I had the privilege of attending the TED conference, one of the more extraordinary gatherings of worldchangers. Acumen Fund is particularly honored to be associated with TED, given our support from the Sapling Foundation, which owns TED. The conference includes 1,000 individuals who come to Monterey, CA from around the world to listen to some of the most innovative and creative thinkers and doers in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design. The experience was thrilling, filled with insights and inspiration. You couldn’t leave without wanting to be smarter, do better, make more of a contribution on earth.
One thing that struck me was how TED increasingly is a reflection of a new wave of idealism that is cresting across the world. Speaker after speaker talked about their inventions and discoveries, their insights and plans with an eye to do something of real significance for the world. If there were commmon threads, they were around the importance of private sector initiatives and resources to solve tough problems of today’s world. No one is waiting anymore for governments to solve problems; individuals and companies are looking to pave the way themselves. There was great focus on the need for more innovation, for bottom-up thinking, for quick prototyping and for more listening around the world, even to - or mostly to - people we don’t know and those who think they hate us. Indeed, the quest for new technologies that clean water, clean the environment, allow for early detection of pandemics and bring energy to the poor was combined with a search for better understanding and more open and complex moral frameworks. This confluence of skills and technologies with moral imagination must be at the heart of the future we will create together.
As Sir Ken Robinson said, TED celebrates the gift of the imagination. This conference pushed all of us to think harder to make a better world for everyone. I was proud to be part of it.
I’ve just returned from my first trip to Africa to visit Acumen Fund’s investments in South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. One of the most striking things is that within 24 hours (5 airline meals, 4 movies and 3 hours of sleep) I went from sitting in the living room of a woman with AIDS in a poor semi-rural community in tropical Africa to picking up my daughter at elementary school, knee deep in snow, and somehow did not feel the culture shock I expected to feel. (Frankly, I felt much more culture shock readjusting to driving, and not having to lock my doors and worry about the carjackings of JoBurg). I suppose this is largely because the trip was extremely short or it may have to do with weak antennae on my part, but I actually think there might be two things: First, the kind of struggle and community support and perseverance I saw are not something so foreign to us in the U.S. I see the same kind of commitment, optimism and heartbreak in the U.S., particularly through involvement with urban community development corporations. Just add a few zeros to the per capita GDP and a decade or two to the life expectancy, and the circumstances, at their core, are not that dissimilar.