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Innovation Blog

Happy Bloomsday! How James Joyce Changed Novels Forever

By Shlomo Maital

 James Joyce,  Bloomsday June 16 

Happy birthday, everyone!   Today is Bloomsday, celebrated worldwide, June 16, because June 16, 1904, is the single day that is recounted in detail in the life of Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom, in Dublin, in James Joyce’s amazing novel Ulysses, which everyone loves but very few have read end-to-end. 

   Joyce picked June 16 for Ulysses, because on that day he and his future wife Nora Barnacle, whom he loved deeply, met, and went for a long walk. 

    Until Joyce, novels were conventional, and had plots that unfolded over time.  In Ulysses, there is really no plot, and what happens is what is known today as stream of consciousness, what goes on in Leopold’s mind. Moreover, the language is not literary, but the language and cadences of ordinary Dublin speech, including some that is very profane. (That got Ulysses banned in many places, explicitly some of the sex scenes). 

     It is still a mystery to me, why some people choose to carefully follow the rules, in art, literature, poetry, sailing, tiddlywinks or ballroom dancing, and excel, and create works of beauty, while others choose to blow the rules up, all of them, with a ton of TNT, and put years of work into their creation without being certain whether their work will be seen, read and enjoyed by anyone. (Then, and now, you need someone to publish your work, and the more radical it is, the harder it is to get a publisher).   It is these radical innovators, the ones with the TNT, who exert lasting impact on their world and on their discipline. 

    What was it that made James Joyce disregard all the rules of novel-writing, to create a masterpiece? 

   Ulysses’ last line, yes I said yes I will, is very famous.  Innovators: say it!  Yes I said yes I will… disregard the ‘rules’, break the rules, try things, yes I said yes I will.  After all, Joyce did it – and look what happened!

 Innovation Blog

When REAL Writers Write the News:  Innovating the Newspaper

By Shlomo Maital

 Etgar Keret, journalist 

I read the Hebrew daily newspaper Haaretz every morning, along with the International Herald Tribune.  Usually something in Haaretz makes me angry, because it is very left-wing and highly critical of Israel’s government, army and society. 

  But today, I am in awe of what landed on my doorstep.  In honor of Israel Book Week, Haaretz’s editors had a brilliant idea. What would happen if the newspaper were written by real writers, not journalists?  What if you got the best novelists and poets to write the news, editorials and even the weather? 

   The result is truly astonishing.  Writer Etgar Keret flew to Italy with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a state visit there, and came home with a scoop.  “Bibi” finally let the cat out of the bag.  “There’s no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he revealed.  No solution – ever?  Permanent state of war, forever?  Pretty depressing. Perhaps we need to find a new Prime Minister who can find a solution to the conflict that has no solution, and that in itself will be a solution.  Thanks, Etgar!

   Here is part of poet Ronny Someck’s weather forecast, translated from Hebrew by superb translator Vivien Eden:  Drops in rain language/have not yet begun to stutter in the cloud throat/ the thunder mouth is toothless/and lighting has not yet flicked the spotlights on/ in the pupil of the eye/  until the stoves are lit, sleeves will be rolled up/on the arms of the sun…..

   Maya Arad, from New York, offers a vivid and telling description of what went wrong for Dominique Strauss-Kahn: “She (the maid) refused to accept the money”.   Historical novelist Yochi Brandes, one of my favorite authors (Book of Kings 3), asks the Education Minister, “have you given up on the Bible?”  The Minister lamely puts the focus on the teachers.   And finally, Israel’s greatest living poet, Nathan Zach, writes an editorial: Gilad (Shalit) will not return.  He reminds us, “I was born in the land of the Nazis and my father committed suicide there.”  He claims, “Gilad Shalit will not return, at least not as long as our prime minister believes he has a strong majority in the coalition.”

     What an amazing, insightful, trenchant, biting, satirical, depressing, slashing, innovative, unique, and above all superbly written newspaper! How in the world will we go back to reading the dull, confusing stuff written by journalists, tomorrow and every day? 

     Hey, Haaretz.  Good job!  As the song goes, though – how ya’ gonna’ keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?! 

 Innovation Blog

Dogs Are Man’s Best Friend, and Cancer’s Worst Enemy: How Fido May Get Hossam Haick a Nobel Prize

By Shlomo Maital

  Fido:  Cancer Fighter???

Hossam Haick is an associate professor chemical engineering at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.  He is an Israeli Arab who comes from the city of Nazareth.  Haick recounts how he read about dogs who apparently were capable of sniffing cancer – detecting cancer in people where no such cancer had been detected before by conventional means.  Dogs, of course, have super-sensitive noses.  Still the fact that the presence of cancerous tumors led to a distinctive, though faint, odor, was surprising.  A segment of the CBS program 60 Minutes documented, and demonstrated, how dogs could sniff out bladder cancer, in 2009.

   Haick set to work (with associates Abassi and Nakhoul)  to see if he could develop a sensor “nose”, like that of a dog, capable of sniffing cancer and perhaps other illnesses.  And he succeeded.  He recently won an award for his project on “a nanosensor array for easy detection of volatile biomarkers at early stages of lung cancer and related genetic mutations”.  Haick has built a highly sensitive, inexpensive, portable and fast-response array of nanosensors for detecting molecules that indicate increased risk of lung cancer, or the presence of lung cancer. Of course, it is well known that advanced lung cancer is nearly always fatal. So Haick’s “nose” could save many lives, when it is proven and available.   

   I don’t know if Prof. Haick will win a Nobel for his breakthrough, or when his ‘cancer nose’ will be widely available.  I think the lesson for innovators here is clear.  Millions of people watched 60 Minutes in amazement, as doggies  Biddie and Tangle, Oak and Dill, Bee, and a couple of pre-med rookies, Briar and Daisy, did their thing.  Other scholars replicated the study with other dogs.  Haick, in contrast, sought to improve on the dog’s cancer-sniffing noses with nano-technology.  Pushing a finding higher and farther is what creative people seek.  Dogs’ noses are truly incredible things.  They have 100 times more receptors than human noses, and are hence probably 1,000 times more sensitive.  A tough act to follow – or duplicate?  Haick tried, and apparently succeeded.

    So if you are a smoker,  pat that stray dog you see on the street and perhaps give him a treat or a drink of water.   Even if you choose not to save his or her life, indirectly he may save yours.

 Innovation Blog

Innovating Hiring:  Prior Experience Will Disqualify You!

By Shlomo Maital

 My friend and colleague Y. has no college degree. Yet he held high-level positions as a software engineer with market-leading Check Point, started a website-building company and sold it for a good price, and is now involved with two additional startups. 

  Here is his secret for success:  Hire people with no prior experience or qualifications.

  How precisely does that work?

   Y. himself is what is known as an auto-didact (self-taught).  He loved computers and taught himself programming and programming languages.  He did this out of passion and because he did not like formal classroom learning.  He then realized that there is a whole population of people like him, who are given no chance because HR officials play it by the book, hire only those who fit perfectly into the square holes of degrees, experience and training.  So Y. set out to hire ONLY people like him, with fire in their bellies, dying for an opportunity to prove themselves, rejected everywhere and grateful for a chance.  And it works wonders.  In his successful startup, he hired ONLY such people.  And the results were startling.

   So, innovators, HR managers, startup hopefuls – when you begin to hire people and build your organization, scrap your 800-page HR manual and instead, look for people who are truly passionate about what they do, who for various reasons have not acquired formal degrees and experience, who seek only a chance to prove themselves, give them a probationary period and try them.  Some may fail. Many will not.  You will save money – they’re willing to work for a lot less than MIT graduates.  Do not hire people who expect YOU to be grateful to have them, and demand company cars, perks, and on-the-job massages, but instead, hire those who are truly grateful you gave them a chance when others wouldn’t and return that gratitude in creative hard work.

  Innovation Blog

Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique:   The Delight of Surprise in Innovation

By Shlomo Maital

Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Last night, my wife and I heard the Israeli Philharmonic, led by conductor Yoel Levi, play Tchaikovsky’s  Symphony no. 6 in B minor (Pathétique).  We observed a tiny lesson for innovators.

   There are  four movements in this wonderful work.  The third movement is labeled “allegro molto vivace” which means “very lively”.  And very loud!  The movement ends with a flourish of timpani and bass drum, with the orchestra playing at top volume, in a closing crescendo… and the audience bursts into applause (including me – and I know the piece quite well), thinking it is the final movement. 

   The conductor and orchestra waited patiently for the applause to die down, as we looked at one another sheepishly, and then began the fourth movement. 

   The fourth movement of the symphony is labeled “adagio lamentoso” (which means plaintive, sad),  and it is very soft, quiet, somber, an elegy, with a huge gong sounding like a death knell.  And the movement, and the symphony, end, like no other symphony I know, with pianissimo (very very soft), almost inaudible  ….and the conductor holds the movement, stands motionless, the auditorium is absolutely silent, you can hear a pin drop, nobody applauds, nobody moves, the moment of utter silence is held, held, held….. and then, applause!  

    The rule is, you end symphonies like Beethoven’s Fifth, with a loud bang.  Why? said Tchaikovsky. Why not end it almost inaudibly?  Why not surprise the audience?  Why not break the rules? 

    Innovators – try to surprise.  Try to put at least something in your creation that is aimed at surprising and delighting, something unexpected.  Listen again to the Pathetique…if you wish, just to the end of the third movement, and then the end of the fourth and last movement..and find inspiration.   If everyone follows Rule #27, do the precise opposite.

    Tchaikovsky died a few days after the premiere of Pathetique.  The audience and critics received it coolly (hard to believe?).  But Tchaikovsky himself thought it was one of his greatest works – and it was.  The symphony takes 40 minutes to play – but those closing few seconds of near-silence are insightful, impressive and unforgettable.    

Innovation Blog

A Cure for Alzheimer’s?  From the Bible to the Drugstore Shelf

By Shlomo Maital

   A new study led by Prof. Michael Ovadia, Dept. of Zoology, Tel Aviv U., isolated an ingredient of cinnamon (CEppt) and used it on mice raised with five aggressive strains of Alzheimer’s-inducing genes. 

   The results, published in PLoS ONE scientific journal, were impressive.    “Fed drinking water containing a CEppt solution over four months, researchers found that the disease’s development was delayed, with additional trials showing that existing amyloids has been dissolved.”   (Amyloids are the sticky proteins that gum up the brain, in those who have Alzheimer’s).   This may eventually result in an Alzheimer’s drug.

   Speaking today on Israeli television (Channel 1), Professor Ovadia revealed the source of his idea that cinnamon could be therapeutic.

   “As a youth I took part in a Bible quiz.  One of the questions nearly stumped me. The question was, what spices were used by the High Priests in the Holy Temple?  That was tough.  I finally remembered, one of them was cinnamon. And then, ever since, I kept wondering – why cinnamon?  What properties does cinnamon have that made it suitable for use by the High Priests?  I tried to grasp the logic.  I thought, well, the High Priests do the sacrifices of animals, animals have many pathogens, maybe the cinnamon protects them from the pathogens of animals.  So we tested cinnamon, but it did not prove anti-pathogenic.  But as we continued our research, we did find it has anti-Alzheimer’s properties!”  

   By the way, the Bible passage about cinnamon is Exodus 30:23:  “Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane…”

   Prof. Ovadia says he and his students now drink a cup of tea daily, with a cinnamon stick inside.