Innovation: The Who's Where's and How's

Being in technology and believing deeply in the power of the same to change the World, many times I encounter those not so convinced and that challenge my beliefs by assertions and lamentations that society is worse for it. Further, having the privilege of having grown up in other countries and cultures, I field many criticisms from abroad from the many friends and family that I have left behind. These people are a constant sounding board, and are not shy about expressing their view of the World and the shortcomings of the USA and its foreign policy practices. From there, by extension, of course, other related subjects emerge such as: imperialism, over-consumption, climate change, over-use of technology, etc... Basically, when one visits - as I am now doing in Chile - one is exposed to provocative discussions from relatives and friends frustrated by the state of the World that many blame on the existing political elite reigning in the USA. The refreshing thing is that they do it acknow...

Believe what you want about climate change, but the science is hard to refute. Changes are happening and while the connection between human activity and changes has not been proven, it is hard to not acknowledge that we are having an impact. Sort of like the cigarette-is-bad-for-your-health debate of decades ago…Boy, were we ever wrong about smoking. In any case, what brings me to the arduous task of transferring fuzzy thoughts into actual readable text that my scarce audience can read, has to do with individual actions and the inherent value they possess to drive collective action and from there power to effect change. You see, I believe that the sooner we can aggregate these individual actions into a cohesive whole, the sooner we will get started in achieving change. Easy, right? Well, no, very difficult indeed. Changing people’s behavior has to be up there with managing the universe in terms of difficulty. I have been thinking about this for awhile because I have taken it upon mysel...

Ok, so how more official can it get? I don’t know about you, but for me The Economist ( www.economist.com ) is as reputable a publication as they come concerning business theories and when they write a story about the benefits of psychology and the positive impacts on business, one must pay attention. Now, I know that I have written a lot about the need for “soft” skills and how we have overdone the analytical side of business management. I am not a management theorist and don’t pretend to be one, but some things just make so much sense that we really don’t need to wrap an academic study around it. I try to write on things that track with nature and soul which in turn sort of validates them- I know, kind of a tortured philosophy. This particular piece appeared in the May 3rd to 9th edition of The Economist titled: Inside a Deal. It is on page 88…Go ahead, check it out. It is further confirmation that “soft” skills are needed in order to succeed well. The key work being: well. It turns ...

Last week I had the immense privilege of attending the Milken Institute’s Global Summit in LA. The event was well attended to the tune of about 3000 attendees and 400 panelists of which I was one. I have attended and participated in many of these types of summits but never have I experienced such diversity in the attendees. Given Michael Milken’s background in finance, it was not surprising to see lots of attendees from that sector. Nevertheless, the profile of all the others was rich with diversity to include academia, NGO’s, technology, education, energy, agriculture, media, medicine to name just a few. It was disheartening to feel the pressure of the all the World’s problems as they were presented during the conference. But it was also highly enlightening to see so many people trying to make a difference. The place was crawling with Nobel laureates such as Mohamed Yunus of Grammen Bank’s fame. Or Craig Venter, an innovator that wants to solve many problems via synthetic biology, a n...