#Palo Alto, California, the mecca of innovation and entrepreneurship. I’m here with half of the #IMD MBA class, two days into the class’s exploration of this iconic region. We’ve already met with some incredibly interesting people, and though I can’t do justice to everything they imparted to us, a few quotes stood out for me.
From Jerry Kaplan the renowned computer scientist, entrepreneur, author and Stanford prof: “Any individual can change the world.”, “AI will give us the greatest productivity gains in human history” and “AI is a new wave of automation, which will destroy some jobs, but create completely new ones, create new wealth, which is then spent on new products and services”.
From Subha Tatavarti, CTO of Wipro “When you have the right people on a project, constraints are a beautiful thing. Unlimited resources reduces innovation.” And ”Run away from people who think they know it all”. Also at Wipro, Arvind Ravishunkar, GM Tech Strategy: “Today the strategy function requires technology acumen”, and “How will HR departments change in order to “hire” AIs to get work done?”
Last night we had a master class in VC investing in the healthcare space, from Ruchita Sinha of AV8 Ventures “2024 is likely to be the same as 2023 for entrepreneurs trying to raise money. The IPO market is slow, as is M&A”. And “AI is having a huge impact on healthcare, but so far most of the gains are going to the incumbents”.
This morning the class went through a #Design Thinking workshop with the inimitable Jess Munro and as I write they are playing the role of anthropologists on the #Stanford campus, trying to understand the university’s place in Silicon Valley. Did Stanford make Silicon Valley what it is today, or is Silicon Valley what makes Stanford unique? Does it matter?
Later today we’ll be visiting three startups: Pow.Bio Diatiro and Ubiquitous Power, along with EPRI
Yes, the class is jetlagged and tired, but they’re posing great questions and working hard.