Yes, I know the blog is stream-of-consciousness, not exactly a diary, but not categorized or organized in any strong way. And the website is... say we say, "under development". As is the Institute itself.
Intrapreneuring is of course a great place to start. American corporations have lost sight of innovation as the driver of good things, and today the immature 'answer' is to do ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Which misses the whole point, since 99% of even Stanford graduates will work for someone else rather than themselves almost their entire life. Why cannot 99% of us work for innovative companies? Sort of the Romney applique for business if you are a chary observer.
So, the InnovaScapes Institute (ISI) is tackling Intrapreneuring, with a couple of books (one 'about to be' published, another in draft), workshops, speeches (harangues?), and some conference material.
But ISI intends to do much more than that. The real questions center more around the impact, both positive and negative, of technology on society, whether it be our own or those of other countries, including third world countries. So health questions, environmental concerns privacy and security, quantitative measurements, and the like are fair game for the Institute.
One friend said, "you must need a lot of experts around you to tackle these questions" and of course he is right. Another said, "how REALLY are you funded?" -- knowing full well that we are mostly working with pecuniary limits and a lot of faith. A third said, "I'd love to come work with you." I liked that response!
The most consistent questions, though, are WHAT are you going to do, and WHY do you think you can make a difference? Lurking right behind those questions for some is the meta-question -- are you simply a modern day Don Quixote? I am not enamored of that perspective, but I have to admit that the laundry list of potential topics might resemble such an agenda.
Previous posts have indicated some of the potential topics. In an aging society -- true of most of the 1st world countries in the sense that birth rates have fallen below replacement level, and also true that people are living substantially longer -- several 'new' questions become important that used to be able to be ignored. Alzheimers will affect nearly one in two people who live past eighty-five years; used to be that wasn't very many people, but it will become a sizable contingent in the next twenty-five years.
COPD, mentioned herein in a couple of posts already, is an increasing killer, and its causal elements are not only not known, they are not being investigated with much effort or money. Between COPD and asthma, some twenty percent of Americans are current sufferers, and it does foreshorten life by an average twenty years, not to mention robs energy and vitality long ere that death. Why the AMA holds onto the notion that COPD is 85-90% caused by smoking is as bizarre as why the NRA and the toady Congress grant the gun industry complete immunity from sanity and legal recourse.
Jobs fuel the economy, true, but they do much more in terms of giving people hope, dignity, and a sense of purpose -- not to mention food, shelter, and some discretionary income to attend ballgames and rock concerts. But jobs increasingly are 'under pressure' it would seem, and the social fabric could unravel if we are heedless of this. Sure, new technologies have 'always' provided new jobs -- why won't they do so this time? Our feeling is that this arena also is in need of further understanding.
Other topics are tempting -- privacy and anonymity questions raise a lot of issues re government intrusion as well as crowd sourcing apps for your iPhone. If the Syrian government can track you within five meters whether your cellphone is on or off, maybe others can do so as well. Do you care?
The mountain of debt -- some $1.1 TRILLION -- in student loans, mostly soaked up by the thirty leading "FOR-PROFIT" colleges from desperate kids wanting jobs, is a timebomb waiting to go off. That unfunded loan pool is larger than the entire consumer debt load in America, and nearly as large as the hidden profits of America's largest corporations in Bermuda and other offshore 'banks'. Why these two topics seldom get raised when questions of debt ceiling and "fiscal cliff' topics fill the airwaves is beyond me, since they equal or dwarf the amounts usually in debate.
Yes, yes, these look like an attempt to boil the ocean, and we've only just begun. What topics would make YOUR list? And should you toss them into the mix? Would you? And would you help work on them?
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