Engineers in Aprons, Anyone????

The following is an except from a post on Knowledge Jolt with Jack (one of my featured blogs in the right column).

A colleague forwarded How Companies Are Using IT To Spot Innovative Ideas by David Greenfield from InformationWeek's 10 November 2008 issue. It highlights how research organizations are adding prediction markets to their process of selecting new ventures to pursue.

The use of these collective decision-making technologies, both sophisticated prediction markets and simple voting tools, is spreading, and they're increasingly being paired together as a component of corporate innovation programs, helping companies sort through reams of ideas--from new products to customer service to productivity improvements--to find that handful of blockbusters.

But where do companies get those better ideas? That's the golden question. Based on everything I've seen and done, the surprising new ideas come from a combination of "the prepared mind" (expertise) and strange ideas that appear to come from left field -- the innovation-in-the-gaps concept.

Those familiar with my blog and/or faculty website know that one of my foci is that of software that enables collaboration, along with the passionate belief that the goal of every person no matter their "bucket capacity" (aka "intelligence") should be to become an "educated person." (See my apologia in the right-hand column of my faculty site).

I've commented before upon the future of the American economy being based upon our ability to innovate. And while we need to educate our young folks deeply in one discipline, this is yet another example of why we must also educated them broadly.

So please:

• K-12 programs should continue (or restart) music, art, field trips, etc.
• Colleges should continue to promote arts programs on campus--and instructors should motivate students to attend (a few point's bribe, perhaps???)
• Humanities instructors (e.g. Music & Art Appreciation) should be given plates of chocolate chip cookies by adoring engineering students

Educate broadly--the future of our economy and our nation depends upon it.

Ok, so maybe the cookie thing won't happen . . . . .

Advice to Obama from Wharton

"Given the array of problems that the Obama administration will confront, what should its priorities be? How much will the new president be able to spend on programs like alternative-fuels research or middle-income tax cuts without driving the federal deficit to unmanageable depths? And how will those short-term spending decisions affect his ability to deal with a long-term crisis -- trillions of dollars in obligations to retiring Baby Boomers as they enroll in Medicare and Social Security? A growing number of commentators contend that Obama's success in dealing with the economic slowdown will affect his policy decisions in other areas."

The quote above, taken from Knowledge at Wharton is part of a larger article in which some of the brightest business minds on the planet "weigh in" on what steps should be taken by the Obama administration.

I recommend the Knowledge @ Wharton series to all business majors.

Bankers in Leather . . . .

Out here in Lancaster County, we see a lot of horses used for a variety of purposes. Rarely do we see a horse minus a bridle--for a bridle allows control of the animal. If the horse has acres upon which to run and graze, the bridle may be unnecessary; in a congested area (around cars, for example), the bridle is as much for the protection of the horse as it is to impose the human's will upon him.

Interestingly, the term "unbridled" has come to connote not merely "free," but "wild" or "frenetic".


President Bush (#43) is the first President in history to share my academic degree, an M.B.A. His economic policy has been vintage Republican: "unconstrained capitalism" that would grow jobs, build wealth, and strengthen the economy.

Now, visually do a "find and replace" in the preceding paragraph, and replace "unconstrained" with "unbridled" -- then take another look at the chart above. As I stated in an earlier post, this should NOT have come as a surprise.

The goverment is now toying with the idea of giving the banks even more money in return for (preferred) stock. In most counries this would be called nationalizing the banks. Who would have thought that the Bush/Cheney administration would go down in history as bigger socialists than FDR? The plan would be voluntary, but it still undercuts a basic tenet the Republican Party has held sacred for a century: the government should leave the private sector to manage itself. It will be interesting to see how the candidates respond to this new wrinkle.

The Fed gave A.I.G. another $38 billion yesterday, on top of the $85 billion they already gave it. People are hopping mad (and the $440,000 party the A.I.G. executives threw for themselves didn't help much). John McCain's strategy of talking about William Ayers 24/7 has apparently backfired and he is pulling the ads. While the base was eating it up, they were already in the bag. Independents didn't like it one bit. They want to hear how McCain is going to fix the economy, not who Obama knew 20 years ago. McCain doesn't want to talk about the economy, of course, since what he really and truly has believed his whole life is the free markets work best and the government should stay out of them. But as people watch their 401(k) plans and their pensions and their future go up in smoke, this is a real tough sell. He'd better think of something different to say in the next 50 nanoseconds or he is going to be--in the immortal words of George H.W. Bush--in deep doodoo. (from the website that provides the electoral map (right)

Doctors tend to think that medical science can, single-handedly, solve the world's problems. Business people think that enterprise can do the same thing. Politicians . . . You catch my drift.

But unbridled medicine can lead to Dr. Mengele; unbridled government can lead to Kim Jong-Il, and unbridled business . . . .