Innovation: To What Purpose

Innovation is said to be essential for survival in most industries. Yet, innovation can be very risky-some innovations can even destroy value. How can managers and entrepreneurs know what to do, and how should this trade-off between innovation and risk be treated? What are the broader social goals that ought to be achieved via innovation?
This keynote panel titled "Innovation: To What Purpose" at the Institute for New Economic Thinking's "Human After All" conference in Toronto, with featured speaker John Ralston Saul and moderator Rohinton Medhora, examines these questions.

[@gabrielmills2361]

This is a great talk: as relevant now five years on, as when it was given in 2014. And to add to "the people's" expressed unhappiness -- and anger -- globally, we now have Black Lives Matter, and MeToo, and EXtinction Rebellion.

[@nicktaylor5264]

When people talk about Average Life Expectancy, they always seen to assume it's a bell-curve... which it ain't... if life-expectancy is low, it's more on a u shape - ie: the stats look that way because child-mortality is high.

[@marianhunt8899]

Great talk, thank you.

[@JackSaturday]

Excellent talk, thank you Mr. Ralston-Saul and INETeconomics.
One minor point: as heat-generators, even our bodies close together can generate warmth - and blankets etc. can save someone from freezing. But inviting people over does not seem to me helpful per se in the case of heat. You would have to have air-conditioning or access to cool water to keep people from dying of heat - a problem less easy to solve at a community level, however people may die quicker of cold - no?
Of course, public investment in infrastructure for humans instead of profit or bailing banks would prevent both problems.

[@filosofoeduardo]

+Jack Saturday Thinking the same as you. In addition the mere act of going around to help other people, in this sense the act of moving itself, helps to produce heat and keep one from overcooling. The same situation does not fit with overheating: staying still is the better response, which make the two situations different in some essential way. Everybody running around trying to help each other in a heat wave would make it more likely for them to overheat. Otherwise as usual John Ralston Saul's take and reasoning is full of multidimensional and strong cases and points, without any of these ever overtaking or undermining the crucial need to doubt.

[@lilyfuzz1]

appreciate this post and perspective...so relevant.

[@lilyfuzz1]

we cant think any faster than Dante but we CAN think and we CAN make choices.

[@vivianoosthuizen8990]

Japanese just in time took over the Western managementy

[@poobum9857]

I wonder what was on the menue ??

[@thomasd2444]

0:08:00 - Who is more contemptible than he who scorns knowledge of himself?
. . . . . . . The unexamined life is not worth living.
. . . . . . . Wake up and smell the coffee.

[@vivianoosthuizen8990]

I don’t believe that numbers about life expectancies. Most statistics are done very poorly

[@heyhey89674]

This was a really uplifting talk.

[@scottmcloughlin4371]

The machines are already rusted.

[@promich7194]

Love John, but Toronto simply does not work and no one really wants to be there.