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Pittsburgh: Rises from the Ashes
By Shlomo Maital
In today’s International New York Times (July 3), David Brooks makes an important observation. The political battleground in the U.S. and other countries has until now been: big government? Or small? Too much government? Or too little? This is changing, in the wake of Trump and right-wing nationalist parties in Europe.
The core issue, he says, in the coming decade, will be: open or closed? Open society, to trade, ideas, immigrants, information? Or closed society, with a big wall, protectionism, tariffs, and ‘immigrants not welcome’ signs?
Globalization began with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nov. 9 1989. The unification of the two Germanys accelerated the European Single Market and boosted global trade. But the benefits of free open trade, which have been enormous for Asia, accrued mainly to the wealthy and better off, who make money from money. Blue collar workers in the West lost their jobs, as manufacturing migrated. This silent majority is no longer silent. And their pain has become a central issue in politics, in the post-Trump era.
Brooks, like all good columnists, leaves his office and goes out into the field, to see first-hand. He visited Pittsburgh. My sister lives in Pittsburgh, and I’ve been visiting her regularly since her marriage to Chuck, my late brother-in-law, a Pittsburgh optometrist, in 1952. I saw first-hand the smoky steel mills along the Monongahela River and saw the terrible pollution that coated Pittsburgh with a layer of dust. I saw them disappear, as Pittsburgh reinvented itself to become today’s modern high-tech city, financial center, healthcare center and home to a great university, Carnegie-Mellon. As Brooks observes, Pittsburgh today is amazing, with sparkling clean air, great restaurants, cultural events, an old train station rezoned into restaurants and shops… a stark contrast to many other rust-belt cities, like Cleveland, OH and Gary, IN, which have not done the same.
But nonetheless, Pittsburgh too has its community of losers, those who lost high-paying steel jobs in the heyday of U.S. Steel. Globalization may have produced net gains for Asia, and even for the U.S., but those gains were very very unevenly distributed, and the winners did not in the least compensate the losers. After a long delay, the losers are now generating a political reaction and near-counter-revolution.
It would be a shame if the benefits of globalization were reversed, simply because our political system was too lazy, stupid and short-sighted to realize that somehow, we have to find a way to help those who lose from it. Maybe a good place to start is Pittsburgh, as Brooks notes, which lost thousands of steel jobs and eventually created thousands more of service jobs.
I think we should recall China and its amazing Great Wall, stretching for some 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers), completed around 1400-1600. The Great Wall kept out the Manchus and kept China whole and safe, at least in part. But it also kept out the world and led to 500 years of stagnation in China’s economy. Modern China has been a huge winner from globalization, because it has been smart enough to know how to reap the benefits. We should challenge other countries, especially the U.S. and Europe, to state: What is your strategy for evening the playing field, NOT globally but WITHIN your own country, to help those who have lost well-paying jobs to free global trade? Because if you don’t shape such a strategy quickly, you may find that politically globalization is no longer viable and is replaced by protectionism and modern Great Walls. Trump’s “build a wall and make them pay for it” will replicate itself elsewhere, if we do not act soon and wisely.
What If Technology Does Destroy Jobs?
By Shlomo Maital
Larry Summers
Larry Summers was Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, President of Harvard, and is one of the world’s top macroeconomists. In a recent New York Times article on how technology is disrupting the world, the author recalls how Summers spoke in November at a conference, about his undergraduate days at MIT in the 1970s. Nobel Laureate Robert Solow made the case then that new technology boosts productivity and overall creates jobs, employment and wealth. Sociologists at the time responded that new technology often destroys jobs and wealth.
“It sort of occurred to me,” Summers recalled, “suppose the ‘stupid’ people (sociologists) were right, and the ‘smart’ people (economists) were wrong. What would it look like? Well – pretty much how the world looks today.
Uber is eliminating taxi-driver jobs. Internet news is destroying print journalism jobs. Digital education will soon eliminate my job (as professor). Long ago, software made the entire mid-level managers’ jobs (focused on processing and interpreting data) redundant. Add to that globalization and world trade, which led America to outsource its manufacturing to Asia.
What if technology really does eliminate jobs? What if, like Finland and Switzerland, we will need to consider providing a basic minimum living wage for everyone, when unemployment becomes widespread? (The referendum in Switzerland on this idea was soundly defeated…but nonetheless, the mere fact it happened is important). What if in future, work itself will be a huge privilege and a luxury, granted only to a very few highly skilled, highly productive people who somehow are not made redundant by very smart machines?
The late MIT Dean and Professor Lester Thurow, who passed away recently, liked to say that sociology trumps economics. If sociology is about how people live and work together, and economics is about how money and capital procreate and proliferate, then surely he was right. Perhaps it is time that economic policy should be shaped by the sociologists.
Remember the Name! Tu YouYou, Nobel 2015!
By Shlomo Maital
Chinese scientist Tu Youyou has won China’s first Nobel Prize for Science – other ethnic Chinese have won Nobels, but Dr. Tu is the first to win one for work done entirely within China – and under really touch circumstances.
Tu is 84 years old. She did her work under Chairman Mao. During the cultural revolution, engineers and scientists were suspect. Her husband, an engineer, was sent to the country to work on a farm. Tu was allowed to do her research, only because Mao wanted to find a remedy for malaria, which was afflicting North Vietnam soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Tu sought a remedy in traditional Chinese medicine, found promising candidates, then did proper scientific trials on them, until she narrowed the field down to what is today known as “artimesinin”, a key element in anti-malaria medicine today. Her discovery, part of Mao’s “Project 523”, has saved countless lives. There must be a great many more wonderful rememdies hidden in traditional Chinese medicine, waiting for proper clinical trials.
Congratulations, Tu Youyou. Your work was done “to you”, “for you”, for the millions who die of malaria, especially children. Well done! Many more Chinese Nobel prizes will follow, I’m sure.
What We Learn from Ivo Karlovic’s 156 mph Serve!
By Shlomo Maital
Ivo Karlovic, serving
If you like tennis, and perhaps even if you don’t, you can learn a lot from a Croatian pro tennis player named Ivo Karlovic.
Karlovic was a 15-year-old teenager living in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, during its bitter civil war. He practiced his tennis daily at the Salata tennis club, but could find no-one to play with him. (Tennis balls hurt when they hit you, but bullets hurt a lot more).
So he gathered 200 balls and practiced his serves, for hours, imitating his role model, the Croatian pro Goran Ivanisevic. He would serve 200 times, go to the opposite court, and serve again 200 times… to no-one.
Ivanisevic holds the world record for “aces” (serves that win a point outright, without being returned), at 10,183. Karlovic is getting close. He has 10,004 aces and will soon break the record.
Karlovic is 6 feet 11 inches tall, the tallest pro player on the tennis circuit. His serve comes from 11 feet high, screams across the net at speeds averaging 132 mph, and is clocked at times at 156 mph. So – try hitting that! His big serve enables him to win 96 per cent of his service games. And though he’s in his mid 30’s, he is getting better, rising in the pro ranks.
What can we learn from Ivo? Leverage your advantages (his height). Accept your constraints (practicing during civil war). Make the best of what you have. Practice hard. And excel.
Thanks to David Waldstein for his excellent profile of Karlovic in the New York Times.
Innovation Lessons From the Sports Page: Go, Katie Ledecky!
By Shlomo Maital
What in the world can you learn about creativity and innovation from the New York Times Sports Page??
It turns out, a lot.
Today’s newspaper has a wonderful piece by Karen Crouse, about Katie Ledecky, American swimmer competing in the world championships in Kazan, Russia. She did an amazing feat yesterday. She swam in the 1500 m. final, and broke the world record. In fact, she SMASHED the world record, by 2.23 seconds! She swam 30 laps, 1500 meters, in 15 minutes, 25.48 seconds. About one minute per 100 meters. Nearly two meters a second!
And then?
Only one hour later, she got back in the pool…and swam in the semi-finals for the 200 m. freestyle. And somehow, qualified for the final.
Nobody has ever done that before, or even dreamed of trying it.
What’s her secret?
“I wasn’t afraid to fail,” she said, adding, “I had nothing to lose.”
And, digging a bit deeper: Here is how Crouse explains it:
Ledecky is the way she is partly because of a combination of her mental toughness and the unconditional love of her inner circle. Ledecky’s parents, Mary Gen and Dave, dispense hugs, not technical advice, leaving the post race analysis to Ledecky’s coaches. They support her swimming but do not smother her with expectations. Their view is that whatever she accomplishes in the water is but one strand in a rich life tapestry that includes academics and service and family.
There you have it. Mental toughness. And the unconditional love of her inner circle.
Our kids are inspired to do great things when we raise the bar high, give them high aspirations, support them… but always, always, stressing that failure is both inevitable and not a problem. Go for it, if you fail, we’re here, we love you, always will, we love you for who you are and not for the medals you win.
Go, Katie! We’ve learned a lot from you. Thanks.
How Vic Firth Drummed Up Some Business
By Shlomo Maital
Vic Firth died Sunday; he was 85 years old, lived a full life, and for an amazing 40 years was the principal timpanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I’m certain I’d seen him in action, during the 20 years I taught as summer adjunct at MIT. He played for such great conductors as Bernstein, Koussevitsky, Leinsdorf and Ozawa. Seiji Ozawa called him “the single greatest percussionist anywhere in the world.”
The Boston Globe once called him “debonair, affable,intelligent and sometimes cheerfully profane.” He once came up from the audience and played a drum solo, in Providence, RI, with The Grateful Dead. (The Boston Symphony told him never to do that again. He didn’t). And, by the way, he launched a company that bears his name, that turns out 12 million drumsticks and mallets annually, used by classical, jazz and rock drummers everywhere.
How did this happen? Here is what the Global New York Times wrote: “[he desired] sticks that were fleet, strong, perfectly straight, of even weight in the hands and able to produce the vast range of sounds he desired….Working in his garage, he whittled a prototype that had the lightness, versatility and equilibrium he desired, and engaged a wood turner to fabricate the sticks. … his students clamored for them [and] soon other drummers did too. Vic Firth Inc. was born.”
A great many startups are born, when creative people want some product that does not exist, and take action to make it. They do no market research, no surveys…just introspection. Because, if like Vic Firth you want and need something and know exactly what you want, then other “percussionists” will want it too. And you don’t necessarily need to be the world’s greatest drummer to make it happen.
What would YOU like to have, that does not exist right now? Can you make one? If the answer is yes, and yes, you have a great head start. Go for it.
Innovators: Are You Comfortable with being Uncomfortable? Are Your Kids?
By Shlomo Maital
Comfort: “a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint”.
The purpose of much of modern life seems to be to annihilate all sources of discomfort from our lives. Pain? Pop a pill. Hungry? Thirsty? You’re never more than 5 minutes away from fast food that gives you bulges in ugly places. Frustrated? Well, if you can’t leap over the bar, hey, just set it lower.
The problem with this is, things that truly create immense value for human beings happen, only when creative people become uncomfortable with the current state of affairs – with what exists. Without this divine dissatisfaction, and discomfort, we would have no progress at all. If everyone was satisfied with everything as it is…? If everyone shunned prolonged discomfort? Nothing would change. And heaven knows, there is a lot that MUST change. When Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, launched the company in 1999, he told the team of 17 that he assembled, that the next 3-5 years would involve a great deal of pain. And it did, beginning with the NASDAQ crash of March 2000. But led by Ma, his team was comfortable with being uncomfortable, because there was a reason, rationale, vision and goal.
I think this issue begins with raising our kids. As parents, we want the best for them. We want them perhaps to avoid the hardships we ourselves experienced. We smooth their paths. We make them comfortable, as much as we can. And our schools do the same, avoiding the tension and frustration that occurs when kids are challenged to do better, far better, in math and reading. We want our children to avoid failure. But failure is part of life. Resilience after failure is one of the most important skills one can have. How can you acquire it, and strengthen it, if you never are in a situation where resilience is needed?
The Jewish Talmud requires every parent to teach their children to swim. It’s common sense – what if they fell into a river or lake? By the same logic we also must prepare our kids for life’s challenges. Meeting those challenges may involve prolonged discomfort. If you cannot face any discomfort, how can you achieve greatness, for yourself and for others? How will you ever invest the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell says is the difference between mediocrity and greatness, in anything? If you only do things that you know will be comfortable, successful, you will miss many many wonderful opportunities for adventure and innovation.
I recall jogging with each of our children. They didn’t always love it. But our boys have all done marathons (I’ve done two, NY and Boston), and all have taken on, and surmounted, major physical challenges that led to important achievements. I think that running with them when they were young may have helped.
So my message is: Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Help your kids do the same. New and strange things by definition are uncomfortable, in general. If you welcome the risk, the uncertainty, the angst, that comes with trying the unfamiliar, the challenging, the unknown, even the frustrating, if you welcome discomfort, soon you become comfortable with it. And then, you can go on to invent great things and change the world.
Memo to All Professors: Our Monopoly Has Ended Forever
By Shlomo Maital
Memo to myself, and all professors everywhere? Hey – you know that cozy monopoly that we enjoyed? Our courses, especially compulsory ones, were, like, the only game in town? We all paid lip service to teaching quality, but our promotions were based on published papers, most of them barely or never read by anyone? And I’m talking about myself here….
Those days are over. Here is how I know.
Thanks to an amazing support team at my university, Technion (the Center for Improvement of Learning & Teaching), I offered a course on Creativity through the website Coursera (Cracking the Creativity Code: Part One – Discovering Ideas). Some 10,000 students from all over the world participated. It was a lot harder than I originally thought. I taped the videos three times, because the first two tries simply were not acceptable. Students are now submitting their final project – a 2-minute video showing how they would use creativity to tackle seven challenges that we defined.
Unlike the wise adage “look before you leap”, we leaped first and then looked. In preparing a talk for an academic conference on Educational Technologies, we summarized what we learned from our MOOC (massive open online course). We discovered that there are at least 50 other open on-line courses on creativity. Some are simply outstanding, given by the top people in this field, including Tina Seelig, at Stanford’s new Design School. A Penn State course on “Creativity innovation and change” attracted 130,000 students.
It has now dawned on me, like a light bulb turned on, that the cozy little monopoly that I once had (and all other professors), is now over. Our students can now reach out and tap the teaching skills of the very best professors in the world. No longer do they need to suffer the inadequacies of the local substandard version. And if I, as a professor, do not improve very quickly, I will be as extinct as the brontosaurus.
Cracking the Creativity Code: Part Two – Delivering Ideas, is now in the works. And trust me – it is going to be a whole lot better. It has to be. Because my once-captive audience has been freed, just as Lincoln freed the slaves in 1864. My monopoly has ended.
And the world is a whole lot better for it!
Why You are More Than Just One Person
By Shlomo Maital
In the picture, is “Clocky”. You can easily buy one from Amazon. The idea is simple. Set the alarm for, say, 7:17 a.m. You are determined to rise early, jog, walk, walk the dog, write a chapter or do the dishes. At 7:17 a.m. faithful Clocky rings. But, you’ve changed your mind. You’d rather sleep another 30 minutes. Clocky, however, is clever. As you approach it, it runs away. Zoom…. You chase it around the bedroom…. Finally, you catch it, in a far corner… but – by now, you’ve awakened. No point in going back to bed. You’re awake. Might as well get up.
Clocky is an example used by Prof. Dan Ariely, who hopefully soon will win a Nobel Prize in Economics, in a lecture given here at my university, Technion, last week. Ariely has explored the nature of ‘irrationality’, and showed that we human beings are actually quite rational, or systematic, in our irrationality. For example, when we go to sleep, with good intentions to rise early, we are Person A. But when we awake, we are Person B, another person entirely. This is why we need Clocky. (Ariely notes that you can buy lots of Clocky’s on eBay, but for some weird reason, they have smashed tops and lack wheels). And this is why we invent all kinds of ways to impose constraints on ourselves, because, when we choose to defer gratification, as Person A, Person B doesn’t always manage to actually carry it out.
Person A and Person B date back to Ulysses, who tied himself to the mast in order to resist the temptations of the Siren song.
Just before Ariely’s wonderful lecture (given by the way, without Power Point, simply with Dan standing in front of a packed auditorium, describing some of his wonderful experiments, interacting with the students, asking them questions, and in general, intriguing us with real-world economics about real people, facing dilemmas that we all face), I presented a research report on the pension crisis, with two colleagues. We recommended that each baby born receive a grant-at-birth, and that it be invested, for…70 years. With the power of compound interest, it will double five times, in 70 years, and the baby will be a millionaire… and indeed, is already, at birth (albeit a future millionaire). That money cannot be touched for 70 years… but when you know it is there, you have the secure knowledge that you will not live in poverty, when you grow old. This is an example of Person A and Person B, and ways to circumvent the problem they pose.
Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus – and it’s You!
By Shlomo Maital
One of my Coursera students (Cracking the Creativity Code) writes, in a chat forum,
“I was a college professor who had to retire at age 45 due to illness. I am now 55 and happy. My best advice to you is to branch away from your comfort zone. For instance I was a biostatistician (loved it) and am now a digital artist (self taught, http://gosusan.com). I am bringing the two together through infographics”.
Thank you “Virginia”. You show us that, Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus – and it is YOU. You have successfully used Stephen Johnson’s clever method, known as the “adjacent possible”. Change your field. Move far enough away to make it interesting and challenging, but not so far away as to be impractical and impossible. When you do this well and successfully, “Santa” showers the gift of energy and passion on you.
The key is to leave your comfort zone. It is super comfortable to remain in that old familiar rut, doing again and again what you always did. Trying new stuff is risky and uncomfortable, because at first you inevitably fail, and many of us are so used to permanent success, we cannot imagine doing anything poorly.
Try an imaginary exercise. Lying in bed at night, before you fall asleep – think to yourself, what could I do, that is different, different enough to be just possible (but hard), not so different as to be clearly unfeasible? Dream it.
Then, do it.
TIMnovate 