innovation, Society

Defend science? What if universities started by putting their own house in order?

Under the slogan “Stand up for science,” marches were organized on March 7 to defend science as a pillar of democracy. These demonstrations were aimed at protesting the budget cuts and massive layoffs in American organizations and universities decided by the new Trump administration. No institution, even the most prestigious, seems to have been spared from this wave of repression. But academic institutions are not simply innocent victims. They bear a large part of the responsibility for the crisis of legitimacy they are experiencing, having long since forgotten the ideal of truth in order to serve ideological causes.

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Society

Why Categorical Solutions Fail to Solve Complex Problems

A member of parliament who voted in favor of low-emission zoning (banning older vehicles from city centers) recently confessed to the writer Alexandre Jardin, who is strongly opposed to this measure: “We wanted to do the right thing, even if we misjudged the impact”. One might have thought that laws were passed precisely on the basis of their expected impact, but this is clearly not the case. Instead, they seem to be passed on ideological principles. In this respect, they constitute what economist Thomas Sowell calls categorical solutions, claiming to provide a single, simple answer to what are in reality complex social problems. Categorical solutions have become commonplace today, eclipsing pragmatic, nuanced and fair approaches, and the consequences are catastrophic.

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decision making, Uncategorized

The Power of Vertigo: Thinking Clearly in the Face of Uncertainty

With the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States on January 20, we are entering a period of radical uncertainty even greater than we’ve experienced in recent years. We thought we lived in an uncertain world? We haven’t seen anything yet. Accepting this uncertainty means accepting a kind of vertigo, a sense of a world out of balance. For the philosopher André Glucksmann, accepting the vertigo of renouncing certainties is a source of strength. Vertigo is a form of liberation that allows us to think clearly and is a lever for creativity and transformation. But there’s no guarantee that we’ll have this power.

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Economy and society, Society

Progress versus the environment: the toxic belief that condemns Europe

The causes of a society’s decline are often internal. It declines because it maintains or adopts beliefs that prevent it from adapting to a changing world. When a crisis weakens its model, it is tempted to adopt external beliefs that promise an easy solution. These can prove fatal. This is what happened to Europe. Over the past twenty years or so, it has convinced itself that it must sacrifice its industry and agriculture and abandon technological progress to save the environment. This belief is toxic and must be reconsidered if Europe is to halt its decline.

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Uncategorized

Why Europe’s answer to Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s attack must be innovation

Europe is reeling from the repeated attacks on it by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Both, in their own way, embody the new challenges Europe is struggling to meet. Musk, with his disruptive innovations, exposes its structural weaknesses, while Trump, the symbol of a transactional, uncompromising world, underlines its inadequacy for a new geopolitical reality. Far from being anomalies, these figures highlight an aging European model, incapable of competing in terms of innovation and asserting itself in the face of determined adversaries. This observation calls for urgent reflection: Europe must wake up from its blindness and undertake profound reforms to avoid irrelevance.

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Society, Strategic surprise

The illusion of certainty: what Donald Trump’s victory teaches us about willful blindness

We live in a world of surprises, leading to unexpected events, sometimes with far-reaching consequences. But what’s striking about each of these events is that not everyone is surprised by them. In other words, what surprises us depends on who we are. Surprise is a largely self-inflicted phenomenon, the product of blindness. This is the result of blinding beliefs, certainties reinforced by social mechanisms, a bubble of illusion in which we enclose ourselves with those who believe the same things as we do. A typical example of this blindness is Donald Trump’s second victory in the US presidential election.

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Economy and society, entrepreneurship, innovation, Society

Europe’s competitiveness: the missed opportunity of the Draghi report

Electroshock. Emergency call. Existential threat. The report on Europe’s competitiveness that Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, presented to the President of the European Commission on September 9 has caused quite a stir, to say the least. The report marks a salutary awakening to Europe’s decline, the symptoms of which it clearly identifies. But the proposed remedies remain conventional – a plan, a loan and an industrial policy. It’s a missed opportunity, or almost.

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Economy and society, entrepreneurship, innovation, Society

In praise of indirection, or how problems aren’t always solved by problem solving

Problem solving is a universal paradigm, and a very dangerous one. We believe that the world is full of problems and that we can solve them if we really try. But this is not true. Many problems are solved indirectly, thanks to a solution that was not imagined by those who faced them. That’s why it’s important to allow free innovation, i.e. solutions without problems, no matter how absurd they may seem.

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