Day: February 18, 2018

“I really enjoyed your program with the Weinstein Brothers! It was outstanding! A great follow on show would include Eric or Brett with a CEO from a private company disrupting a certain industry segment (Uber) or a well-known Futurist like Dr. Ray Kurzweil. The Private Sector can teach Government about reinventing itself to become relevant. Keep you the good work! Jim Weber.”

That was the note I sent Dave Rubin on his YouTube Channel. I had just watched an episode of The Rubin Report where he interviewed Bret and Eric Weinstein. Discussions on the topic of transformational change fascinates me.

Bret and Eric Weinstein are intellectuals with Doctorates in Biology and Mathematics. They are liberals; Progressives, but not leftists. They realize that our social-political-economic system is broken and needs to be fixed. I enjoyed hearing their thoughts on the issues, each coming from their own frame of reference: Bret, the Evolutionary Biologist, and Eric, the Economist and Mathematician. They view the election of Donald J. Trump as the forty fifth President of The United States to be symptomatic of the problem. Likewise, they cited the corruption associated with institutions fighting back to protect themselves, like the DNC.

Much of the program dealt with the failure of our institutions, particularly government, media, and academia to serve their constituents, causing them to become increasingly irrelevant. The Weinstein’s were critical of Academia and the Media for their lack of curiosity, contributing to the problem. “Universities have become insular and risk averse.” Frankly, I believe this applies to most of our institutions as they were created during a different time under a different paradigm. The conversation touched briefly on the issue of climate change which they think is a valid concern. Bret admitted that we don’t fully understand the risk due to the complexity of the climate system, however, he believes the risk is great enough to be taken seriously.

The Weinstein brothers are academics, thoughtful and cautious with their observations. They have a set of rules to guide their discourse. Their method of debate is collegial; respectful of other opinions based on an underlying assumption that each opinion is based on reason. In this respect I found them to be very Covey-like; seek first to understand. They believe that every part of the political spectrum must be represented to create a new paradigm. They demonstrated some disillusionment, but overall, they are optimistic.

How does one break out of their paradigm so as the see the opportunities of a different model? In other words, how can one adopt a new paradigm without discarding the current system? Does it require one to define the attributes of their current paradigm first?

As I have written, it is my opinion that the breakdown of our institutions is a symptom of the transformation from an industrial age economy to a digital/information age model. It seems to me that an obvious place to begin would be an understanding of the purpose and structure of industrial age institutions. What were the expectations of their constituents, compared to current needs?

I have heard that transformational change often happens when survival forces the need to change. But what of situations where the full extent of the existential threat isn’t recognized?
The digital revolution creates tremendous opportunities to make significant productivity improvements within the existing business model. By realizing progress from pursuing incremental productivity improvements, one may become blinded to macro-level threat from a disruptive technology. Can we be lulled into complacency by incremental improvements only to be blind-sided by a macro-level structural change to the model?

The good news is that we don’t really need to look too far to find clues as to how we might align our institutions to a digital age paradigm. Every year CNBC reports on the top fifty Disruptor Companies transforming industry. The executives managing those companies know the model to help our institutions become relevant in the digital age. The answers for transformational change are already in the market.