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Global Crisis Blog
Three Global Scenarios: Take Your Pick, Share Your Wisdom
By Shlomo Maital
Nov. 3/2009
In The Economist’s Oct. 1 issue, a special report on The World Economy has an excellent and insightful lead article. The question addressed:
*** Will the world economy recoup its huge losses from the 2007-9 global crisis, catch up to the pre-crisis trajectory, and return to the original baseline growth (a large but one-time loss)? This is Scenario 1. (See Chart). (Prof. Milton Friedman believes this has been the case in every American recession, for instance).
*** Will the world incur a permanent loss in output, returning to the original global growth rate but NOT recouping fully the losses in wealth and output. This is Scenario 2.
*** Will the world incur a permanent and growing loss in output, with global output growth emerging SLOWER than pre-crisis and never regaining its original rate. This is Scenario 3.
It makes a huge difference for every single manager, business, family, government — everyone! — which of these scenarios will actually occur. If forewarned is forearmed, we all need to be forewarned. But as usual, our economists disagree and are of little help.
If you have insights into which of these scenarios you believe is most likely, and why, please share them with us and submit a comment.
Innovation Blog
2 Million Women Suffer — Who Cares?
The Terrible Shame of Fistula
By Shlomo Maital
Oct. 27/2009
If two million American, French, British or German women suffered from a life-destroying humiliating and unbearable condition — how many thousands of innovators and billions of R&D dollars would be devoted to finding a rapid solution?
But, fear not, it is only African, Asian and Arab women. So, who cares?
The condition is fistula. It is horrendous just to read about it. And despite a global campaign launched by that powerful, effective and efficient body called the United Nations, little progress has been made. We have excuses rather than results. It is a true disgrace, and a dark blot on the alleged humankindness of the wealthy half of the world.
The cost of curing the 2 million African, Asian and Arab women who suffer from the condition is $600 m., or $300 per woman, a sum equal to about 12 hours’ worth of crude oil production, or 0.1 per cent of what the world spends annually on advertising.
According to the UN:
Obstetric fistula is a hole in the birth canal caused by prolonged labour without prompt medical intervention, usually a Caesarean section. The woman is left with chronic incontinence and, in most cases, a stillborn baby. The smell of leaking urine or faeces, or both, is constant and humiliating, often driving loved ones away. Left untreated, fistula can lead to chronic medical problems, including ulcerations, kidney disease, and nerve damage in the legs. A simple surgery can normally repair the injury, with success rates as high as 90 per cent for experienced surgeons. The average cost of fistula treatment and post-operative care is just US $300. Sadly, most women with the condition do not know that treatment is available, or they cannot afford it. Like maternal mortality, fistula is almost entirely preventable. But at least 2 million women in Africa, Asia and the Arab region are living with the condition, and some 50,000 to 100,000 new cases develop each year. The persistence of fistula is a signal that health systems are failing to meet the needs of women.
If philanthropy is absent, where is creativity — a cheap effective solution poor women can afford? Where are the world’s creative gynecologists? What about a mass-production ‘assembly line’ surgical unit, portable, that can do hundreds of such operations, for example? What about enlisting 3,000 gynecologists and surgeons to donate a month a year curing fistula?
In 2003, UNFPA spearheaded the global Campaign to End Fistula, “a collaborative initiative to prevent fistula and restore the health and dignity of those living with its consequences.” What a relief. Rather — what a joke.
Perhaps we need a campaign to end the Campaign to End Fistula, and get down to some real action. I don’t see how we wealthy people sleep at night when so many people are suffering so badly, and so needlessly.
Postscript: Nicholas Kristof wrote his Sunday Oct. 31 NYT column on this subject — a topic he has been writing about since 2002. Here are the first paragraphs…
October 31, 2009, 10:10 pm
<!– — Updated: 8:48 am –>A Heroic Doctor, a Global Scourge
By Nicholas KristofMy Sunday column is about obstetric fistula, a horrendous childbirth injury that rarely gets attention or treatment because the victims are the most voiceless of the voiceless. Dr. Lewis Wall, the hero of the column, taught me about fistulas years ago, and so I’ve been writing about them periodically since my first column on the topic back in 2002.
For years, I’ve watched with admiration as Dr. Wall has persevered to try to build a fistula hospital in West Africa — and I’m thrilled that he is now fulfilling his dream. Those who want to help his Niger hospital can support his organization, the Worldwide Fistula Fund; tax-deductible donations to the hospital are possible right on the site, so please don’t send any money in my direction. For now the surgeries in Niger will be done in the existing leprosy hospital there, and he still needs significant sums to construct the new fistula wing beside it.
There’s another great fistula organization, the Fistula Foundation, that supports the Addis Ababa hospital and other places such as the remarkable Edna Adan maternity hospital in Somaliland.
Above all, I hope that we go even further and eradicate fistula globally. In the column, I mention Dr. Wall’s careful 12-year $1.5 billion proposal (written with Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute) to eradicate fistula. It’s also an effort to tackle maternal mortality; my sense is that fistula may be the best way to get traction for maternal health
Innovation Blog
Where the Wild Innovators Are:
What Innovators Can Learn from Maurice Sendak
By Shlomo Maital
Oct. 20/2009
The animated movie Where the Wild Things Are, directed by Spike Jonze, has opened to critical praise and grossed $32 m. in its first days. Where the Wild Things Are is a children’s book by illustrator Maurice Sendak. Sendak was the son of Polish Jewish immigrants. He decided to become an illustrator after watching Disney’s Fantasia. Sendak published Wild Things in 1963. For the few who have not read it to their children, it is about Max:
….Max, who one evening, plays around his home, “making mischief” in a wolf costume. As punishment, his mother sends him to bed without supper. In his room, a mysterious, wild forest and sea grows out of his imagination, and Max sails to the land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things are fearsome-looking monsters, but Max conquers them “by staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once”, and he is made “the King of all Wild Things”, dancing with the monsters in a “wild rumpus”. However, he soon finds himself lonely and homesick, and he returns home to his bedroom, where he finds his supper waiting for him, still hot.
Break the Rules: Sendak’s book was controversial, because some experts felt it was too frightening for kids. But all parents know children have massive fears and confront them head on (unlike adults, who repress and deny them). Moreover, kids like to be frightened, when they know the fright will dissipate as ‘good night’ and warm supper and warm covers.
Initially the monsters were supposed to be horses. But Sendak’s publisher found that Sendak could not draw horses. So he suggested Sendak draw ‘things’. Sendak could draw ‘things’ — he based the monsters in his book, who are truly frightening, on dinner guests to his parents’ home, especially, his aunts. (Innovators: Adapt, adjust. Use what you have, not what you need or want.)
Seven years later, Sendak wrote and drew In the Night Kitchen, about a young boy prancing naked in the kitchen. This book caused a far greater controversy and several states banned it, because of the nudity. It remains banned in several states.
Sendak broke the rules for kids’ books, because he had an idea and was unafraid to implement it. The result was two true classics. The lesson for innovators is parallel to that in the world of sport, writing, music, or research.
· Never look over your shoulder for the critics/experts, while innovating. If you innovate to please them, if you innovate while thinking about what they will say, you are doomed. In American football, a wide receiver who thinks about the defender coming up to nail him, rather than focus on the ball, will miss the catch. Innovate according to your inner voice, like Sendak. Never ever think about what others will say.
This, of course, seems to defy the true-blue rule of “listen to your customers” or “fulfill a proven need”. In fact, it doesn’t. Sendak thought about the kids who would read his book. He wrote and drew for them — only for them.
Innovators create, for those whose lives they wish to change. And only for them — based on a deep true understand of who they are, what they want and what they need. If you shape your business idea according to what you think venture capitalists or investors may wish to hear, I think you are navigating by ‘radar’ rather than by your own internal ‘compass’. If so, you’re going to get lost.
Innovation Blog
Art and Copy:
What Innovators Can Learn from Advertising, or:
Why No Company Should Do “R&D”
By Shlomo Maital
Oct. 15/2009
A brilliant documentary about advertising is called Art and Copy. It is now playing at theaters across the U.S. Here is a brief synopsis:
ART & COPY describes advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s — artists and writers who all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation: George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow, Hal Riney and others featured in ART & COPY were responsible for “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” “Think Different,” and brilliant campaigns for everything from cars to presidents.
Innovators can learn a lot from this 85-minute film. I often think that startups should BEGIN by creating the advertising for their product. If you cannot produce an exciting ad for it, why bother?
The film explains that in the 1960s and 1970s, the key people at ad agencies were account executives. The creative department was valued at less than zero. Then a revolution occurred. Creativity, not account managers, created order-of-magnitude changes in revenues and profits for Wendy’s (Where’s the Beef?), iPod, Apple, New York City, Nike, milk producers — and votes for Barak Obama. The creative department faced the risk aversion of senior managers and their wives, who a priori rejected brilliant but unconventional ad campaigns — and had to come up with new campaign ideas when their original ones were rejected, after weeks and months of round-the-clock work.
Two small memorable episodes from the film:
· Nike’s Just Do It campaign was inspired by a newspaper headline. In Utah, a convict about to be executed by firing squad said to the executioners: “Let’s Do It!”. An ad agency executive read the story — and came up with the legendary mantra for Nike.
· The ambience of the ad agency is crucial; all the truly creative agencies shown had spaces that were open, sunlit, comfortable, spacious, unusual — the exact opposite of design-by-committee. On the wall of one agency was a sign, made with 100,000 clear plastic push pins: Fail harder! A great sign. The unusual part of the sign: Rather than write the words: Fail Harder! with the push pins, as most people would do, the creator made the sign the hard way by filling all the spaces in the sign with push pins, leaving the words Fail Harder! only where there were no pins — far far harder and more time consuming but — far more striking. Take the hard way, the sign says. Don’t take the easy obvious way.
· Seize the opportunity! Nike brought in a Latin dance expert, to help pose models for still photos, for the iPod ad campaign. The expert, though not told to do so, took the model’s hand — and they did a torrid salsa dance. It was his way of showing the model how to pose. The creativity department watched in awe. At the end of the dance, everyone in the department agreed: This is our ad! That is how the famous iPod salsa ad was born — dancing figures, in black shadow, with the white iPod earphone cords.
In watching this film, Art and Copy, I reached the following rather wild conclusion. For what it is worth, here it is:
No company should do R&D, have an R&D department, or appoint a VP (R&D). There IS NO SUCH THING as R&D. Companies do not do research. Universities, labs, scholars do research. Companies do development. But there are different flavors of development.
Every organization should have a VP (Creativity). Every organization needs a Creative Dept., just like that in ad agencies, whose goal is to come up with wild unconventional ideas. In his or her creative department, there will be three reports: head of product (or service) creativity; head of process creativity (dealing with the company’s business model, every aspect of it, including sales, marketing , advertising, supply chain, pricing, and HR); and head of innovation scouting, or imitative creativity — benchmarking other industries to bring home new ideas, to adapt and adopt. (BT has a head of innovation scouting, for example). These three senior managers should work closely together, travel together, meet face-to-face frequently to exchange information, and should embrace the principles of Applied Creativity (head in the clouds, feet on the ground).[1]
Call a spade a spade. R&D? Why? If the goal is creativity, call the function just that. You will then staff the creativity group with creative people, by definition. The truly great ad agencies were created by creative people who were chewed up and spit out of conventional bureaucratic ad agencies. How many creative people are out there, crushed within bureaucratic organizations, just waiting for a chance to join a truly creative organization unafraid to call its R&D by that precise word.
[1] The concept of head-in-the-clouds, feet-on-the-ground was first taught to me by former Intel executive Avinoam Kolodny, now in the EE faculty at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
A special Business Week Report on “Innovation in Recession” (July 22/2009) contains excellent tips for managers, and mini-case studies to support them, on how to sustain and strengthen innovation despite the global downturn. Here are a few excerpts:
• Realism: 60% of 1,430 global managers surveyed by Bain & Co. believe that the current recession will last through 2010. Be wary of pronouncements about ‘green shoots’ — those making them have an interest in persuading you to spend. Now is the time to prepare your product launches for the recovery, a crucial time when market leaders can lose ground to upstart incumbents.
• Prioritize: Evaluate your innovation portfolio and prune it, slash what is not crucially necessary. Despite temptation, do not slash long-run projects for those that yield big first-year revenues. An avoid-this example: Vanilla Coke, a line extension that took sales away from other Coke products. A to-do example: Google, which used technology for long-run search engine leadership, then found ways to make money out of it.
• NPV: Avoid it! Existing NPV (Net Present Value) templates use conventional assumptions about the organization’s business model. But the recession will certainly make many of those assumptions obsolete. Moreover, NPV ignores option value: Will the innovation build expertise in new fields, that can later be leveraged to open doors not even reached, were it not for the innovation? Option value of innovation is crucial during a recovery, because every industry features paradigm shifts.
• Employees: Drive Their Creativity! MasterCard has copied IBM’s Innovation Jam, which since 2006 uses 90-hour round-the-clock brainstorming sessions on-line. MasterCard CEO Robert Selander led a Webcast of his company’s 5,500 employees, down to the lowliest intern, based on a long search process done by seven senior executives who comprise an internal international task force. Recession is the perfect time for this — employees all understand the vital need for innovation, which could save their own jobs.
• Involve your customers: Caterpillar is launching its D7E this October, despite the downturn. Its price tag is $603,000, $100,000 more than the older D7R. It’s a hybrid, 30 % more fuel efficient and 10% less expensive to operate, meaning that the $100k price differential is paid back within 30 months. Caterpillar has in the past made many development mistakes; this time it involves its customers far earlier in the development process, to make sure what it brings to market meets their needs. Caterpillar thinks customers will pay higher prices if customers get superior products.
• Five Questions: A new HBS book by Scott D. Anthony (The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times) suggests a five-question template for evaluating downturn innovations: What is the upside potential? How much risk remains? What resources are needed to reach the next learning milestone? How well does the idea fit important qualitative criteria (e.g. the value innovation profile)? How much does the idea contribute to the overall [innovation] portfolio’s balance?
Economists never were great communicators. As managers struggle to read the data and seek signs of the recovery, economists’ messages continue to baffle. Here are excerpts from the latest Business Week article on the subject, along with translation into simple English:
Real gross domestic product declined at a pace of just 1% in the second quarter, after a 6.4% decline in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said July 31. The Commerce Department also released multiyear revisions in the GDP that showed the recession was deeper in 2008 than originally reported. Here’s a selection from analyst reactions to the report:
GDP data are revised, often a year or more later. The 2008 US recession was, it seems far deeper than the original numbers showed.
Action Economics: The Q2 figures extend the pattern of a skewing in 2009 economic weakness toward the business from the consumer sector.
Initially, lower consumer spending was the key cause of the recession. Now it is business investment, both in buildings and in machines. Consumer spending is making a slow recovery in the U.S.
Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics: We expect GDP to post a modest increase in the third quarter, as the pace of inventory liquidation slows and government spending enjoys another big fiscal-related surge.
In every recession, inventories grow when businesses sell less to consumers than they had planned and expected. So businesses cut back production, lay off workers and stop investing, to reduce inventories. Ashworth expects “the pace of inventory liquidation” to slow, a good sign, meaning that businesses may go back to producing for current sale. Managers should watch inventories closely, they are an important indicator.
One other key indicator that managers should track: jobs. The early signs of some recovery in the US economy do not include unemployment, job creation and jobless numbers. Desperate cost-cutting on the part of most businesses means that even if GDP and spending numbers recover somewhat, this may not be reflected in the job market. There may be a ‘disconnect’ between the goods market and the jobs market, and this could lead to a scenario of ‘double dip’ — workers whose incomes and jobs are weak again slash spending, leading to a second round of inflation.
Exactly one hundred years ago, a French pilot named Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel (or La Manche, as the French prefer to call it) for the first time. He flew in a rickety monoplane with a tiny engine, held together by spit and paste. Bleriot himself had been injured in an accident two weeks earlier and was limping. And he had no instruments, not even a compass.
Clearly the attempt was foolhardly. Had he ditched in the cold choppy waters, he would not have lasted long, even if he had survived the crash. The plane was flimsy. Its axle was no thicker than a broomstick. Bleriot flew successfully from Calais to Dover. After that, orders for the planes he built poured in, mainly from countries’ armies.
Many years later, Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean, in the Spirit of St. Louis. It was a far longer and riskier flight. But Bleriot paved the way.
There is a direct line from Bleriot the daring pilot to today’s innovators. Bleriot risked his life to do something no-one had done before. There was a reason. By stretching the limits of aviation, Bleriot encouraged innovators to stretch them even further.
Today’s innovators also take bold risks. While they usually do not risk their lives, they risk years of effort and their careers, facing high odds of failure, just as Bleriot did. The same innovative spirit that drove Bleriot to fly across the English Channel drives today’s innovators, as they seek to identify unmet needs and satisfy them. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bleriot’s daring flight, we can draw inspiration from him and others who pioneered and pushed the boundaries of human achievement.
Global managers are religious about reading at least one financial daily every day. Miss an issue, and you miss key trends. Today’s issue of Financial Times is proof. In this one issue, once can find many of the key trends going on in the world today.
Pp. 1, 2. Solar power drive. “China plans to offer subsidies to solar power projects”. China has been behind the curve in clean/green tech, but is battling fast to catch up, and will offer subsidies of 50-70 % for solar projects, especially in Western regions.
P.1. ”Goodyear will not be Temasek’s chief”. Chip Goodyear ran BHP Billiton, and a year ago was hired, after a long wooing, to run Temasek, Singapore’s semi-Sovereign Fund. Today it was announced he is leaving, even before he really started. Why? This issue highlights the dramatically important new role sovereign funds will play in capital markets, as they recover, and the strategies they will follow. Goodyear probably wanted to invest in resources. But did Temasek’s Board?
P. 1. “Treasury yields fall on Fed strategy”. Exit strategies apply to VC investments — how do we get our money out? But they also apply to Federal Reserve strategies. How will the Fed turn around its low-interest-rate policy, and hike rates again, and when will the Fed do this? Bernanke’s recent pronouncement on this issue — perhaps to keep his job, as he is up for reappointment next year and some Dinosaur Democrats want Larry Sommers instead — hints that an ‘exit’ and rising rates will not come soon. Treasuries reacted by seeing their yields fall.
P. 1. ”China to deploy forex reserves in push to speed overseas expansion”. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said “we should hasten the implementation of our ‘going out’ strategy and combine the utilization of foreign exchange reserves with the ‘going out’ of our enterprises”.
Say again? Pardon?
Loose translation: China should begin shifting its $2 trillion dollar asset reserves from paper assets into real assets (companies, resources), thus encouraging its enterprises in ‘going out’ (i.e. globalizing), using China’s vast resources to do so. This is a key trend. What companies will China seek to buy? Where? When? The answer will have vast impact on world markets.
P. 9 ”Asia keeps the West’s betrayed faith”. While many Western populations are becoming wary of globalization (realizing, at last, that they have on the whole lost out from it), Asian societies continue to support it (because they have been the big winners). What will the final outcome be — more globalization, less, or the same?
P. 9. ”Research conflict point way for ratings agencies.” Remember the ratings agency scandal — S&P or Moody’s rating toxic mortgage-backed securities as AAA when they are B minus? Research now shows, if you pay analysts based on the accuracy of their recommendations, their research quality improves. Why not do the same for ratings agencies?
P. 9. “Warring economists are carried along by the crowd.” “There can be little doubt. The science of macroeconomics is in deep trouble. The beset and the brightest in the field fight over the most basic problems.” Macro-economists disagree. Macroeconomists cannot agree on creative ideas regarding how to deal with the global downturn. I am a macroeconomist. My my. Why am I not surprised?….
…and we are only on page 9. 16 more pages to go….
This is the oldest example of innovation I’ve ever encountered.
Jørn Harald Hurum (born November 4, 1967) is a Norwegian paleontologist and popularizer of science. He is a vertebrate paleontologist and holds a position at the Geological Museum of the University of Oslo. He has studied dinosaurs, primitive mammals and plesiosaurs.
According to the BBC, on May 19, 2009 he announced the acquisition and scientific description of a 47 million year old, 95% complete skeleton of a primitive primate, Darwinius masillae, that had been in the private possession of an amateur fossil collector for 25 years. Hurum named the specimen “Ida”, after his daughter. The Latin name was in honor of Darwin’s 200th birthday. The fossil is the oldest complete fossil by far, of a primate. Ida looks like a lemur, but in fact belongs to the monkey genus and may shed light on the evolution of humans. Hurum assembled a ‘dream team’ of 10 world-leading paleontologists. The result of their study of the fossil was published on 19 May in the online journal PLoS One.
Hurum has aroused great controversy because he is also a populizer, and has made a BBC documentary, built an IDA website and appeared on the History Channel. He rejects the extravagant claims that the fossil is ‘the missing link’ and an ‘extraordinary breakthrough’, but does think it will shed light on how humans evolved.
How does one become a paleontologist? Hurum recounts that when he was 6 years old, his mother read him a story about a little boy who picks up and throws stone. One stone, the story recounts, spoke to the little boy. ”Don’t throw me away!” it yells. “I can tell you a story”. And the stone, containing a fossil, tells a story of a creature that lived millions of years ago.
That story led Jørn Hurum to collect fossils and ultimately to become a paleontologist. I find this significant; by reading to our young children, we can plant passions and ideas that much later become powerful motivators.
Because he is also a ‘populizer’, and moderates a weekly TV program for children, Hurum has been attacked by other scientists. I believe this is unfair. Hurum published his article, along with his colleagues, in a reputable journal. The article was ‘embargoed’ (i.e. forbidden for distribution prior to publication) as is common practice. Nonetheless, as a result, NATURE, a leading journal, attacked Hurum (even though NATURE does the same embargo). Many scientists make their careers by acquiring pre-prints and attacking the article and its findings even before it appears. SCIENCE and NATURE did this with Hurum’s study. Scientists who take the trouble to explain, carefully and accurately, what they are doing and what it means to ordinary people should be praised, not attacked.
Innovators should not find the attacks on Hurum unusual. If you cannot innovate yourself, you can attack others who do.
IDA – 47 million years young. She has fingernails, not claws, and the contents of her last meal (fruit and leaves) are still in her stomach! She has been preserved in polymer plastic. Hurum’s Institute paid something approaching $1 m. for her from a fossil dealer.
(based on a talk given at the Rotman School of Business, Univ. of Toronto)
There is a strong, logical connection between the TV series Star Trek, its inventor Gene Rodenberry, da Vinci, Picasso, Einstein, Edison, the pre-frontal cortex (part of the brain), and psychologist Daniel Gilbert. The links are obvious, once you know them.
Star Trek was a successful TV series, and later movie and sequels. Its theme: the Starship Enterprise “to go where no man has ever gone before”. This is the principle of innovation. The inventor of Star Trek was Gene Rodenberry. He was an Air Corps pilot, flew bombers in World War II (over 80 missions), later became a Pan Am pilot and saved his passengers with a brilliant desert crash landing in the Syrian desert. His dream and passion: to be a TV writer and producer. He quit his job as a pilot, moved with his family to Los Angeles and became a policeman for 7 years, to support his family while he pursued his dream. He sold several TV scripts, finally selling and producing Star Trek. The network wanted to cancel it, but its dedicated fans staged a write-in campaign and saved it.
How many of us would have followed Rodenberry’s path, quit a great job to pursue a dream and passion? What keeps most of us from doing this?
The answer is: our pre-frontal cortex. This part of the brain, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, is our ’simulator’, our imagination. With it we can simulate future events and experience them before they happen. Only humans can. Animals lack this ability. But the pre-frontal cortex, which has developed only over the past 2 million years, is limited. It has ‘hedonic bias’. That is — it overestimates the happiness we think we will derive from future events (mostly things we buy) and overestimates the pain and suffering we think we will sustain from bad things that may occur. We fail to pursue our dreams, perhaps, because we think about failure, overestimate the pain it will cause — and never try to pursue our dreams and our passions. We come up with ‘excuses’ — reasons why we never even tried.
The world’s great inventors and innovators avoided this trap. Da Vinci had every reason in the world not to amount to anything. He was born out of wedlock, in the 15th C., when the Church controlled every facet of life. Had he been born in wedlock, he would have become a notary, like his father, and been trapped by the life of a Guild member. As an illegitimate child, he had the freedom to pursue anything he chose — and he did. Picasso lived during a turbulent 9 decades, experienced war, Nazi occupation of Paris, a ban on sculpture and painting — and never missed a day in his studio, producing amazing works of art, fearlessly innovating, producing an astonishing total of 50,000 works! If I know what I am going to do, he once said, why bother doing it? Einstein finished his Ph.D. and could not get a university post, because his professor had been insulted by him and failed to recommend him. Because he was only a lowly Swiss patent office clerk, he had the time to write three revolutionary papers, on relativity, the atomic structure of matter and E=MC2. All of this, in one year, 1905. He changed the world. Edison, as a child, was booted out of school. He was hard of hearing and had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). His mother home-schooled him and he taught himself by reading. He invented the phonograph, because of his deafness — he sensed vibrations through his fingers and realized that sound was something real, something physical, that could be captured and stored.
What is your dream? Your passion? What are you doing to achieve it, to implement it? What are your excuses for not doing so? Can you learn from Edison, Einstein, Picasso, and da Vinci, and turn your constraints into creativity levers? Can you emulate Gene Rodenberry and pursue your dream no matter what? Can you learn from Daniel Gilbert and sharpen your pre-frontal cortex?
Here is a small exercise that may help. Create a digital camera. It is a very special one. It takes a photograph 5 years into the future. Picture yourself in 2014. What do you see? What are you wearing? What does the room look like? Picture every detail. Imagine it. Now — think ahead backward — what will you do today to make that photograph come true in five years? I believe Gene Rodenberry did this. Try it. List all your excuses for not following your dream — and then turn each of them into a reason to pursue it passionately.
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