I just received a thank you note from a student who attended a fireside chat I held at the ranch. Something I said seemed to inspire her: “I always thought you needed to be innovative, original to be an entrepreneur. Now I have a different perception. Entrepreneurs are the ones that make things happen. (That) takes … Continue reading »
Facebook and the humanities: Pondering what would Oedipus do
No less disturbing than the recent news that the personal data of millions of Americans was culled from Facebook by the shady research firm Cambridge Analytica and provided to the Trump campaign, has been the behavior of the masters of Silicon Valley. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has so far been mostly silent. This … Continue reading »
Lack of oversight puts Americans’ privacy at risk across entire tech, information industry
As fallout from the revelation of Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook user information continues, many are mistakenly calling this incident a breach. Facebook is right to claim this incident was no breach — this is Facebook’s platform working exactly as designed. I know, because I too created a survey app on Facebook for the express purpose of … Continue reading »
Leadership is more than a memo
I just read Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley. It was both eye-opening and cringe-worthy. The book explores the role of gender in the tech industry – at startups and venture capital firms – and the interaction between men and women in the two. While Silicon Valley has grown to have global … Continue reading »
We cannot afford to keep academia and industry separate
In 2007, UC Berkeley, the University of Illinois, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab signed a $500 million agreement with BP to form the Energy Biosciences Institute. Protests ensued, with accusations that the university was selling out to big oil. Needless to say, many people were, and are, not fans of universities partnering with private companies, … Continue reading »
Should peer reviewers remain anonymous?
Should peer reviewers remain anonymous? Perhaps with the digital epoch we are living in the time has came to change this. In a recent article published in Science (“Judge orders unmasking of anonymous peer reviewers,” News in Depth, February 2, 2018, pp. 504-505), Andrew P. Han of Retraction Watch describes what has now been historically … Continue reading »
Scholarly publishing: Will Sci-Hub open the way to ‘academic Spotify’?
Sci-Hub, a website offering free access to around 60 million pirated scientific articles, has become the new phenomenon on the academic publishing market. Its growing popularity might lead to the change to the whole system of academic publishing as we know it. A 2016 article published in Science demonstrated that pirated papers are downloaded all … Continue reading »
Innovation at Speed — when you have 2 million employees
Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new fighting technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting…Our response will be to prioritize speed of delivery, continuous adaptation, and frequent modular upgrades. We must not accept cumbersome approval chains, wasteful applications of resources in … Continue reading »
Janesville — A story about the rest of America
I just read a book – Janesville – that reminded me again of life outside the bubble. Janesville tells the story of laid-off factory workers of a General Motors factory that’s never going to reopen. It’s a story about a Midwest town and the type of people I knew and worked alongside. When I got out of the Air … Continue reading »
2018 Olympics: Could computer hacks produce the wrong winners?
Sporting events are only meaningful if we trust the results. But as digital devices proliferate, so will the risks of cybersecurity failures. Imagine if, at next month’s 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the women’s figure skating competition were to be halted mid-event. Several coaches file a protest alleging that the International Skating Union Scoring System, the computer-based system … Continue reading »
Food, technologies and politics in Berlin
I visited Berlin to participate in the Global Food Summit, an event sponsored by our International and Executive Programs (IEP) at UC Berkeley and Wageninen University among others. This is the second time we held this event, and it has improved in many ways. We hosted the event at the top floor of the Radisson … Continue reading »
Risks of recognition: New digital ID program for refugees is vulnerable to abuses
“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” — Article 6, UN Declaration of Human Rights Tired, hungry, and scared, she approaches the front of the line and is greeted by aid workers. They scan her eyes, catalog her fingerprints, and snap her photo. For the first time in her life, she … Continue reading »
Why Uber is the revenge of the founders
CEOs of companies with billion-dollar market caps have been in the news — and not in a good way. This seems to be occurring more and more. Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. Here’s why it generates bad CEO behavior. Unremarked … Continue reading »
The red queen problem — innovation in the DoD and intelligence community
“…it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. ” — The Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland Innovation, disruption, accelerators, have all become urgent buzzwords in the Department of Defense and intelligence community. They are a reaction to the “red queen problem” but aren’t actually solving the problem. Here’s why. … Continue reading »
Office of Naval Research goes lean
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has been one of the largest supporters of innovation in the U.S. Now they are starting to use the Lean Innovation process (see here and here) to turn ideas into solutions. The result will be defense innovation with speed and urgency. —- Here’s how the Office of Naval Research … Continue reading »
How companies strangle innovation – and how you can get it right
A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog. — I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation. … Continue reading »
Removing the roadblocks to corporate innovation — when theory meets practice
Innovation theory and innovation in practice are radically different. Here are some simple tools to get your company’s innovation pipeline through the obstacles it will encounter. — Pete Newell and I’ve been working with Karl, the Chief Innovation Officer of a large diversified multi-billion-dollar company I’ll call Spacely Industries. Over the last 15 months his … Continue reading »
Coevolution of human and artificial intelligences
Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, in an open lesson to more than a million schoolchildren on Sept. 1, said that “Whoever becomes the leader in [artificial intelligence] will become the ruler of the world.” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, states that AI represents an existential threat to humanity and urges government regulation before it’s too late. Clearly, AI … Continue reading »
The false media focus on violence: If it bleeds it still leads
On Sunday, August 27, in downtown Berkeley, I witnessed thousands of protesters raising their voices against a planned white supremacist “Patriot Prayer” rally. In my decades as a documentary filmmaker of activism and now an academic studying movements and media, it was one of the most positive, diverse and unifying gatherings I ever experienced. While … Continue reading »
Working outside the tech bubble
Annual note to self – most of the world exists outside the tech bubble. —– We have a summer home in New England in a semi-rural area, just ~10,000 people in town, with a potato farm across the street. Drive down the road and you can see the tall stalks of corn waving on other … Continue reading »