From Susan Lang, President/CEO, Lime Connect, Inc.
Here’s a mom’s/manager’s perspective on how her son’s disability helped her to acknowledge “quirks” in others (and herself) that helped her to tap into their strengths. Inclusive leadership - great article!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/w
During the launch of Tesla into the UAE, Elon Musk held his audience captivated at the World Government Summit in Dubai, when he was suggesting that humans need to merge with machines to become some sort of cyborg.
"Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,"
“It's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”
Case in point .... Computers can communicate at a trillion bits per second", while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second.
Over the years, humans have been flirting with their inventions - We have created cars, computers and our mobiles to improve our communication and efficiency.
“The next innovation is to merge the human to the machine by having some high bandwidth interface to the brain that will achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem," Musk explained.
This symbiosis (maybe in the form of a chip in the brain?) will enable us to access information quickly and tap into artificial intelligence.
Will we have a “chip ceremony” 7 days after we are born?
The imminent disruption of a major industry
Autonomous cars - which will be an amazing convenience - will displace jobs - this is going to be a major disruptive and will happen very quickly - within the next 20 years . This will render 12 to 15 percent of the global workforce redundant - they will need to find other jobs.
What will be the new roles for us humans? What do we need to do to upskill into meaningful work? What do webneed to? Will there be a new economy? Universal income? How will we behave?
What will we look like? How will we evolve? Will the elite be some sort of Cyborg? Are we already not some sort of Cyborg?
These are the narratives that are being discussed at I4J (Innovation 4 Jobs).
Where do you think the new jobs will be in 2050 and beyond?
The future of work - Beyond 2050 ?
What will we look like - Beyond 2050?
Hopefully not like this
One key feature in all of my recent program roles is ‘ambiguity’.
Ambiguity in this context is where there is a vision and set of principles or goals, but the rest evolves as the program evolves, discovers through a test and learn - Agile/LEAN start up type of approach.
Navigating and delivering outcomes where there is ambiguity is a necessity in today’s workplace and yet I see so many colleagues and staff struggling with it.
They cannot seem to develop it as a capability/skill.
When I reflect and try to understand the why, a few things come to mind:
Fear of the unknown: We have been trained to build a solution as specified (waterfall type of approach) and then if the solution is not right we have the specifications to blame eg: detailed requirements. When things are ambiguous it evolves and the clear line of sight to the outcome can be lost. People seem to struggle to redefine a clear line of sight through test and learn - Agile/LEAN start up ways of working.
What gets measured gets done: People want to be able to measure success and if it is not clearly defined and tangible they struggle. They cannot see the success that comes from discovering, acquiring knowledge, building, testing and learning in short intervals where you ‘build and learn as you go’. They can only see success when something is physically built and it works as specified.
Fear of failure, people are scared to fail and if it is ambiguous then they can not guarantee that they will not fail. Traditionally there has been no reward for failure or as I see it learning. I love the example where an employee loses a substantial amount of money for an organisation and when they try to resign their manager says that the mistake was a very expensive training course. The manager encourages the employees to stay. This is a different way to view ‘failure’.
What do you think? Why do people struggle with ambiguity and what can we do as leaders to help them? Look forward to hearing your views.
But he also emphasized the importance of exercising extreme caution when altering organisms’ DNA and developing a “containment mechanism” to control technologies that turn out to be dangerous for humanity.
The Forum announced a partnership between the Earth Bio-Genome Project and the Earth Bank of Codes. As part of the WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth initiative, these organizations will collaborate to sequence the DNA of all life on earth, a hugely ambitious project estimated to take ten years and cost $4.7 billion.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-26/australian-of-the-year-michelle-simmons-chess-quantum-physics/9364600
From an early age, Michelle Simmons liked to understand things.
She used to watch her brother and father play chess, a lot.
"One day I asked if I could play my father and he was a little bit surprised. I could see he wasn't expecting it," the 2018 Australian of the Year said.
"After about 20 minutes I thought, 'gosh I think I'm going to check-mate him'. And I did and he was totally surprised.
"It made me think 'wow he didn't really expect me to be able to do this' and that really got me thinking 'there must be other things that people don't expect of me, let me find out what they are'."
One of those things was understanding the world at a level of physics and mathematics.
"So I got into it," she says.
"And I found that the more difficult the challenges I took on, the more rewarding it was and I thought wow this is a phenomenal world to be in.
"It's absolutely rewarding in a way I didn't get with easier things. From that point on I thought what can I do that's going to be useful for the world."
She went on to become one of Australia's top scientists.
The 50-year-old mother of three is a professor in quantum physics at the University of New South Wales, and has placed Australia at the forefront of research that could reshape the way we live.
But even though her world is filled with fascinating concepts, Professor Simmons concedes being Australian of the Year is a bit unusual.
"As a physicist we fly under the radar a lot. We're not in the public eye very much so for that reason it's very strange," she said.
Professor Simmons grew up in London and went to some of the best universities in the UK.
She looked at going to the US and Europe but settled on Australia because of its society, ambitious attitudes and culture.
"I looked at Australia and I thought wow, they have an egalitarian society. You come in at an early age and they encourage leadership from a young age," she said.
"You're able to get your own funding, you're able to do your own thing.
"But also just the Australian culture of giving it a go, not taking themselves too seriously, working hard, being ambitious. I just thought 'wow, that's a place where I feel that I could actually do things in a way that would suit me'.
Since arriving in Australia in 1999, Professor Simmons has transformed her quantum physics department into a world leader in advanced computer systems.
In 2012, her team created the world's smallest transistor made from a single atom.
They put out an eight-stage plan and it was questioned internationally over whether all, if any of those stages were possible. But that was no deterrence to getting it across the line.
"We thought, 'we think it's possible'," she said.
And it certainly was.
"When we got to the final stage ... you can actually see the atom in a microscope. So we could see it was there but then we had to prove that it behaved as a transistor," Professor Simmons said.
"And then when we actually saw that it worked, that feeling is absolutely phenomenal and it will stay with me for the rest of my life."
The next thing on Professor Simmons' radar is to build a quantum computer — one that could solve problems in minutes, that would otherwise take thousands of years.
"It really starts to allow us to do things that we simply wouldn't be able to do in a timely fashion," she said.
Something like this would have the potential to revolutionise things like artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and drug design.
Some would say quantum physics is a man's world.
But Professor Simmons said most of the time she has not been aware of a gender divide, other than the fact people had lower expectation of what she could achieve.
"Because they're not expecting me to do anything, I can actually get on with it. No-one's paying attention to me, I can actually get on and see if I can achieve it," she said.
Only 5 to 7 per cent of her field is female and she knows there'd be benefits to boosting that number.
"I love having females in my group so I've been trying to figure out how to get more in the group," she said.
"There's all kinds of different schemes you can come up with but I think it's almost a cultural step change in just accepting that you've got to take on the hard challenges.
"Recognise that females, just as males, can do the hard challenges equally as well. And encouraging them not to lack confidence in what they can do, just get out there and do it."
Innovation and Science Australia has handed down a total of 30 recommendations to the federal government as part of the public release of its 2030 Strategic Plan.
The 2030 Strategic Plan is a roadmap delivered to advise the Australian government on how to develop the nation’s industry policies out to 2030.
“Looking towards 2030, innovation will be integral to the expansion of Australia’s economy, keeping its workforce strong, and addressing societal challenges,” ISA chairman Bill Ferris wrote in the plan’s introduction.
“Australia will need to be competitive in a global innovation race by scaling up more high growth industries and companies; commercialising more high value products and services; fostering great talent; and daring to tackle global challenges.
“Yet just at the time when Australia needs to accelerate its innovation performance, we are falling behind our global peers, particularly in student performance in science and mathematics, and in business investment in research and development. This is more than a canary chirp in our economic mineshaft: it is a clarion call for national action.”
The 30 recommendations have been delivered with five key policy imperatives in mind. These include education, industry, government, research and development, and culture and ambition.
The ISA also proposes within each key policy imperative strategic opportunities that are available to government to ensure each recommendation can be actioned.
Below is a summary of the 30 recommendations made in the 2030 Plan:
