I4J -- what's that

I4J or "Innovation for Jobs" -- a catchy little logo, and a group that organized a two-day seminar this week called "International Summit on Innovation for Jobs".  A 'special invite' group of seventy-five met at SRI to discuss, lament, and debate possible approaches to an insistent problem -- the problem of an apparent economic recovery, but one without jobs.

The meeting, held under Chatham House rules (which decrees that no one get tagged in a quote), featured some truly well-connected folk, versed in these topics, and concerned enough to want to partake in erstwhile solution designs.

For those that don't know, here is the Rule:

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under Chatham House Rules, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

On the other hand, the group, and the announcement of the meeting, is on the web, at iiij.org
where it notes that the advisory committee includes Vint Cerf, chief evangelist of Google (and co-creator of the InterNet); Curt Carlson (CEO of SRI); Irwin Jacobs (Founder and Chairman of Qualcomm); and Dave Stangler, Kauffman Foundation.  David Nordfors, the peripatetic leader of the Innovation Journalism program at Stanford was the organizer.   So some of the info is public.

What a stimulating conference, and what a privilege for InnovaScapes Institute to be invited to participate.   Our focus on Intrapreneuring was relevant to be sure, but so was the wider effort we do in terms of advocating better visual understanding of 'big data' and better graphical mathematics.  Such topics as semi-log plots were not lost on this crowd, even as most students in America's graduate business schools don't have a clue about this "Eighth Wonder of the World" acc. to Einstein.

I'll summarize some of the information in subsequent blogs.  Some amazing conversation happened; this group was impressive.