Rafe Sagarin

Dr. Rafe Sagarin is an ecologist, writer, artist, and expert on adaptation. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Dr. Sagarin consults with organizations from the American Red Cross to the U.S. Department of Defense to marketing executives from the world's largest corporations, on how they can unleash the natural power of adaptability to survive and thrive in an unpredictable world.

We were saddened to hear that Dr. Rafe Sagarin was struck and killed Saturday night while bicycling. In his memory, we'd like to share two videos from his 2013 IdeaFestival appearance - his full presentation, posted above, and this two minute video interview filmed on site.

Dr. Sagarin was a marine biologist and the author of "Learning from the Octopus: How secrets from nature can help us fight terrorist attacks, natural disasters and disease." He lectured and held research positions at Stanford, Duke, UCLA and University of Arizona, and had consulted widely, applying his expertise in biological adaptation to contemporary problems.

Wayne

Ideas "Currency of the 21st Century"

Image: Some rights reserved by mskogly

You've heard it before. The best way to have a great idea is to have a lot of bad ones. Listed among nine other recommendations in an article on the "10 Commandments of Being Your Own Boss" at Forbes, Brian Rashid wants you to know it takes practice.

9. Exercise your idea muscle. I talk about this all the time. Ideas are the currency of the 21st century. You have heard this I am sure. But it is true. My life has changed, completely every six to nine months (for the past 10 years) because of this. Every day, write down 10 ideas. I do this every day. Even if the ideas are bad (many of mine are bad and that is OK), you are building your muscle up. If you can come up with ideas, your business will always grow. You will be an asset to others. The ideas can be about anything. I just jotted down 10 books to write that I think my dad would enjoy reading. He loves sports, so one book I thought would be fun was the 10 most magical locker room moments in the history of football or who has the baseballs of the most important hits in the history of the game. It can be anything. Just start flexing. Every day.

Have a great weekend. I hope to see you at the IdeaFestival!

Stay curious.

Wayne

Entrepreneurs, Artists, Allies

Ben Casnocha, Entrepreneur & Author, at IBM Vision 2015 with Dave Vellante & Sam Kahane @theCUBE #IBMVision

Entrepreneur and the author of "The Start-Up of You," Ben Casnocha talks about some of the values the IdeaFestival also holds dear: the beginner's mind, the importance of 21st century literacies such as networking and search, an entrepreneurial approach to discovery, an instinct for self-learning and, of course, the need for curiosity.

Casnocha says that one of the ways he recaptures creativity is "to surround himself with people who think that way."

Sound advice.

Are you an entrepreneur, an artist, a professor, a scientist a business manager or marketer in need of a fresh perspective? I hope to see you at IdeaFestival 2015!

Stay curious.

Wayne

"Curious" Characteristics

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[R]egaining our sense of curiosity is important to our success. Stephanie Vozza, Fast Company

What does the IdeaFestival mean when it asks you to "stay curious?" On the IdeaFestival blog, we've referred to research that says successful creatives are open to experience, argued that curiosity "is about this too" and pointed out that "all or nothing thinking" cuts short discovery. 

Fast Company adds to this list, identifying eight characteristics of curious people, and says, among other things, that curiosity is about asking a better question.

'We’ve moved out of the industrial era and into the information era. Curiosity is a fundamental piece of that work and a powerful tool,' says Kathy Taberner, cofounder of the Institute of Curiosity, a leadership coaching team that focuses on curiosity.

Answers are more valued than inquisitive thought, and curiosity is trained out of us.

While we’re born curious, experts say we can relearn the trait. Here are eight habits of people who’ve retained their sense of curiosity:

1. They listen without judgment.

We agree. Notice that Vozza doesn't say never form an opinion, but to "listen" without judgement. Because insight doesn't flow from facts, but what you do with the facts, withholding judgement in the moment is transformed from a passive activity into an information gathering tool. You just might uncover the final piece of a puzzle.

Among other "curious" characteristics, Vozza adds "seeking surprise" and "willing to be wrong." The entire list is here.

Of course, we might also add a ninth characteristic. Curious people go to the IdeaFestival. I hope to see you there!

Stay curious.

Wayne

Trapped In This 'Snow Globe Of Photons' Forever?

CalTech theoretical physicist and author of From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll, explains the "arrow of time" in physics pointing out its close association with "entropy", a measure of the ever increasing disorder of the universe. Disorder is what humans experience as the passage of time.

Encoded in everything from streaking, mystery particles to the world's religions, the question of origins preoccupies humans. We want to know.

If time begins with a colossal release of energy, what, if anything, existed before the beginning? Is "what happened before the Big Bang?" a nonsense question? Can experimental physics provide an answer, or will inflationary cosmology and theoretical physics such as string theory continue to provide untestable - and ultimately unsatisfying - answers?

At Aeon Magazine, Ross Andersen wonders if we'll "be trapped in this snow globe of photons forever."

Has cosmology reached a dead end?

But cosmology’s hot streak has stalled. Cosmologists have looked deep into time, almost all the way back to the Big Bang itself, but they don’t know what came before it. They don’t know whether the Big Bang was the beginning, or merely one of many beginnings. Something entirely unimaginable might have preceded it. Cosmologists don’t know if the world we see around us is spatially infinite, or if there are other kinds of worlds beyond our horizon, or in other dimensions. And then the big mystery, the one that keeps the priests and the physicists up at night: no cosmologist has a clue why there is something rather than nothing.

To reconcile the famously incompatible but empirically very sound physics of the colossal big, relativity, and the vanishingly small, quantum theory, physicist Lee Smolin suggests that the laws of nature my change over time, and has written about the his ideas in a new book, Time Reborn. Brian Greene, who spoke at the very first IdeaFestival in 2000, has written extensively about string theory in popular physics books such as The Elegant Universe. Another IdeaFestival speaker, Leonard Mlodinow, wants to unite relativity and quantum theory into a single whole, quantum gravity.

There is certainly no shortage of ambition and smarts. The search goes on. And sadly, recent evidence for inflationary cosmology now appears to be far weaker than first believed.

CalTech physicist, prolific blogger, book author and 2011 IdeaFestival speaker, Sean Carroll, answers the question of what happened before the Big Bang in two ways. One, "we don't know." Two, experimental physicists might yet find testable answers, and thus produce science, although the "scenarios" he alludes to are probably understandable by about two dozen people on the planet.

His video is one of hundreds that can be found on the festival's YouTube channel, IFTV.

Stay curious.

Wayne