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Experienced executive Darren Huston is no stranger to 60-hour work weeks or the grind of hustle culture. After an illustrious career as an executive at McKinsey & Company, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Booking.com, he took a step back from full-time work to focus on a set of exciting passion projects. “I actually thought I’d retire when I’m 55, and now I’m 57, and I could see going until I’m 70 just in what I do because it keeps me busy and I really, really enjoy helping others succeed in business as well,” he says.

Ten years from now, travel won’t involve any paper, says Darren Huston, (former) president and CEO of the Priceline Group and booking.com. “You’ll have no passport, no credit cards, no confirmation,” predicts the Amsterdam-based Canadian. “You’ll just have your phone in your pocket, and if you lose it, everything will be in the cloud.” Until someone invents teleportation, though, we’ll still have to fly – something Huston doesn’t actually like to do. (He makes the most of his air time by sleeping and working.) 

Company leaders have searched for the key to productivity, high morale, and better performance for decades.

According to seasoned executive and chairman Darren Huston, the secret is deceptively simple: improving corporate culture. “A lot of consultants and investors can cut costs and make things more efficient and take a particular business and tighten it up, but learning how to profitably grow businesses is more of an art than a science, and it has a lot to do with culture,” he explains. 

When I was in high school, some 30 years ago, I studied abroad for two years in a small Italian village where no one spoke English. Even when I went to a city, such as Venice, I rarely found people who spoke my native language. That has changed completely. You can do business in English almost anywhere in the developed world, with the possible exception of Japan.

Artificial intelligence continues to steadily make its way into nearly every aspect of modern living. Predictions about its potential impacts span from a utopia filled with abundance to doomsday scenarios ruled by machines. Veteran tech executive Darren Huston shares that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Huston speaks from a rare vantage point.

BlackPines Capital Partners is a private holding company that owns a portfolio of companies, manages direct investments, and provides strategic long-term advice to companies to accelerate growth, maximize potential, and deliver long-term sustainable profitability. | www.blackpinescapital.com