I am flying to Sydney Australia on United 839. United has been one of the most important
utilities in my lifetime carrying my life in relative comfort to all corners of
the globe. The flight crew was particularly
helpful on this flight. On my way back
from the bathroom, I went to place my ring encrusted with the insignia of
tribes in Papua New Guinea on my finger and it slipped down into the complex
workings of the seat. Fifteen minutes later,
I knew more about seat 4D than I ever thought I’d know. I also knew that M&M’s, ear plugs, and
all manner of mystery lurks beneath the seats!
I don’t know when the last service crew vacuumed under the seat but I
know that it’s a bit cleaner now. I also
know that I found my ring.
We were 7 hours into the flight when this little episode
happened and, fully awake, I decided to watch Concussion. This is the
story of the CTE brain injury involving the NFL’s retired players’ disproportionately
high incidence of significant neurological damage resulting in suicide,
profound disability, and destruction of quality of life. Near the film’s climax, Dr. Bennet Omalu, the
Nigerian pathologist who was responsible for the work leading to the CTE
inquiry makes an interesting statement.
“I have a dangerous gift, the gift of knowing.”
I cared about this film for a bunch of reasons. One of my colleagues in graduate school went
on to work on brain injury and had much of his work supported by the NFL and by
helmet manufacturers. I count as many of
my dearest friends current and former players, some of whom suffer from the effects
of CTE. As I’ve worked with them over
the years, I’ve come to love them for the fierce elegance they bring to life
and I count that experience one of life’s most cherished gifts. I love the idea that, with greater awareness,
there may be interventions that can preserve the game and preserve their
lives. I know that the NFL’s denial of
evidence is driven, not by bad individual commissioners, league executives,
lawyers and owners. I know that the
entertainment and gaming billions of dollars create an illusion of something
that cannot survive the truth. And
tragically, many great men (yes, mostly men) cower in the face of the
truth. When billions are at stake,
telling the truth is quite unpopular.
There’s a reasonably good chance that I may be suspending my
writing of Inverted Alchemy for some time.
The reason is simple. By carrying
torches into crevices far darker than the NFL’s brain injury cover-up, I’ve
learned the value of Dangerous Gifts. By
having unusual abilities to sense into things that are subtle traumas in the
lives of others, I’ve been able to help many.
But this has come at a dear price.
It has cost me love, friendship, external validations of “success”,
opportunity, credibility, and unspeakable inhumanities. And while “being human” is routinely used as
an excuse for weakness or failings, I’m at least one voice that takes the
opposing view. Dr. Omalu was fully
human. And like the intrepid fellowship
of those who chose to stick to their “gift of knowing”, he paid dearly. I
salute him and I salute the entire production effort behind telling his story.
But as I watched the film, it dawned on me that I wanted to
write a very different blog post. Not
one that reminds us about our willful neglect of each other and our harm of our
own well-being. Not one that highlights
ever more egregious examples of corruption and destruction. No, I wanted to immediately write a thank you
letter to a few people who you may not know but you should. They are people that have decided to make
this week an amazing week. And, by the
way, before I go any further, let me state that I’ll leave many great people
out of this list. That’s fine. I’ll get to you later. This is written for people I don’t usually
mention.
Before getting on this flight, I had a wonderful opportunity
to appear on CNBC. M·CAM was asked
nearly a year ago to consider providing a metric for the “innovation economy”
that would update or replace the industrial models set forth over 120 years ago
with the advent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This impulse to help measure the innovation
fitness of publicly traded companies was substantiated by the great work of
Hayden Luse, Pam Cole, Stuart Holman, Bob Kendall and the General and Limited
Partners of the Purple Bridge funds. But
before that, the first impulse arose in conversations with Joe O’Shea while he
worked at GE Licensing & Trading in the early 2000s. During our work on the index with CNBC, a
phenomenal man and colleague, David Spiegel asked us if we’d help measure the
innovation fitness of private companies applying for the honor of being on CNBC’s
Disruptor 50 list. Led by Dex Wheeler –
one of M·CAM’s greatest unsung heroes – we came up with a scoring mechanism
that contributed to this year’s rankings.
And because of David, Nikhil Deogun, Gina Francolla, and Steve Lewis, I
was invited to sit on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and help unveil
the metrics of the Innovation Economy. I’ve
spent 21 years preparing for those 4 minutes.
And I’m deeply grateful that this moment happened.
Just one day earlier, David Pratt, Colleen Martin, Pam and I
went up to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Those of you familiar with any of my work
know that I have been the world’s most outspoken critic of the patent system
and the abuses thereof. Years ago, Jay
Erstling suggested that we develop systems that could allow the world to
understand the quality of patents that were being issued around the world. On a rainy afternoon in Geneva, WIPO Director
Francis Gurry let fears far more ominous than the NFL’s CTE issue overrule what
ethics would dictate. Francis knew that
if the world could see the abuses of the patent system - the millions of lives
that are lost to patent restrictions around health care, communication,
agriculture, energy, water and so much more - trillions of dollars of corporate
corruption would be at risk of being exposed.
So he buried it. But on Monday,
the Under Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of the USPTO invited me to
present our work once again. And not
just in one perfunctory gathering. We
met with judges, executives, economists, and technologists to discuss how
reform could come to the world of innovation.
Had it not been for the advocacy of the U.K.’s Tony Clayton, the U.S.’s
Alan Marco, and the hospitality of Janet Gongola, this would not have been
possible. These individuals went to the
mat for a voice that has been silenced for years. I’m deeply grateful that this moment
happened.
And I’m on this trip to meet with a number of individuals in
Australia to discuss how to align the future economy of Australia with the
transforming economic landscape of the world’s market. Through the persistence of colleagues like
Richard David Hames, Laurent Labourmene, Christine McDougall and Adam Jacoby, a
new conversation is emerging that may hold promise for new models of public
policy, academic activity and scholarship, and economic engagement. I was sent on my way with the blessing of
Colleen who has valiantly and lovingly endured three decades of living with the
Dangerous Gift. And I’ll be engaging
this conversation with Kim Phillips who is standing taller each day as partner
and colleague.
There’s no question that the old adage “Ignorance is Bliss”
has a siren seduction to it. Sure, if
you didn’t know, you could simply muddle your way through life. But the “Gift of Knowing” comes with benefits
far more precious than any elixir of ignorance.
The Gift of Knowing comes with the amazing act of humanity that says, “I’ll
stand with you.” And of all people, I’ve
been most blessed by those few, beautiful, amazing, wonderful, souls who have
borne, even if for only a moment, the most Dangerous Gift. Napier Collyns, without your request, this
blog would not have been written.
Hundreds of posts later, I want to thank you, above all, for asking me
to start Inverted Alchemy in 2008! It
has been a true gift! Godspeed, fair
winds, and following seas!
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