsequent Cambridge Analytica scandal, but in the wake of that omnishambles—and the 2017 downfall of aggressive Uber CEO Travis Kalanick—it did seem like tech’s high-fliers had reached cruising altitude and it was safe for everyone to unfasten their seat belts. “Investing in responsible innovation not only benefits society, it protects the viability of technological progress in a democratic system,” wrote Taneja.
