Things my students and others taught me for 2022

Dear readers, 

I write this newsletter once every month or so. It features my reflections on the deployment of creativity to making the world’s economic systems (and by extension social and to some extent political systems) more inclusive and, therefore, fairer.  That sounds like a tall order – and it is! 

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Things my students and others taught me for 2022

I started 2021 with ‘Things my students taught me in 2020.’ Here’s something similar, with five themes, as 2022 leaves 2021 behind.  Two are disconcerting, and three are heartening.

Failure of Facts

Facts were called into question.  Kellyanne Conway, advisor to President Trump, famously memorialized the idea of ‘alternative facts.’  It seemed a rhetorical joke at the time. But, if we all live in our own self-reinforcing bubbles, there’s no independent arbiter to adjudicate whether my bubble’s version of reality is better than your bubble’s.  People’s social construction of reality is as important as whatever are the facts.

Impoverishment of No-travel

The inability to travel, to be in another milieu, among another people, part of another fabric is so energizing to me, that it’s been a big loss of the past two years of near-zero-travel.  It’s true that Zoom has helped deal with some parts of the communication issues this has raised, but nothing around is a substitute for true immersion. I should say that I’m a technophile, bullish about new possibilities – even the so-called Metaverse in which I’m an active investor – but it’s just not the same thing (yet).

Success of Science

Not just the mRNA technologies to make new vaccines and possibly therapeutics, but also stem cell implantation to rejuvenate the pancreas to cure type 1 diabetes (out of Doug Melton’s lab at Harvard). Game-changers! Meanwhile, as the press pokes fun at the joy-rides-into-space of billionaires, remember how President JFK’s exhortation to explore the moon some decades ago was in fact energizing.  And when you land in Logan airport in Boston, the JFK library posters remind you of the incredible spillovers into daily life that the past space-investments have had.  Then there’s synthetic biology re-imagining manufacturing and food, and green hydrogen, and pathways to nuclear fusion. I’m like a nerdy kid in the proverbial candy-shop-for-ideas!

Kids happy to be with Kids.

Amazing to watch kids re-engage with kids whenever pandemic-related constraints on their mobility were relaxed. Masked and careful, the energy is palpable when they get together. I see it when I walk past the primary school playground a couple of blocks from my home in Newton, Massachusetts, and among the college kids on the Harvard campus.  And, of course, this need to engage socially is true not just of youth, but for all of us.  And lest you think that ‘kids’ excludes old folks like me, I take heart from what 91-year old Clint Eastwood reportedly says ‘I get up every day and don’t let the old man in.’ Luv it. The energy of youth was apparent everywhere this year.

Enthusiasm of the Marginalized.

Aspire Institute’s fourth cohort launches first week of 2022.  Our four-year old non-profit (headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with hubs in Latin America, South Asia, and Africa) serves the world’s super-talented but disadvantaged first-in-family-to-college kids from 135 countries; it’s become a global movement already. Completely and unconditionally free for all applicants. We build educational and informational bridges for them to connect with the more privileged, mostly in their own countries or regions). The most talented among the Aspire alumni would give the Princeton/Oxford/IIT/Tsinghua kids a run for their money, with motivation on steroids. The enthusiasm of the marginalized is an unpriced asset, to use capital market terminology and we’re on a quest to tap into it for society.

What’s a theme that sticks with you from last year?

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