Irving Wladawsky-Berger

How Can AI Accelerate the Pace of Scientific Discovery?

A recent issue of The Economist included a special focus on “How AI Can Revolutionize Science,” with three articles on the topic. “Debate about artificial intelligence (AI) tends to focus on its potential dangers: algorithmic bias and discrimination, the mass destruction of jobs and even, some say, the extinction of humanity,” noted the issue’s lead article. “As some observers fret about these dystopian scenarios, however, others are focusing on the potential rewards. AI could, they claim, help humanity solve some of its biggest and thorniest problems. And, they say, AI will do this in a very specific way: by radically accelerating the pace of scientific discovery, especially in areas such as medicine, climate science and green technology.”

“Could they be right?,” asked the The Economist, reminding us that in the 1990s we had high hopes that the internet would reduce inequality and eradicate nationalism by transforming the world into a connected global village. Instead, internet-based social media platforms have been blamed for fueling political and ethnic polarization around the world.

“But the mechanism by which AI will supposedly solve the world’s problems has a stronger historical basis, because there have been several periods in history when new approaches and new tools did indeed help bring about bursts of world-changing scientific discovery and innovation.”

How to Build Organizational Resilience to Cyberattacks

I became quite interested in cybersecurity around a year ago, given the growing threats of cyberattacks by criminal groups and adversarial governments. I then joined CAMS, MIT’s interdisciplinary cybersecurity consortium and started attending its online weekly seminars. A few weeks ago I attended a CAMS seminar on cyber resilience by Manuel Hepfer, a research affiliate at Oxford University and a research analyst at ISTARI, a cyber risk management company.

What is cyber resilience? While cybersecurity is the practice of protecting critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks, cyber resilience is the ability to prepare for, withstand, and recover rapidly from any major disruption, whether an intentional cyberattack or a natural disaster.

The seminar was based on a study by Hepfer and colleagues of the 2017 NotPetya ransomware attacks, a series of powerful cyberattacks which caused over $10 billion in global economic damage across a number of industries. Their study was primarily focused on three global companies that were the subject of NotPetya attacks: a logistics company with over 60,000 employees, a manufacturing one with over 20,000 employees, and a third in professional services with over 5,000 employees.

The study conducted around 50 interviews with senior executives across the three companies, including CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and CISOs. In addition, it reviewed internal documents, presentations, press releases, newspaper coverage, and audio and video files related to events before, during, and after the attack. Their study was published in two articles in the MIT Sloan Management Review, the first in 2020, the second in 2022.

Is the Metaverse the Next Major Phase of the Internet?

“Don’t mock the metaverse,” said The Economist in a November 2021 article. “There are good reasons to take the metaverse seriously. One is historical: as computers have become more capable, the experiences which they generate have become richer. The internet began its life displaying nothing more exciting than white text on a black background. Flat images were added in the 1990s. Video came to dominate in the 2010s. On that reading, a move into three dimensions is a logical consequence of the steady growth in computing power.”

“The metaverse is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed,” the article added. “The video-game industry - the only type of entertainment fully exposed to the compounding power of Moore’s law - has been selling virtual worlds for years.” Online games like World of Warcraft, Fortnite, and Roblox have hundreds of millions of users, and their gaming companies have valuations in the tens of billions, - evidence that immersive virtual worlds can be popular and profitable. “It is hard to argue that an idea will never catch on when, for millions of people, it already has.”

3-D virtual environments have had limited success beyond the video-game industry. But this could change. Leading technology companies have announced plans to expand their use in business, education, social media, and other so-called serious applications. On October 28, Mark Zuckerberg announced his commitment to a metaverse strategy by rebranding Facebook as Meta Platforms. A week or so later, Satya Nadella shared Microsoft’s metaverse plans, starting with enabling users of Mesh for Microsoft Teams to interact and collaborate in 3-D immersive workspaces.

What Musical Mindsets Can Teach Us About Business Innovation

In their recently published book, Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation, Panos Panay and R. Michael Hendrix argue that “the mindsets developed by musicians make them good entrepreneurs.” Panay is currently Senior VP for Global Strategy and Innovation at the Berklee College of Music. On June 22, he was appointed Co-President of the Recording Academy effective August, 2021. Hendrix is a Partner and Global Design Director at IDEO.

“[T]he creative mindset is more than a unique approach to entrepreneurship, more than drawing upon the improvisation of jazz or practicing until our fingers bleed,” write Panay and Hendricks. “As musicians, we believe that there is something instructive here for our work as entrepreneurs and business leaders. Musicians know how to create moments that break patterns, fill gaps, capture our attention, and inspire not only because of skills they have developed at a keyboard or a microphone, but because they have honed their ability to listen.”

The book is based on interviews with musicians, songwriters and producers who’ve succeeded as both performers and entrepreneurs. The authors interviewed a number of musicians, including Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, Imogen Heap, T Bone Burnett, and Desmond Child. In addition, they surveyed the careers of Björk, Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, and others who’ve had a major impact on the music industry as creative artists and business leaders.

A New Contract with the Middle Class

“The U.S. is a middle-class nation,” says the opening sentence of A New Contract with the Middle Class, an essay by Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill that was recently published by the Brookings Institution. “Since our nation’s founding, the American Dream has always been based on an implicit understanding - a contract if you will - between individuals willing to work and contribute, and a society willing to support those in need and to break down the barriers in front of them.” The essay is part of the Future of the Middle Class initiative launched by Brookings in November, 2018.

Why focus on the middle class? The reason, notes the essay, is that this is how the majority of Americans define themselves. “An aristocratic leisure class and a welfare-dependent underclass are equally unappealing to most Americans.” It’s why paid work is seen as so important. Americans want a society where everybody has the chance to “make something of themselves.” Joining the middle class is the very core of the American Dream, - the promise that anyone can get ahead and achieve success and prosperity through talent and hard work.

Who is in the middle class? While there are multiple definitions, most are based on income, partly because data on income are widely available, and it’s easier to come up with concrete, quantifiable definitions. But also because income tends be highly correlated with other attributes of social class, such as educational level, job status, consumer preferences, behaviors, aspirations, and cultural tastes.

The essay defines middle class as those in the middle 60% of household income distribution. “To be middle class, a household of three would have an income between $40,000 and $154,000,” - neither poor nor prosperous. “The middle class, by our definition, is diverse: 59 percent white, 12 percent Black, 18 percent Hispanic, and 6 percent Asian. Within a few decades, whites will make up the minority of middle-class families.”

The Intriguing Nature of Non-Fungible Tokens

The blockchain first came to light in 2008 as the digital ledger for bitcoin transactions. The blockchain creator’s original vision was limited to enabling peer-to-peer bitcoin transactions with no need for a bank or government agency to certify the validity of the transactions. But, like the Internet, electricity and other transformative technologies, blockchain soon transcended its original objectives.

Over the years, blockchain technologies have evolved along two major lines. One continues to focus on blockchain as the underlying platform for bitcoin, as well as a wide variety of cryptoassets, such as digital tokens and cryptocurrencies. The other focuses on the use of blockchain in the business world, - a kind of Internet 2.0. The cryptocurrency camp is based mostly on public permissionless blockchains, which anyone can join and require some kind of proof-of-work or proof-of-stake systems. The business camp, - best characterized by Hyperledger, - is based on private or public permissioned blockchain networks to support transactions among institutions that need not know nor trust each other.

Given my professional history with the Internet and e-business, I’ve been almost exclusively focused on the business camp for two major reasons. First, blockchain technologies can help us enhance the security of Internet transactions and data, by developing a layer with the required standard services and their open source implementations for secure communication, storage and data access. And second, blockchain technologies can significantly improve the efficiency, resilience, and management of supply chains, financial services, and other complex global applications involving multiple institutions across multiple countries.

I have not paid much attention to bitcoin or other cryptoassets. But recently, I’ve become quite intrigued by non-fungible tokens (NFTs). To me, NFTs are further evidence that, as with the Internet of Things (IoT), we’re increasingly living in a hybrid physical-digital world. Let me explain.

Why Business Transformation Efforts Often Fail

A 2019 study found that the average digitization level across all industry sectors was only around 25% of their ultimate potential.  But, the pandemic has now made the case for accelerating the digital transformations firms and economies were forced to make to help them cope with the crisis.  But, how successful are such major transformation likely to be?

A few months ago I received an email from the Harvard Business Review recommending a classic article from its 50 Best Selling collection that could shed light on this important and timely question, - Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail, originally published in 1995 by (now emeritus) Harvard professor John Kotter.

“Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors,” wrote Kotter.  These included large and small organizations, US and non-US based, some that were on their knees and some that were doing quite well.  “But, in almost every case, the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment.”

The 1985-1995 decade referenced by Kotter was also marked by major technology changes, - e.g., the explosive growth of PCs, the client-server model of computing, the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web; as well as major economic changes including the rise of global supply chains, outsourcing and offshoring.

The Public Face of Science - Implications of the Covid Crisis

The Public Face of Science was launched four years ago by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to better understand the complex relationship between scientists and the American public.  The initiative has now published three reports.

The first, Perceptions of Science in America, was published in 2018.  It found that a majority of Americans have expressed a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, a confidence which has remained stable over the past thirty years.  But, it also found that confidence in science varied based on demographics, including age, race, educational attainment, regional location, political affiliation and other characteristics.  The report recommended additional research to better understand why certain topics were particularly controversial, especially climate change, vaccine safety, and genetically modified foods.

It was followed by Encountering Science in America, which was published in 2019.  This second report explored the diverse and expanding range of opportunities for people to learn about science outside the classroom, including visits to science centers and museums, general news sources, online information, social media, and entertainment.  It concluded that such a complex landscape calls for a multifaceted approach to the public face of science, and recommended additional research to better understand how effective communications and engagements shape the public’s interest in their understanding and support of science.

Priorities for the Future, the third and final report, was published in August of 2020.  While the report doesn’t directly address the implications of Covid-19 to the Public Face of Science initiative, it does so in an accompanying document which highlights the critical role played by science in ensuring the well-being of individuals and society during the pandemic.  “[T]he experience with COVID-19 reinforces the need for continuing thoughtful work to address public access to reliable scientific content and to enhance the public’s capacity to identify and reject misinformation and disinformation (intentionally false information).”

Scenario Planning - Formulating Strategy in the Face of High Uncertainty

“How can we formulate strategy in the face of uncertainty?,” asks Learning from the Future, a recent Harvard Business Review article by Peter Scoblic, in its opening sentence.  Answering this question has never felt more urgent as leaders prepare for the future.  “Even before the Covid-19 crisis, rapid technological change, growing economic interdependence, and mounting political instability had conspired to make the future increasingly murky.”  Uncertainty was already all-encompassing.

“And then the pandemic hit.”

When the present resembles the past, we can calculate the probability of future outcomes by analyzing past historical data.  That’s how insurance companies accurately predict the life expectancy of different people based on age, gender, general health, behavioral traits like smoking and drinking, etc.  But the situation is very different when the present doesn’t resemble the past.  “Uncertainty stems from our inability to compare the present to anything we’ve previously experienced.  When situations lack analogies to the past, we have trouble envisioning how they will play out in the future.”

Military strategists first developed scenario planning in the 1950s to help them envision the impact of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union, - something that was clearly way beyond anyone’s experience.  The object of scenario planning is to assemble all known facts, trends, and other information and use them to create a number of alternative stories rich in detail, typically three or four, about plausible future outcomes along with the development paths and key events that led to such outcomes.  Altogether, the scenarios should span the scope of possible futures, although the actual future will likely include events from each scenario.

Dealing with a Highly Unpredictable Future

The high degree of uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic is one of its most frustrating qualities.  How long will the pandemic last?  When will normal life return?  When will a vaccine be available?  Not only don’t we have definitive answers, we don’t even know how to best frame these critical questions.  The answers we get from the most trusted of experts feel too vague, - their explanations full of caveats and probabilities, - as they should.  How can we start making sense of such an unpredictable future?

It wasn’t all that long ago that we didn’t have much use for probabilities in our daily life, - outside of weather reports, election predictions and baseball.  But that’s all been changing in our complex economy and society.   Probabilities have been playing an increasing role in our work and personal lives given our newfound ability to quantify just about anything.  In all kinds of everyday situations, - from medical diagnoses to financial decisions, - we’ve had to learn to live and make decisions in the messy, uncertain world of probabilities.

Probabilities are inherently hard to grasp, - especially for an individual event like the weather or an election.  “People understand that if they roll a die 100 times, they will get some 1’s,” wrote David Leonhardt in a 2017 NY Times column.  “But when they see a probability for one event, they tend to think: Is this going to happen or not?  They then effectively round to 0 or to 100 percent…  And when the unlikely happens, people scream: The probabilities were wrong!”

The Business Value of Augmented Reality

I recently heard a very interesting presentation at the 2019 MIT CIO Symposium, - Why Companies Need an Augmented Reality Strategy, - by Harvard professor Michael Porter and James Heppelmann, CEO of PTC, an industrial software company.  The talk was based on their HBR article A Manager’s Guide to Augmented Reality.

We generally think of products as physical entities built with a combination of mechanical and electrical components, - e.g., appliances, cars, agricultural machines, industrial equipment, - some quite simple and some highly complex.  But, in a 2014 HBR article, Porter and Heppelmann introduced the notion of smart connected products (SCPs), a whole new class of products that, in addition to mechanical and electrical components, use digital components like microprocessors, sensors, data storage, software, and connectivity in a wide variety of ways.  Smart connected products are radically reshaping companies and exposing them to new competitive opportunities and threats, while altering industry boundaries and creating entirely new industries.

Through its first five decades, IT helped companies become significantly more productive, by automating many of their processes, reengineering their overall operations, and reaching out beyond the boundaries of the enterprise.  But, their actual products were largely unaffected.  This is all now changing with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, Big Data, AI, and other innovations whose combined impact is driving the new era of smart connected products.

As the world’s digital and physical infrastructures converge, IT is now an integral part of the products themselves. Digital technologies are designed right into the products.  Massive amounts of product-usage data can now be gathered, stored and analyzed by a variety of applications in the product’s cloud counterpart.  The cloud might also include a digital twin of each specific physical product, that is, a highly realistic 3-D digital model that monitors the real-time status of the digital twin’s physical counterpart, - e.g., a jet engine, elevator or turbine, - and helps make important decisions such as the need for preventive maintenance to prevent a product failure.

The Economic Value of Artificial Intelligence

 PwC recently released a report on the potential economic value of AI to different regions and industry sectors around the world.  The report defined AI, “as a collective term for computer systems that can sense their environment, think, learn, and take action in response to what they’re sensing and their objectives.”  By this broad definition, AI includes the automation of physical and cognitive tasks; assisting people to perform tasks better and faster; helping humans make better decisions; and automating decision making with no human intervention.

The report’s overriding finding is that AI is the biggest commercial opportunity for companies, industries and nations over the next few decades.  PwC estimates that AI advances will increase global GDP by up to 14% between now and 2030, the equivalent of an additional $15.7 trillion contribution to the world’s economy.

Around $6.6 trillion of the expected GDP growth will come from productivity gains, especially in the near term.  These include the continued automation of routine tasks, and the development of increasingly sophisticated tools to augment human capabilities.  Companies that are slow to adopt these AI-based productivity improvements will find themselves at a serious competitive disadvantage.

But, over time, increased consumer demand for AI-enhanced offerings will overtake productivity gains and result in an additional $9.1 trillion of GDP growth by 2030.  Moreover,  network effects, - that is, the more data and better insights companies are able to gather, the more appealing the products and services they’ll be able to develop, - will further increase consumer demand.  AI front-runners will gain an enormous competitive advantage through their ability to leverage this rich supply of customer data to shape product developments and business models, making it harder for slower moving competitors to catch up. 

The Complex Relationship Between Science and the Public

More than ever, scientific and technological innovations touch every aspect of our lives and influence the choices we make in a wide variety of areas.  A 2015 study by the Pew Research Center revealed that most Americans have a positive view of science and of the accomplishments of scientists.  But, despite broadly similar views about the place of science in the country, there were large differences between the general public and scientist across a number of important issues, including genetically modified foods, vaccine safety and climate change.

Two years ago, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences launched The Public Face of Science, an initiative whose objective is to better understand the complex relationship between scientists and the public in America.  A few weeks ago, the Academy released Perceptions of Science in America, the first in a series of reports from the Public Face of Science initiative.  The report aims to analyze the public’s perception of scientists, explore how opinions vary among different populations, and shed light on how public opinions are shaped.  Its analysis is based on survey data from multiple sources, including the Pew Research Center, the National Science Board Science and Engineering Indicators, the National Opinion Research Center, Research!America and ScienceCounts.

What do we mean by science?  “The term science encompasses a range of disciplines in the physical, social, and life sciences, along with applied fields, such as engineering and medicine,” notes the report. “Science can be defined as ‘the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.’”  But, one must keep in mind that the word science is interpreted differently by different individuals, - e.g., medical treatments, technological advances, fundamental research.  “When interpreting the available survey data, it is important to consider the range of responses a question might prompt.”

Human Beings Need a Story

It wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t have much use for probabilities in our daily life, - outside of weather reports, election predictions, baseball and financial markets.  But that’s all changed with the growing datafication of the economy and society.  Probabilities have been playing an increasing role in our work and personal life given our newfound ability to quantify just about anything.  In all kinds of everyday situations, - from medical diagnoses to financial decisions, -  we now have to accept the fact that it’s impossible to predict what will actually happen.  Instead, we have to get used to living in a complex world of uncertainties and probabilities.  We have to learn how to deal with the very messy world of big data, and how to best apply our learning to make good decisions and predictions.

Physics went through such a transition about 100 years ago.  In the deterministic world of classical mechanics, there’s always a real truth.  The same objects, subject to the same forces, will always yield the same results.  Elegant mathematical models can be used to make perfect predictions within the accuracy of their human-scale measurements.  Early in the 19th century, French mathematician and scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace observed that if we knew the precise state of the universe as represented by the position and speed of every one of its particles, classical mechanics would enable us to calculate all past and future states of the universe.

But, this predictable world began to fall apart in the early 20th century.  19th century classical physics was replaced by a kind of 20th century magical mystery tour, ruled by the new principles of quantum mechanics and relativity.   Classical mechanics could not explain the counter-intuitive and seemingly absurd behavior of energy and matter at atomic and cosmological scales.

At these scales, the world is intrinsically unpredictable.  Instead of a deterministic world, we now have a world based on probabilities.  You cannot predict all the future states of an electron, for example, based on its present state.  You can map out its behavior, but only as probability distributions of all the possible states it could be at.  Moreover, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle tells you that it’s impossible to know the exact state of a particle.  You cannot simultaneously determine its exact position and velocity with any great degree of accuracy no matter how good your measurement tools are.

Blockchain and the Music Industry: Turning Pennies into Dollars

Just about every industry has been significantly transformed in the past few decades.  But few have been as disrupted as the music industry.  Everything seems to be changing at once, from the way content is produced and delivered, to the sources of revenue and profits.  Digital technologies, - the Internet, smartphones, cloud computing, … - have literally turned dollars into pennies.  Now, blockchain and related technologies may once more play a major role in the music industry, - this time helping to turn those pennies back into dollars.

We’re truly surrounded by music as never before, - in a wide variety of styles; in physical and digital formats; over the Internet, satellite, and broadcasts; in mobile devices and home music systems.  But, the shift from physical to digital, and then from downloads to streaming have wreaked havoc on the business of music.  US retail revenues of recorded music were close to $14 billion in 1998 before starting their decline.  According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), revenues fell from roughly $12 billion in 2006 to around $7 billion in 2010.  They stayed flat at $7 billion though 2015, starting to increase in 2016 mostly due to a growth in paid streaming music subscriptions.  Revenues are expected to be around $8 billion in 2017.

Turning dollars into pennies succinctly captures the music industry’s precipitous revenue declines.  As this article noted, “During the heyday of the 80s, the music industry was rolling in so much money it could afford to leave some on the table… which it often did…  There were so many dollars coming in, they didn’t bother paying attention to the pennies.  Well, as we all know those days are gone.  And after a decade of losses from its traditional revenue stream (sales), we’ve seen the music industry forced to look for revenue in new places and in different ways.  In the absence of dollars, the pennies now matter.”

As a result, the music industry now finds itself trying to figure out how to keep track of all those pennies in the hope of turning them back into dollars.  In the first half of 2017, streaming services accounted for 62% of the total market, with digital downloads and physical sales accounting for 19% and 16% respectively, said the RIAA.  But streaming pays royalties in fractions of pennies, so legislation, new business models and technological innovations are needed to make sure that all the necessary data are efficiently collected so the various artists involved in a song are paid.

The Growing Importance of Storytelling in the Business World

Communications have played a major role in my work over the past few decades.  During this period, I was involved in organizing emerging business opportunities at IBM, including the Internet and Linux.  Since retiring from IBM in 2007, I’ve continued my involvement with technology-based initiatives, - AI and blockchain most recently, - through my consulting and academic activities as well as the weekly blogs that I’ve now been writing for the past dozen years.

Over the years I’ve learned that when trying to explain a complex new concept or product, it’s important to engage in a kind-of conversation with your intended audience, where you talk about what's in your mind, your questions, your doubts, what you know and what you don't know.  In short, you’re telling a story about the concept, product or brand you’re trying to explain.

While storytelling is mostly associated with entertainment, education and culture, it also plays a major role in business.  Storytelling is widely used in the development of brands for products as well as companies.  And, the more powerful, important and complex the brand messages you are trying to convey, the more important it is that you do so by telling a compelling but simple, - i.e., understandable, - story.

Good storytelling is particularly important when introducing a complex and potentially disruptive offering in the marketplace whose value is not well understood.  It’s a natural way of explaining what the new innovation is all about.  As a concrete example, let me share my experiences with the development of IBM’s Internet and e-business strategy in the mid-late 1990s.

Virtual Work Interactions, Context, and Related Subjects

I just read Tripping Down a Virtual Reality Rabbit Hole,- a very interesting NY Times column by technology journalist Farhad Manjoo.  Manjoo recently spent a few weeks testing the Occulus Rift and the HTC Vive, two of the most powerful VR devices on the market. 

“The whole point of virtual reality is to create a fantasy divorced from the physical world,” he wrote.  “You’re escaping the dreary mortal coil for a completely simulated experience: There you are, climbing the side of a mountain, exploring a faraway museum, flying through space or getting in bed with someone way out of your league…  There are some great games on these systems… There are also several useful experiences, like designing your Ikea kitchen in V.R.”

“But if you’re not a gamer and you’re not looking for a new kitchen, V.R. is, at this point, just too immersive for most media.  A few minutes after donning my goggles, I came to regard my virtual surroundings as a kind of prison… I suspect that V.R. will be used by the masses one day, but not anytime soon.  I’m not sure we’re ready to fit virtual reality into our lives, no matter how excited Silicon Valley is about it.”

Manjoo’s reaction brought to mind the work of Karen Sobel-Lojeski, who’s long been studying technology-mediated interactions.  She’s in the faculty at Stony Brook University as well as the founder of the workplace consulting firm Virtual Distance International.  To be effective, she argues, our technology-based interactions must take place within the proper context, defined as “everything around us that helps us to understand who we are, where we are, and what our role is.”  The way VR works, - at least for now, - is by cutting off all real-world context to better immerse us in its simulations, - an experience that as Farhad Manjoo discovered, can be very unsettling.

The Growing Value of Social Skills

I recently read a very interesting paper, The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market, by Harvard professor David Deming.  Deming’s paper shows that over the past several decades, labor markets have been increasingly rewarding social skills, that is, interpersonal skills that facilitate interactions and communications with others.  He presents evidence that since 1980, social-skill intensive occupations have enjoyed most of the employment growth across the whole wage spectrum, and that employment and wage growth have been particularly strong in jobs that require both high cognitive and high social skills. 

Deming’s paper builds on the work of MIT economist David Autor, a leading authority on the impact of technological change on the US labor market.  A few weeks ago I wrote about a paper he published this past summer on the history and future of workplace automation.  In that paper, Autor summarized the sharp polarization of job opportunities that’s taken place in the US over the past two decades, noting that job opportunities have significantly expanded in both high-skill and low-skill occupations, while they have significantly contracted for mid-skill jobs. 

The reason for this polarization is that automation has been most successful when applied to mid-skill routine tasks, that is, tasks or processes that follow precise, well understood procedures that can be well described by a set of rules.  The occupations most susceptible to automation have included blue-collar physical activities such as manufacturing and other forms of production, as well as white-collar, information-based activities like accounting, record keeping, and many kinds of administrative tasks.  As a result, these occupations have experienced the biggest declines in employment opportunities and earnings. 

On the other hand, non-routine tasks are much harder to describe by a set of rules that a machine can follow.  These include manual jobs in fast-food restaurants, janitorial services and health-care aides that require relatively low skills and education, as well as high-skill jobs that involve expert problem solving and complex communications requiring strong cognitive skills and a college education.

Bridging the World’s Knowledge Divide: Technology + Competition, Skills and Institutions

A few months ago I attended the 12th annual Brookings Blum Roundtable on Global Poverty, a meeting that brought together around 50-60 policy and technical experts from government, academia, business, investors and NGOs.  This year’s event was focused on the impact of digital technologies on economic development in emerging and developing countries.  It was organized around six different sessions, each of which explored the links between technology and development through a different lens. 

Prior to the event, the Brookings Institution commissioned a policy brief for each session to help set the stage for the ensuing discussions.  I wrote one of the briefs, - Will the Digital Revolution Deliver for the World’s Poor.  I would now like to discuss another brief which I found quite interesting, - Will the Spread of Digital Technologies Spell the End of the Knowledge Divide?, by Deepak Mishra, lead economist at the World Bank.  Dr. Mishra is also co-director of the World Development Report 2016: Internet for Development, which will shortly be released by the World Bank.

The Importance of Empathy in Our Services-Centric, People-Oriented Economy

A few days ago I read an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review, - Empathy Is Still Lacking in the Leaders Who Need It Most, - by Ernest Wilson, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism  at the University of Southern California (USC).  The article is based on the Third Space, a research project to better understand the key competencies companies are looking for, and whether these talent requirements are being adequately addressed by universities.

The study conducted face-to-face, in-depth conversations with dozens of senior executives across companies in a broad range of industries and consulted with a number of other academic institutions.  It gathered additional data through online surveys and partnered with Korn Ferry, - the world’s largest executive search firm, - which gave them access to data on almost 1,900 executives with a broad range of professional backgrounds. 

Their initial findings were published in a working paper, The one-trillion dollar global talent gap: What it is and what we can do about it.  Their research discovered that talent is the greatest competitive challenge companies face.  More specifically, beyond the traditional skills typically provided by engineering and business schools, companies need a new kind of talent that is currently undersupplied in the workforce.

Future leaders must be strong in quantitative, technical and business skills.  But these must be complemented with a unique set of attitudes, perspectives, experiences and other so called softer skills.  Good leaders need to be good strategic thinkers and must have strong social and communications skills.  Finding and retaining talented individuals with these capabilities is a challenge regardless of geography or industry.

Technology and the Future of Media

Most everyone will agree that advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) are radically transforming the business landscape.  But, how are these transformations playing out industry by industry?  This question was explored in Industries in Transformation, a series of reports developed by Ericsson in collaboration with the Imperial College Business School and the UK’s Sustainable Society Network.  Several weeks ago I wrote about The Future of Financial Services, based on their report on the subject.  I now want to turn my attention to ICT and the Future of Media. 

Like few industries, media has been disrupted by the digital revolution of the past 20-25 years, - with much more to come.  “[T]he number of Internet users is expected to increase from 2 billion to 5 billion by the end of the decade,” notes the report.  “Internet users already spend 20–30% of their time online, mainly engaging with media content…  Globalization, deregulation, technological innovation and the convergence of previously separate industries such as media, entertainment, information, and consumer electronics, have created a somewhat turbulent media landscape.”

Reflections on Ten Years of Blogging

The Internet era was born around 20 years ago, when Netscape went public in August of 1995 and caught the world by storm with its highly successful IPO.  For many people, myself included, the Netscape IPO marked the passage of the Internet from a network primarily used by universities, research labs and the technical community in general, to the universal platform for content, communications and commerce it’s since become. 

The Internet ushered the rise of a highly connected economy all around us, whose magnitude and implications were nicely captured by NY Times columnist Tom Friedman in his 2005 bestseller The World is Flat.  But it’s a measure of how fast things are changing that, as Friedman observed in a conference in 2011, the environment he described was already out of date.  In a short 6 years, we were already transitioning from the connected world of PCs, browsers and web servers he wrote about, to the hyperconnected world of smart mobile devices, cloud computing and broadband wireless networks, a transition that in 2015 is now in full swing.  

Friedman’s words came to mind as I was reflecting on the evolution of blogging since I posted my first blog in May of 2005.

According to Wikipedia, something like blogging got its start with the advent of the Internet era in the mid 1990s, although the term weblog, later abbreviated to blog, didn’t come into being until the latter part of the decade.  In its early years, blogging was mostly viewed as something geeks did, - technical knowledge was required since the tools were fairly primitive, - or as a narcissistic endeavor, - early blogs often felt like online personal diaries.

This all started to change in the early 2000s.  The advent of easy-to-use tools and platforms brought blogging to a much larger, non-technical population.  People started to blog about a wide variety of topics, from politics and journalism to business and technology.  Internal company blogs, only accessible to employees, began to appear.  By the mid 2000s, blogging was growing quite rapidly and had made its way from the fringes to the Internet mainstream.

Some Thoughts on The Future of Internet-Centric TV

Over the last several decades, digital technologies have been transforming just about every industry.  But few have been as disrupted by the dramatic advances in technology as the media industries.  Everything seems to be changing at once, from the way content is produced and delivered, to the sources of revenue and profits. 

I’ve been closely following this technology-based transformation of media for a number of reasons.  First is my personal experience with disruptive innovations in the IT industry.  Unlike other industries which I might follow from afar, I’m an everyday consumer of media, spending a considerable part of my day on its various offerings, including TV, newspapers, magazines and the Web. 

In addition, I’ve been a member of the advisory board of USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL) since it was founded in 2010 to study the impact of technology and cultural changes on the media industries.  And, since last September I’ve been involved with HBO as strategic advisor on innovation.  Within media, I’m particularly interested in the evolution of television, not only due to my recent HBO affiliation but because, for over a decade, TV has been the source of much of the entertainment I consume.

Technology, Marketing and Storytelling

I’ve been involved in a number of interesting projects in my long career, but perhaps none more so than IBM’s Internet initiative in the mid-late 1990s.  In the Fall of 1995, Lou Gerstner, - IBM’s then Chairman and CEO, - made the decision to embrace the rapidly growing Internet as the centerpiece of IBM’s strategic vision and created the Internet Division as a cross-company group to lead the initiative, with me as general manager. 

At the time, a lot was happening around the Internet.  It was all very exciting, but it was not clear where things were heading, and in particular what the implications would be to the world of business.  A key part of our job was to figure out the business value around the Internet, and to then extensively communicate it to our customers and the wider marketplace.  Working closely with Ogilvy & Mather, IBM’s marketing agency, we came up with our Internet strategy, - which we called e-business.  Our challenge was not only to explain what e-business was all about, but also to leverage e-business to help re-build the IBM brand, given that the company was just coming out of a really serious near-death experience. 

Ogilvy created an award winning campaign, bringing e-business to life with compelling stories over a variety of communication channels, including memorable TV vignettes that nicely captured what it meant to do business over the emerging Internet.  The campaign succeeded in closely associating IBM with the Internet, repositioning the brand with the future rather than the once glorious past that almost caused its demise only a few years earlier.

My personal experiences with e-business, - and subsequent ones with Linux and other initiatives, - have sensitized me to the importance of storytelling in business and marketing, especially when introducing a disruptive innovation in the marketplace and/or needing to revitalize a troubled brand. 

I was reminded of those exciting times when reading a recent article, The Power of Immersive Media, by  Frank Rose, Senior Fellow at Columbia’s School of the Arts and author of a number of articles and books on digital culture, including The Art of Immersion.

Leveraging the Passions of Fans

On November 21 I participated in a Think & Do workshop at USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL).  AIL was founded in 2010 as part of USC’s Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism to study the transformational impact of technology and cultural changes on the media industry.  I’ve been a member of AIL’s Advisory Board since its founding.

The Lab conducts research projects in a number of areas at the intersection of media and technology.  From time to time it hosts what it calls Think & Do events that bring together students, faculty members, research staff, industry executives, artists, entrepreneurs and policy makers to collaboratively explore new research ideas.  The topic for this particular workshop was Leveraging Engagement.  It was aimed at exploring new frameworks for fan engagement in a variety of media, including entertainment, music and sports.

Like few others, the media industries have been severely disrupted by the digital revolution and the forces of creative destruction.  Everything seems to be changing at once, from the way content is produced and delivered, to the sources of revenue and profits.  One of the major changes is the relationship between the creators and distributors of media content and their audience, especially their most committed audience members or fans. 

What do we mean by fan?  The briefing book prepared for the workshop draws a distinction between an audience of relatively passive listeners/spectators and fans.  Fans are “enthusiastic followers or admirers… have a passion, are emotionally connected to the object of their passion, and experience their passion through their own subjective lens.” 

The Internet, smartphones and related technologies, are enabling fans to play a more central and active role in the evolving media ecosystem.  They are active participants in social networks.  They are critics, co-creators, and brand influences.  They are also potential consumers of all kinds of goods and services related to their passion.

Reflections on the Future of TV

I’ve long been interested in the impact of digital technologies on the media industry.  While all industries are subject to the forces of creative destruction, media is one of the most affected.  Everything seems to be changing at once, from the way content is produced and delivered, to the sources of revenue and profits.  It seems as if, - to borrow Marc Andreessen’s words - digital technologies are eating the media world.

Studying such dramatic changes helps me better appreciate the transitions our economy is going through.  Moreover, unlike other industries which I would mostly follow from afar, media is one that I can actually discuss based on personal experiences.  From print newspapers and websites, to live TV and recorded programs, I’m an everyday consumer of media, spending, like many of us, a considerable part of my day on its various offerings.  I’m also a (very minor) content producer, given the weekly blogs I’ve been posting since 2005 and my 2-year guest columnist affiliation with the WSJ’s CIO Journal .  In addition, I’ve been a member of the advisory board of USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL) since it was founded in 2010 to study the impact of technology and cultural changes on the media industries. 

Within media, I’ve been particularly interested in the evolution of television.  The future of TV is being widely discussed in articles and workshops.  Once upon a time, the term television  generally referred to TV sets, the TV programs we watched on those sets, and the TV networks that broadcast those programs to our sets.  But, over the past few decades, and especially in the past 5 - 10 years, it’s much less clear what we now mean by the TV industry, let alone what it will encompass by 2025.  The TV industry is being massively restructured as its companies keep searching for viable business models.

From Mass Production to Mass Individualism

A few weeks ago, NY Times columnist David Brooks posted an OpEd on The Evolution of Trust. The OpEd is focused on Airbnb, the online platform where people list and book  accommodations all over the world, which now has over 600,000 listings in more than 34,000 cities and 190 countries.  Brooks thought that people would never rent rooms in their homes to total strangers.  “But I was clearly wrong,” he writes.  “And Airbnb is only a piece of the peer-to-peer economy.  People are renting out their cars to people they don’t know, dropping off their pets with people they don’t know, renting power tools to people they don’t know.”

He attributes the growth of this peer-to-peer economy to 3 main trends.  First is middle-class stagnation.  Technology and globalizations have significantly reduced the employment opportunities and earning of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs.  Many have thus had to invent their jobs and sources of income, including renting out rooms, cars and other possessions, and offering child care, pet boarding and a variety of other services.

Second, quite a number of people find the less expensive, one-of-a-kind goods and services now being offered by unique individuals more appealing than the mass-produced goods and services offered by companies.  People with time to travel but little money prefer to stay in someone’s moderately priced spare room rather that in a more expensive standard hotel chain.

And, adds Brooks, “the big thing I underestimated was the transformation of social trust.  In primitive economies, people traded mostly with members of their village and community.  Trust was face to face. Then, in the mass economy we’ve been used to, people bought from large and stable corporate brands, whose behavior was made more reliable by government regulation.  But now there is a new trust calculus, powered by both social and economic forces.”

Technology, Media and Culture - the Best of Times or the Worst of Times?

USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL) was founded in 2010 to study the transformational impact of technology on culture and on the media industries.  The Lab is involved in three main kinds of activities: research on the overall media landscape and its impact on society; design challenges to promote the development of innovative prototypes, applications and business ideas; and workshops that bring together students, faculty, artists, executives and entrepreneurs to discuss specific problems and come up with new ways of addressing them. 

The Lab has a number of industrial partners, including technology and communication companies like IBM, Verizon and Cisco, and media companies like Warner Bros, Paramount and BET.  I’ve been a member of AIL’s Advisory Board since its founding.  For a technologist like me, it’s been a unique opportunity to learn about the impact of technology on society through the lens of the culture being transformed.  It’s also been an opportunity to learn about the major changes underway in the media industries, - among the industries most disrupted by the digital revolution. 

A few months ago, AIL launched The Edison Project, to “explore how the new creators and makers, the new metrics and measurement, the new funding and business models, and the new screens are all combining into a new ecosystem – and how media and entertainment companies can reorient themselves to flourish in this emerging Imagination Economy.”

Reflections on Storytelling

Storytelling has played a central role in human communications since times immemorial.  Storytelling predates writing.  Oral narratives were used by many ancient cultures as a way of passing along their traditions, beliefs and learning from generation to generation.  Over the centuries, the nature of  storytelling has significantly evolved with the advent of writing and the emergence of new technologies that enabled stories to be embodied in a variety of media, including books, films, TV and the Web.

While contemporary storytelling is mostly associated with entertainment, education and culture, it also plays a major role in business.  In particular, storytelling is widely used in the development of brands for products and services as well as companies. 

Establishing a brand requires much more than advertising, mindless jingles or assertions that no one believes.  It is akin to engaging in a conversation with your intended audience, where you talk about your challenges and aspirations for the product and the company in order to create emotional associations and expectations.  In short, you are creating and telling a story about your brand.  And, the more powerful, important and complex the messages you are trying to convey, the more important it is that you do so by telling a compelling and emotionally resonant story. 

Good storytelling is particularly important when introducing a complex and potentially disruptive offering in the marketplace whose value is not well understood.  It’s a good way of explaining what the new innovation is all about in as simple a way as possible.  As a concrete example, let me share my experiences with the development of IBM’s Internet and e-business strategy in the mid-late 1990s.

Transmedia Storytelling and Collaborative Innovation

Communications and related activities have played a major role in my work over the past twenty years.  The key reason is that over this period, I have been involved in a number of emerging business opportunities such as the Internet and e-business, Linux, cloud computing and digital money.  Marketing and communications are essential when introducing a disruptive innovation in the marketplace, given the need to explain what the new initiative is all about to key constituencies including clients, analysts and reporters.

Over the years, I have learned that in order to capture the attention of your intended audience and differentiate your offerings from those of competitors, you have to develop a compelling brand for your new products or services.  This is particularly important when you are introducing a new and potentially disruptive offering in the marketplace.  

Establishing such a brand requires much more than advertising.  It is akin to engaging in a conversation with your intended audience, where you talk about what's in your mind, your aspirations, your questions, your doubts, what you know and what you don't know.  In short, you are creating and telling a story about your brand.  And, the more powerful, important and complex the messages you are trying to convey, the more important it is that you do so by telling a compelling, emotionally resonant story.

I believe that developing and communicating the storyline behind a disruptive innovation requires the close involvement of those who best understand and care about the new initiative and offerings.  Marketing experts and design agencies are invaluable in this work, but by themselves they cannot properly communicate the in-depth understanding and passion of those most responsible for the innovations.

So, I was very excited when several months ago I learned about transmedia storytelling, a concept originally developed in the entertainment industry to tell a common story across multiple media platforms by moving characters and storylines across books, films, video games, comic books, TV series, and so on.  The rise of social media and other digital channels makes the concept particularly powerful as a way of engaging the target audience with more depth and over a much longer period of time than would be possible within a single medium.

Design Takes Over: Making Beauty Out of Necessity

Toward the end of 2010, The Economist published The World in 2011, its annual issue with predictions for the following year on the variety of topics it normally covers.  As summarized in the introductory article From the Editor, the 2011 predictions presented a balanced view of the next year, articulating both the magnitude of the challenges we face as well as the major opportunities for progress:

“It will be a tale of two economies: a rich world struggling with a weak and jobless recovery, and an emerging world growing four times as fast.  Europe will be divided between a solid centre of its euro zone and a wobbly periphery.  . . Look at politics, and you will often see two clashing forces, too . . .  America faces gridlock between the White House and Congress . . . A sense of division, and frustration, will also prevail in international affairs. . . For all the talk of co-operation on global issues  . . .  it will often seem like a zero-sum world. . . But the gloom will be overdone.  The year ahead will produce striking examples of the power of technology and imagination to address fundamental problems of the age. . .”

This was the 25th edition of “The World in . . . .”  To mark the occasion,  The Economist also included a section on The World in 2036, peering 25 years ahead on a variety of topics, including the economy, technology, religion and collaboration.

I particularly enjoyed reading Design Takes Over, the 2036 prediction by Paola Antonelli, senior curator for architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  She starts her short and elegant article, by first explaining the importance of design in our increasingly fast changing and complex world:

Julia Child, Innovation, and the Open Mind

I just saw Julie and Julia on DVD.  The film intertwines two stories.  The main story starts in 1948 when Julia Child and her diplomat husband Paul arrived in Paris, and traces her transformation from recently married housewife looking for something to do, to the legend she became after the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961.

The second story focuses on Julie Powell, who in 2002, spent a year cooking her way through all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art, chronicled her saga in a blog that quickly gained a large following, and later wrote a book about her experience: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

I enjoyed the movie, especially the sections on Julia and Paul Child, masterfully portrayed by Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci.  It reminded me why Julia Child has been one of my personal heroes ever since my student days at the University of Chicago in the 1960s.

Social Media Implications for Business

I spent the first week of November as Innovator in Residence at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.  As part of my activities during the week, Dean Ernest Wilson hosted a conference on Social Media: Platform of Provocation for Innovation?.  The half-day conference consisted of two panels: one on the social and technological innovation being brought about by social media, and the other on the implications of social media to business.  Each panel included experts from USC Annenberg and IBM.

The first panel covered topics on social networks, 3D virtual worlds, immersive journalism, social computing research and a number of others.  It was moderated by Henry Jenkins, who moved from MIT this Fall to join the USC faculty as Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts.  Henry, - whom I met at MIT a couple of years ago because of our mutual interest in virtual worlds, - was previously Director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program and Professor of Humanities.

The full video of the first panel can be seen here.

I wouId like to focus this blog on the second panel, which I moderated.  The panel focused on the implications of social media to the communications and media industries as well as to organizations in general.  Panelists included Marc Cooper, Jonathan Taplin and David Westphal from the Annenberg School, and Melissa Cefkin and Steve Canepa from IBM.

The full video of the second panel can be seen here.

Communications, Journalism and Media in the Internet Age

I spent the first week of November at USC’s Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism.  USC Annenberg is one of the largest and most comprehensive schools of its kind in the world, with research and educational programs in communications, journalism, public diplomacy, public relations, media, educations and related areas.  It is thus in a unique position to analyze and influence the impact of information technologies on the world’s news, media and entertainment industries, and on organizations and institutions in general.

Last July I received an invitation from Annenberg’s Dean, Ernest Wilson to be its first Innovator in Residence.  This is part of a program Dean Wilson is launching to bring people to Annenberg from different fields, who have real-world, practical understanding of the impacts of disruptive innovations, - because they have lived through it, as I have in IBM.  His letter said:

“ . . . The communications and media sectors are in a state of great turmoil.  Over a relatively short period of time, technological progress has altered everything from the media for information delivery to the revenue sources for the news, media and public relations business.  At this moment, there is a remarkable confluence of social, economic and technological change - all of which affect vital information flows in our democracy.”

“Rather than seeing these changes as threats, I am encouraging my team to view them as unique opportunities to lead and contribute to innovative thinking and action in the communication field.  The Annenberg School is expected to play a major role in shaping this future:  we need to be able to step up to meet the expectations, offering bold and creative solutions for the communications and media industries, and a meaningful education for our students.”   

Dean Wilson’s invitation letter was very eloquent, but frankly, given my strong interest in the subject, he had me at “Dear Irving.”

Business Innovation and Storytelling

Last week I wrote about my participation in the BIF-3 Collaborative Innovation Summit, an event sponsored by the Business Innovation Factory in Providence.  The BIF innovation summits make use of a unique storytelling format.  Their goal is "to let great people tell great stories,"  which are later available to all in their Innovation Story Studio. 

Why employ a storytelling format at a business innovation event?  Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal columnist who was one of the Summit’s hosts offered a succinct explanation.  "I love the Summit.  It's an intimate setting with a lot of smart people who are talking about something that is often overlooked.  Applying creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is critical to running a business . . . I think we live in a culture where people think business is about the P&L.  But it's really about people and ideas.  I learned a lot by listening to the storytellers."

A few weeks after my participation in the BIF Summit, Chris Wall was guest lecturer in the MIT seminar I am teaching this semester.  Chris is Vice Chairman, Creative Ogilvy at Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), one of the top brand marketing and advertising agencies in the world, where he is responsible for overseeing creative efforts in advertising, direct and interactive marketing.  He gave an inspiring talk focusing on what it takes to build the value and power of a brand – perhaps the single most important asset any company has.  A major theme in his lecture was the importance of storytelling as a key way to develop the image of your brand with your intended audience.   

O&M has been IBM's ad agency for a while now.  Through the years, I have worked closely with Chris and his colleagues, including the periods when they created the very successful e-business campaign in 1997, and then some wonderful Linux ads a few years later.  I have learned from Chris and others at O&M the incredible power of brands in the marketplace and the importance of having clear, simple messages to communicate what your brand is all about.  Above all, I have learned that if you want your major initiatives to be successful in the marketplace, - e.g.,  the Internet, Linux, On Demand  Business, - you have to work really hard to associate your brand with these new innovations, and infuse the brand with their key qualities in a way that differentiates you from what everyone else is doing.  I wanted the class to hear directly from Chris what such work is all about.

Creativity, Innovation and Design

I spent last week in London at Imperial College where earlier this year I was appointed adjunct professor in the Innovation Group of the Tanaka Business School.  As you can imagine, in such a world-class institution there are quite a number of exciting projects going on.  But one in particular caught my attention.

In early June, Imperial College and the Royal College of Art announced the creation of a new center - Design-London - to bring together the disciplines of design, engineering, technology and business to address jointly the challenges of innovation in an increasingly global, competitive economy.  Design-London aims to "create an innovation triangle between design (represented by the Royal College of Art), engineering and technology (represented by the Imperial College Faculty of Engineering), and business and management (represented by Imperial's Tanaka Business School)."

Two sides of this triangle are familiar territory.  For the last few years I have been immersed in IBM's efforts to bring technology and engineering practices to the world of business and complex organizations in general.  As part of this initiative, we have been working with universities to help create a new discipline - Services Sciences is the name we have been using in IBM - to conduct research and develop educational programs to better address these problems.  Such a new discipline must invariably bring together technology and engineering with business and management, which is why I chose to become affiliated with two such interdisciplinary departments - MIT's Engineering Systems Division and Imperial College's Innovation Group. 

The third leg of this triangle is very intriguing - namely the inclusion of Design and the Royal College of Arts as a full partner in Design-London.  What are creative disciplines - and a college of arts, for heaven's sake - doing side-by-side with the hard, analytical disciplines that are charged with pushing the economy into the future - engineering and management, technology and business?  You are mixing the people who run companies and build things with the creative types? 

But the more I thought about it, the more I started appreciating the sheer brilliance of this move.  After all, we are talking about innovation.

Little Movies

Summer is usually the season for blockbuster movies, which usually feature lots of action, special effects, heroic characters, superstar actors, huge budgets, and so on.  I watch my share of these movies, enjoying some a lot (e.g., Batman Begins), others less so.

But, in the last few years, I have increasingly enjoyed watching what are often referred to as "Little Movies."

China's Fifth Generation Film Directors

I recently attended a very interesting lecture on Chinese-American relations by Steven Weber, professor of political science and director of the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley.  Professor Weber's central point is that the Sino-American relationship is now central to the health of the global political economy, but it is not a healthy relationship and needs to be carefully managed, especially when it comes to three critical areas:  currency, energy, and property rights.  You can read what Steve Weber says on Chinese-American relations in his new blog.

Baseball and The Broken Heart

I think that many of us first learn about broken hearts through baseball.

One of the earliest memories of my childhood was when my team, Almendares lost a game to their fierce rivals, Habana, in the Cuban baseball winter league.  I was about 3 at the time, and still remember being very sad and crying.    

A friend and colleague from Germany, who knows little about baseball, told me that when he was on assignment in the US a while back, he once saw his then young children crying in front of the TV and asked them what was the matter.  The Yankees lost, they said.  My friend was baffled.

Pedro, the Jedi Master

Reggie Jackson is the last baseball player that I remember capturing the imagination of New York, the way Pedro Martinez is now doing.

Reggie came to New York to play for the Yankees in 1977, and proceeded to take the town by storm.  He craved, and performed at his best under the intense pressure that New York City abounds in.  His biggest feat is the 3 consecutive home runs in 3 consecutive swings that he hit in the sixth game of the 1977 World Series to help the Yankees beat the Dodgers and win the Series.  He told everybody that they would name a candy bar after him, . . . and indeed they did, the  Reggie Bar.  He feuded with everyone, from manager Billy Martin to George Steinbrenner, the controversial principal owner of the Yankees .  But in the clutch, "Mr. October", as Reggie was nicknamed because of his outstanding performance in five World Series, was the man to go to.

Out of the Blue: Unexpected Joys

I would like to continue the discussions on how the Internet has enriched my life, in particular when it comes to enjoying films.  A few years ago I started using Netflix, a really good Internet DVD rental service, which offers a huge collection of DVD's of all kinds, from recent releases to classics to foreign movies.  Netflix encourages its members to rate films, both films you rent from them as well as any other films you have watched, giving them from 1 star (hated it)  to 5 stars (loved it).  It then uses your ratings and compares them to the ratings from all other members, to recommend movies you are likely to love.  This is similar to the book recommendations from Amazon and other Internet sites.

Sometime last February, while in London, I went to the netflix.com site for a minute to check on a movie.  As usual, the first Netflix web page had a few personalized recommendations.  One in particular was a movie called Blue, which I had never heard of, by a Polish director, Krzysztof Kieslowski, whom I had also never heard of.  The movie had a very high rating, between 4 and 5 stars.  I read comments about Blue from Netflix members at the site, and checked with some of the professional reviewers I trust the most such as Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli, and they all recommended the move very highly.  I also learned that Blue was part of a trilogy, Blue, White and Red, based on the colors of the French flag, and that they were the last films made by Kieslowski, who died in 1996 two years after Red came out.  I was intrigued and put Blue at the top of my Netflix queue, meaning that it would be the next movie they ship me.

The Internet and Films

I often think -- even after working in the area for more than ten years -- that there is something almost magical about the wonders of the Internet and World Wide Web.  I can rhapsodize about how the Internet has transformed business, society and our personal lives, and often do in formal talks and any other opportunity I have. But we all know that real "magic" isn't theoretical but personal. Take the impact that the Internet has had on my pleasure in watching films.