In his capacities as a physician seeing patients, an advisor on infectious diseases to various government agencies, and a frequent commentator on radio and television, Dr. Amesh Adalja has made a career of offering expert advice on health issues. In this talk he reflects on his own career and discusses the work and the character traits one needs to develop and maintain an expert body of knowledge, and to communicate that knowledge effectively to people who need it to make life and death decisions.
This talk will show that, contrary to what we’ve been taught by the critics of economic inequality, ambitious value creation is something noble.
Today’s leading critics of economic inequality tell us that, unless we’re “privileged,” success is impossible, that the “have-nots” cannot rise through their own productive efforts, and that the desire for extraordinary success is greedy and immoral. In this talk, I’ll argue that these ideas are false and pernicious. The ambitious pursuit of success is an expression of the best within us, and the achievement of success is something that is open to all of us, regardless of where we start. But ambition and achievement require us to cultivate the virtue of independence—the commitment to live by independent thought, productive effort, and the principle of win/win trade—and that virtue is precisely what the inequality critics seek to subvert.
Great projects are almost always the result of cooperative efforts. Whether it’s developing a next generation product, building a new skyscraper or launching a tech start-up, big efforts are necessarily cooperative. This means that in order to realize great ideas, value creators must develop the skills to influence people, mobilize resources and cooperate with others.
This interactive talk will focus on professional relationships and cooperation as the heart of the concept of trade. Through the use of tools, tips, and examples from my 25 years in industry, I’ll provide a framework for developing robust work relationships and debugging troubled relationships. In addition we’ll look at more complex projects, and the role of cooperation in entrepreneurship and new business development.
