I am unapologetically bullish on the future of this world.
I’ve never seen an unfixable problem. As a child growing up in South Minneapolis, one of my
favorite pastimes was strolling the lines of the Hiawatha railroad, collecting metal parts that fell
from the cargo trains, and with super glue, a soldering iron and some imagination, putting the pieces
together in new ways.
I haven’t changed much.
Every pressing challenge we have – ensuring economic security, expanding civil rights and justice,
sustaining the environment, redesigning healthcare, improving education, etc. – requires piecing
together innovative ideas in ways that transform our societal capacity to respond and act.
We are well on our way to a brighter future. Information and communication technology will unlock
dramatically new ways to run our organizations. The science behind genomics and molecular biology will
add decades to human lifespans and eradicate the diseases that ravage too many lives. Quantum computing
and robotics will blow the doors off our current productivity limits. Green-oil technologies,
terraforming and carbon sequestration will create clean energy systems as well as heal and sustain our
environment.
Yet there’s much work to do.
Moving forward organizational and technological innovations will be disruptive. As we transform our
communities, businesses, organizations and institutions there will be political and social
ramifications. We’ll have to pace the resulting “adaptive challenge” – surfacing
and resolving the underlying belief systems, loyalties and competencies that can both spur and limit
progress.
The challenge of putting the pieces together charges me up. Leadership for a Networked World, the Harvard
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences-based research programs I run, as well as my advisory
practice, bring together visionaries like you in order to develop the leadership strategy needed to move
forward.
Please poke around this website and let me know what ideas you’d like to engage. Together, we can
work on the solutions that enable our communities, businesses, governments and institutions to foresee
and activate their transformational journey.
Will you join me in this quest? Let’s learn together and create together. Let’s get to work!