Innovation for solving problems: The Milken Institute's Global Summit
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 new field with great promise for the future. Quincy Jones was also there; a prolific man, song writer, producer, director, you name it...Peter Diamandis, MD, founder, Chairman and CEO of the X-price foundation was also there. A foundation designed to explore the immense power of he World’s creativity www.xprize.org
I was invited to participate as a panelist in the topic of: Digital Technology: Personal Innovations, surely a subject in its infancy as we have yet to even fathom the depths of what mobility and the hand-held devices that we have become so attached to, have in store for all of us. The future is by definition fraught with uncertainly and one can speculate endlessly about its attributes. This is the beauty of trying to predict the future; one is really never wrong in doing so. One thing is for certain, however, we seem to always underestimate the pace of change and the impact of change. My panel was shared by Executives from media, hardware and internet and we all arrived at the conclusion that we are indeed in the midst of a revolution led by the frantic pace of technological innovation, to which human systems (economic, personal, spiritual) are not adequately prepared to deal with. This is specially the case with the “digital imports” that the majority of us are, as opposed to our children, “the digital natives.”
It is my opinion that in order to understand where we are going in terms of human evolution we need to first understand how we got here. There is an amazing amount of work written in this space. One such book that I recommend is www.wakingtheglobalheart.com . It is a very interesting treatise on where we have been and where we are going.
In the other extreme, there are works of people that are performing ground breaking research in brand new fields. One such book that I found fascinating and that I bought at the conference is: “The Brain that Changes Itself” by www.normandoidge.com. This book address the new field of neuro-plasticity and the discovery that our brains are much more flexible and able to change than we previously thought. This is music to my ears, as I have always thought that life learning – one the of core principles of Leonardo Da Vinci – is a practice that keeps the mind challenged and agile.
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 new field with great promise for the future. Quincy Jones was also there; a prolific man, song writer, producer, director, you name it...Peter Diamandis, MD, founder, Chairman and CEO of the X-price foundation was also there. A foundation designed to explore the immense power of he World’s creativity www.xprize.org
I was invited to participate as a panelist in the topic of: Digital Technology: Personal Innovations, surely a subject in its infancy as we have yet to even fathom the depths of what mobility and the hand-held devices that we have become so attached to, have in store for all of us. The future is by definition fraught with uncertainly and one can speculate endlessly about its attributes. This is the beauty of trying to predict the future; one is really never wrong in doing so. One thing is for certain, however, we seem to always underestimate the pace of change and the impact of change. My panel was shared by Executives from media, hardware and internet and we all arrived at the conclusion that we are indeed in the midst of a revolution led by the frantic pace of technological innovation, to which human systems (economic, personal, spiritual) are not adequately prepared to deal with. This is specially the case with the “digital imports” that the majority of us are, as opposed to our children, “the digital natives.”
It is my opinion that in order to understand where we are going in terms of human evolution we need to first understand how we got here. There is an amazing amount of work written in this space. One such book that I recommend is www.wakingtheglobalheart.com . It is a very interesting treatise on where we have been and where we are going.
In the other extreme, there are works of people that are performing ground breaking research in brand new fields. One such book that I found fascinating and that I bought at the conference is: “The Brain that Changes Itself” by www.normandoidge.com. This book address the new field of neuro-plasticity and the discovery that our brains are much more flexible and able to change than we previously thought. This is music to my ears, as I have always thought that life learning – one the of core principles of Leonardo Da Vinci – is a practice that keeps the mind challenged and agile.
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