Kink’s Peter Acworth Speaks at The Economist Innovation Summit
by Amelia G : April 7th, 2010
I tend to read The Economist whenever I fly. It is usually available in airports and I find its coverage of pretty much everything that matters, with a particular focus on the economic impact of current events, to be thorough, interesting, and intelligent. The Economist recently held a summit in Berkeley, at the Haas School of Business, called Innovation: Fresh Thinking for the Ideas Economy. I’d think that was pretty awesome to begin with, but The Economist ably demonstrated their blinders-off approach with their selection of speakers.
Peter Acworth, head honcho of Kink.com, was on a panel with Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, Judy Estrin, author of Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy, and Kris Halvorsen from Intuit whose business card apparently reads “Chief Innovation Officer”, which is a great title.</p>
The topic of the panel was the concept of successful failure, innovating in crisis, and dealing with failure and risk. One of the biggest issues for the American economy is intellectual property. A lot of people online seem to think that stealing music, photos, video, and suchlike its fine and this presents huge difficulty in the USA where entertainment and other intellectual property product has been our top export for decades. Peter Acworth kicked off saying that he felt his company’s speed at bringing product to market makes them more nimble in adapting to a briskly changing landscape.
Then there was . . .
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