Category: Change

How Fundamental Scientific and Technological Programs are Now Run in a Competitive Manner by Private Companies

Following up on our previous post ‘How Private Initiatives to Reach the Graal of Nuclear Fusion Show a Tipping Point in the Financing of Fundamental Science‘ that expanded on TAE technologies (a US West Coast startup close to Stanford), another similar start-up – this time on the US East Coast close to the MIT – Commonwealth Fusion Systems, has also recently raised dozen million dollars for the same goal, using a different technology (see here the Wikipedia entry on Commonwealth Fusion Systems).

Commonwealth Fusion Systems Tokamak system

In the same year where the US is gone back to space thanks to private companies such as Space X, with an alliance of high technology and design, this really raises the question of the future role of governments in running fundamental scientific experiments and high technology programs by themselves. The aspect which I want to expand here is actual execution of advanced science and technology leveraging on competition.

Both the new space programme and the new fusion efforts appear to share the same principle of competition (Space X, Boeing and other ventures competing for the NASA contract, several companies competing for fusion) . Where in the past large science experiments were run in monopoly fashion (NASA space program, or ITER in fusion), the new world of abundance of private funding (and increased scarcity of public funding) allows to run these high-risk programs with several teams in competition. This is probably an excellent thing to reach the goal quicker and with better quality: a spirit of competition, the emergence of a variety of ideas and solutions, everything that innovative programs should seek (and have sought, as in the famous parallel development of uranium-based and plutonium-based solutions during the Manhattan nuclear project).

I believe this is a fundamental shift in how science is getting done, and not sufficiently noticed. Monolithic state research organisations need to get into this new world of competitive fundamental research, fostering initiatives instead of trying to capture them and run them by themselves.

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How We Adapt to the New Mask Wearing Habit

A little bit of fun, with this website that proposes to produce masks printed with the image of your face to allow you to… unlock your phone!

Since masks are used for a long time in Asia it is a bit surprising that such initiatives only seem to emerge with the Covid-19 context. Still quite a creative way to respond to the “new normal”. And also a demonstration of the limits of effective mobile phone security!

On a less fun way, with everyone wearing masks, security in public places is an increased issue where before, people were asked to drop helmets and not have their face covered. This represents a clear shift of what is acceptable or not.

There will still be more adaptations of how we live in the new normal.

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How Memory and History are Different

In this post ‘The Most Important Question: How do you Know?‘, Valeria Maltoni tackles an interesting and important subject: the difference between history and memory. An interesting topic at the time we live through a historical and momentous historical event – the first pandemics of modern times.

I like the distinction which is proposed, quoting Alessandro Barbero, a famous italian writer of historic novels:

“Memory is individual, it’s the point of view of one person. History is the understanding of what happened from all points of view.”

Valeria Maltoni expands on this: “History is important. Reality its complex. To understand what actually happened, a view of the events from above is critical. One of the ways to learn from the experiences of others is to get out of a personal point of view, widen the gaze. This is what history does. Because it’s the sum of all the things that happened to human beings, history answers the question: What really happened? Memory is important, but by its very nature is limiting. It takes into account only one point of view“.

We will all have our memories of the current historical moment, but history will be needed to complement our understanding. And it will probably take time before this history can be written by people not getting involved in petty political games and interpretations.

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How We Need to Learn More Than Ever, but that’s Not The Same as Getting Formal Education

In this post ‘But what could you learn instead?’, Seth Godin reminds us that now is the time to accelerate our learning to face a disrupted world – but that at the same time, learning is not necessarily correlated with formal education.

“Learning takes effort, and it’s hard to find the effort when the world is in flux, when we’re feeling uncertain and when we’re being inundated with bad news. But that’s the moment when learning is more important than ever.”

But learning is quite different to formal education which was developed during the industrial age and is actually a way to ensure conformity and the capability to do hard work.

“This shift [from education to true learning] is difficult to commit to, because unlike education, learning demands change. Learning makes us incompetent just before it enables us to grasp mastery. Learning opens our eyes and changes the way we see, communicate and act.”

Let us remind us always that never have we faced more the need to learn, but that there are myriads of ways to learn and change which are not just formal education.

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How to Build Your New Normal

As we live through unprecedented changes, there is quite a challenge to build our new normal. This Capitalogix post ‘Building Your New Normal‘ provides some pointers.

“Things won’t go back to the way they were, but they will go back to normal. Only, it will be a new normal. It’s a good lesson in being attached to a result, not a medium for a result.”

The point is here: let’s not concentrate on how we were doing things, but back to why we were doing them. The means and technology do not matter, as long as we can align to our longer term purpose. We will adapt our delivery methods, our way of working, but the wider world still needs us because of our purpose.

It is a good time now to sit and reflect how we can deliver our purpose more effectively and to more people.

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How to Change Your Leadership In Times of Disruption

This useful post by Charlene Li ‘5 Ways To Change Your Leadership In This Crisis‘ propose some useful hints at what needs to change to be more effective in this climate of disruption.

The suggested changes include:

  • Developing a disruption mindset
  • Establishing stability and security with structure and process
  • Using openness and transparency to create accountability
  • Communicating in 3D to nurture relationships
  • Identifying opportunities for the future

I like this point of combining driving for disruption while creating some sort of safe space for people not to get lost (through processes and structure). Those recommendations in fact combine assuming leadership for change with providing comfort, thereby creating a fine balance to get everyone onboard.

This balance exercise between leading change and disruption and at the same time providing reassurance to the team is exactly what is required by a leader in those tough and strange times – and that’s certainly quite a rare set of capabilities.

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How AI Algorithms Now Get Generated by Natural Selection

In this breathtaking post ‘Google Engineers ‘Mutate’ AI to Make It Evolve Systems Faster Than We Can Code Them‘, latest developments of AI algorithm generation is described.

It does not yet look like it really works for advanced algorithms, but there are possibilities that very quickly algorithms will evolve that will produce novel solutions to certain simple problems such as image recognition. This is quite an exciting – and troubling – development. It was due to arrive though with the development of ‘genetic algorithms’ that simulate natural selection.

Of course the novelty is now to apply it to AI algorithms which are by themselves heavier and more cumbersome to handle. Still it gives quite an interesting perspective of what we can expect in the short and medium term. Scary!

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How Sexy Startups Can Also Sometimes Be Toxic Workplaces

Startups are trendy and many young people dream working there in all the excitement of creating something that will change the world. Still some startups are also incredibly toxic places to work, as reminds us this Gapingvoid post ‘Beware Supersexy‘.

The point is particularly important to make because startups are by essence, stressful places to be where a substantial commitment is expected from employees, and change is prevalent on a daily basis as the venture grows, pivots and struggles. Like in projects, the pace of action is quick and some employees can sometimes feel overwhelmed.

Some examples have recently come to light of cultures of mental and even sometimes sexual harassment, and more benignly of certain toxic work cultures in some startups even some that were very much under the public eye and heavily funded.

It is not rosy everyday in startups, and the strong will that is needed from founders do not always translate in a nice way to work. At the same time I do know a number of startups that have developed very nice ways to work together and where employees are incredibly happy to the part of the adventure.

It’s just a fact that startups, like other organisations, can sometimes be toxic places to work, and that because of the specific pace it can be quite extreme. Startup are exciting, and also demanding. As always it is important to get proper insight about how it is to work there before committing to contribute!

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How the Collaborative Age Requires A New Leadership Mindset

This MIT-Sloan paper ‘Leadership Mindsets for the New Economy‘ takes the perspective that the new economy requires a shift in leadership practices.

It starts with the excellent quote by Patty McCord, former chief talent officer, Netflix: “In today’s world, everyone has to adopt a leadership mindset. We have to think of ourselves as members of a leadership community“. This means that it is recognized that in the collaborative age, leadership capabilities need to be more widely spread inside organisations.

I find the rest of the paper a bit disappointing and too MBA like, with the identification of four key traits of leaders in the modern economy – producers, investors, connectors, and explorers. It does not go back to the question of how to make everyone in the organisation a leader – and how to make sure everyone plays the part he or she is the best about among those four traits. And that’s clearly the most important.

While this issue is recognized (“building a collective leadership capability is the strongest route to competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced world“), tomorrow’s determining leadership trait is indeed to allow the growth of leaders in all levels of the collaborative organisation. I’d rather see research exploring that direction.

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How We Need to Be Fully Committed to a Limited Number of Intents

In the post ‘The Heartbreaking Effects of Being Only Partly Committed to Most Things‘, Leo Babauta exposes all the negative aspects of incomplete commitment. Partial commitment is however much more common than full commitment (remember gyms make a lot of money from people taking memberships and never showing up!).

It is true that partial commitment leads to losing mental effort and investment. And it has negative consequences, including “[losing] trust in ourselves, beat ourselves up for failing again, create a negative self-image, which affects everything“, and possibly creating a negative spiral of non-achievement.

At the same time we can’t commit fully to everything, and in the portfolio of our many commitments, some will take the back seat and will have to be postponed. At any time, we anyway have only a certain limited amount of discipline and will.

I am not thus as negative as Leo Babauta on the issues of partial commitment. There are many more things we’d like to do than we can, and we also need to investigate new things. We can only be fully committed at any one time on a very limited number of projects. But it is true that we have to be fully committed to some. The issue is thus not to be partially committed to some projects, but rather if we are not fully committed to some of those.

What are the projects and intents you are fully committed to?

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How Structure is Needed to Create a Safe Space for Disruptive Growth

I like this post by Charlene Li ‘Disruption Learnings from Self-Publishing a Book and Going to Burning Man‘, and in particular the part about the need for structure to achieve real disruption. Charlene Li is an experienced consultant specialized in disruption.

“One of the most interesting things I learned in my research for my book, “The Disruption Mindset,” is that disruptive organizations are incredibly well structured and ordered. When you don’t have to worry about how to get things done, then you can focus on achieving extraordinary, disruptive growth. You need to feel safe to take on risk, to be both vulnerable and confident in your ability to try and either succeed/fail. “

I find this insight very strong, as it shows that structure is actually needed for large scale change. People need to be able to focus on disruption and the rest needs to work perfectly, not losing time and effort. Messy organisations are not as likely to pull through a disruptive transformation than minimally organised ones.

“The takeaway is that you need to create just enough structure in your organization or community for people to feel safe space taking the first step out of their comfort zone. Your role as a leader is to ensure that this space remains steady for them, that it doesn’t wobble when they push off hard against it to take off on their disruption journey.”

The message is clear then: if you want to create a disruption, make sure you got the basics covered and organised, and create sufficient structure (and not too much) to enable proper focus on the change.

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How We Will Increasingly Interact With Artificial Humans

The artificial human is on the rise, each with its own look and personality. No need to seek permission to use someone’s image anymore, the faces and personalities you’ll interact with don’t exist in the real world. And not only as pictures, soon in video as well, with the full range of emotions.

None of these exist in the real world

One aspect of it is brilliantly exposed in Seth Godin’s post ‘the End of Someone‘: endorsements have now no value. “In 2019, and perhaps forever, we’re now at a new level, one where the polish of photography or video is no longer any clue at all about the provenance of what we’re encountering. I don’t think we have any clue about how disruptive this shift is going to be“. Influencers wa may follow today sometimes don’t even exist (see our post ‘How Virtual Creatures Invade Our Connections and our World‘).

Like we, physical people, may today have several personalities in the virtual world, we’ll get increasingly mixed with purely virtual personalities. And it will become increasingly harder to distinguish one from the other. Fact-checking and source-checking is becoming an essential life and survival skill… as well certains skills to connect with AI-driven virtual humans, and maybe keeping the ability to connect face-to-face with real humans from time to time!

Welcome to the world of the virtual humankind. And a new increase in population, with the advent of a virtual set of humans!

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