cc
>> So this is the opening
lecture in the seminar, which
has been running every semester
since the fall of 2007.
And for those of you who have
come to some of the past ones,
you know that the diversity of
speakers is really sometimes
surprising.
So we have had people who are
national leaders, local
academics, but we have never
ever had someone like Bill
Linton.
And I think his perspective will
be different from that of
everyone that has preceded him.
I am almost completely confident
in making that statement.
So, Bill has a bachelor's degree
in biological sciences from UC
Berkeley, and then he came to do
graduate work in pharmaceutical
chemistry here at UW Madison,
and he has an honorary doctorate
from a Korean university
recognizing his global
engagement in advancing
technology and education in life
sciences.
In 1978, he founded Promega,
which many people may think, oh,
that's our local biotech
company.
Well, it started with one
employee, that was probably
Bill, and now it has 1300
employees, and it's a worldwide
global corporation.
The number of manufacturing
facilities that exist is just
unbelievable.
They exist in Europe, in Asia,
in Australia, in Brazil, and
apparently one is soon to open
in India.
But it's all centered around
life sciences because this is
where Bill came from, and this
is where he stays.
And what makes Bill such an
unusual person, because I think
we all have stereotypes in our
minds, some positive, some not
so positive, when we hear the
word businessman, is that Bill
reaches out to the community and
he tries to advance things that
are going to improve the lives
of everybody from students in
middle schools all the way up to
graduate schools just to general
members of the community.
So one of the things that he did
to make life easier for lots of
people was he established a
daycare center, the Woods Hollow
Day Care Center, right there
near Promega for Promega
employees and members of the
local community.
And this center takes care of
infants all the way to school
aged kids.
And then in 1993, the
Biotechnology Center Institute,
or I always get this wrong.
BTCI I can remember, but what
the letters stand for.
I give it up.
And what this is an educational,
cultural, and scientific
institute.
Probably many of you have been
to the BTCI.
They have an annual forum on
bioethics.
They run classes in the summer
that some of the graduate
students in neuroscience take.
They run classes for middle
school students, oftentimes
middle school students who maybe
have heard of science but have
never considered getting into
it.
So it's a fantastic phenomenon,
the BTCI.
And of late, the forum has
focused on consciousness and the
age-old issue of brain and mind
and what are the relations.
This has been an issue that has
probably challenged humans for
hundreds of years trying to
figure out brain/mind.
How do we integrate these two
things?
And in part, that's why Bill is
going to talk here today.
The title of his talk is right
up there in front of you.
So, Bill.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Thanks very much.
I don't think I've every had
quite an introduction quite like
that.
That kind of took us all over
the globe.
But actually following on that,
I will be saying a few words
related to the start of the
business, but I'll even take us
a little bit before that point
because it's often interesting
to see what were the things that
eventually led a person into
doing what they do.
And I always think that's an
interesting topic to talk about.
Well, good afternoon, and I
would say I'm very impressed
that we have all of these people
here on a Valentine's Day.
And I wish you all great success
and love and all the good things
that come on Valentine's Day.
I also want to thank Ron and
Tara for their wonderful support
and also the invitation just to
be here.
And I've learned a lot about the
neuroscience and public policy
double degree program.
There was a lot I didn't know
about that before.
This really gave me the
opportunity to learn a lot about
that.
It's a very impressive program,
and I had an opportunity to
spend time at lunch with two of
the students.
So that was really great.
I appreciate that very much.
So, what I want to start with is
to share with you three areas of
thought, and then we'll close
the formal lecture.
And then at the end if anybody
would like to stay here and
would like to have a little bit
of questions and answers, I'd be
happy to do that.
It's a little bit more difficult
during the talk to do that just
because of the people who are
viewing this at a remote
distance.
So, first I'm going to talk
about some of my self-reflection
going back as a child, and the
reason I'm doing that is often
when I'm interviewing people for
a job or just kind of
introducing the company, people
often sort of ask, well, why did
you start the company?
What was in your mind at that
time?
And so I'll share with you
perhaps some of the insights
that I've gained as I've thought
about that question.
Second, I'd like to tell you a
little about Promega today.
Ron gave some statistics and a
little bit of insight into that,
but I'll give you some pictures
that show a little about what
the company is today and a
little bit about the special
relationship that we have
between business, the community,
and education that I think
you'll be interested to hear
about.
And finally, probably from my
more scientific origins, I'd
like to share with you some of
my thoughts about the future and
where we're going not only as a
business but also where I think
we can direct some of our
thoughts and attention as far as
society and perhaps what some of
the indicators are as to some
real frontiers that we can think
about in terms of scientific
research and also the role of
business.
So as I look back over 66 years,
which is the time I've been here
on Earth, I always look at some
patterns as I look back,
especially in the early years,
what were some of those early
patterns that I can think about
that might suggest what I would
be doing in future years.
And I use the term this
relentless curiosity and
interest in things, especially
in terms of how things work.
Let's see, I think we can just
postpone that.
So, that's the very young Bill
Linton, and at a very young age,
probably when I was even less
than two but certainly between
two and three, I was watching my
father, who at that time was in
electrical engineering course at
Emery University in Georgia.
I was watching him rebuild
engines.
And he was doing that to earn
money for the family.
And I never really lost my
interest in mechanics and sort
of taking things apart and how
they got put together.
I think there was some early
imprinting that was happening at
that very young age.
And then at the age of six, I
remember having a deep
fascination with outer space.
And I really don't know where
that interest came from, but I
was just fascinated to think
about airships and airplanes and
rocket ships and there was
something about outer space that
really drew me.
But the problem that I knew that
we had at the time was that
there wasn't anything powerful
enough to take anything from the
Earth into outer space.
Overcoming gravity was the big
challenge of the time.
And one night I remember waking
up in the middle of the night,
and I looked at this mirror that
was above a set of drawers in my
room, again, six years old.
As I looked in that mirror, I
could see stars and I could see
galaxies.
And that image of what I saw
still remains with me even now.
And I was so convinced that I
was in outer space looking
through this window that I never
had a doubt that eventually
humans would get into outer
space.
But it was just a very
interesting, we could call it a
dream or a waking dream or
something, but there was
something that really impressed
me as a young child with the
fact that we were going to go to
outer space and we were going to
see things there that we
couldn't see from the Earth.
By the time I turned 11 I spent
a couple summers working for my
dad.
He was a very creative engineer,
but he wasn't particularly good
in business.
What he really taught me through
what he didn't know was what
were the elements that would
eventually make a successful
business.
And it's often not what someone
can tell you directly but often
what someone perhaps doesn't
teach you directly but what you
observe in what they do that can
be most instructive when you're
growing up.
And when I was in sixth grade,
my classmates decided what they
would do is they'd take all
their fellow classmates and they
would decide what they were
going to be when they grew up.
And they decided that I was most
likely to be a mad scientist
when I grew up, and that was in
sixth grade.
I thought that was pretty cool.
I wouldn't mind being a mad
scientist.
So there by the year 1958 in
sixth grade, I had observed a
lot in business, and I already
had a very deep interest in
science.
And then when I was 15, I
attended a National Science
Foundation summer science
program, and that was really
instructive for me.
It had a very deep impression.
It was at the University of
Texas in Austin, and I really
got hooked on biology and
chemistry as a result of that
opportunity that was funded by
the National Science Foundation.
And a little story of what I
would do in the evenings, I
discovered that in the back of
the chemistry building there
were these dumpsters and they
would throw away glassware and
equipment and all kinds of
stuff.
By the end of that summer, I had
a couple of large boxes full of
what later became my first
laboratory which I took home,
and that was the way I first
collected my laboratory.
There was another thing that I
observed being quite young,
which was kind of a phenomenon.
It was that I had an interesting
ability to visualize numbers and
not just in mathematics or not
just in the homework that you
would do.
But someone would come up to me
and say guess how many pennies
I've got in my pocket.
And I would just say 13, and
they would take out their
pennies and count and sure
enough there were 13 pennies.
And it's just kind of, you say
that's kind of coincidence, but
this happened time and time
again in different
circumstances.
And what I discovered as I sort
of observed this and it was sort
of a random thing, but as long
as I didn't have any emotional
outcome, attachment to the
outcome, that this would work.
And it's something that
throughout my life I observed
over and over again.
And, as you might imagine in a
business setting, that can be
rather interesting, and it
turned out to be a rather
valuable thing over the years.
So, again, just another kind of
an observation of something that
maybe is not totally explainable
in terms of the science that we
know today, but there's a lot
that we really don't know about
how the mind works and what the
connections are to the brain.
So that will be kind of where
I'm going with this.
And there's another observation
that I had, and that was that
often I would see something that
later on would become something
that was real.
And I just want to use this
picture as kind of this picture
of reflection.
And I didn't really quite
understand the phenomenon until
I read a book by an author
Atwater that was written in
1996, and the book is called
Future Memory.
And it's about people who in a
way live the future before it's
physically manifested, and they
remember having done that as
though it is an actual memory.
And that experience can be so
real that it's hard to
distinguish that from an actual
memory.
And so often we think, well,
that can't really happen because
we have clear memories of the
past, the future we always view
as being sort of fuzzy.
But time is an interesting
construct, and there really
isn't any physical basis for
time other than the way that we
make sense of things.
There's no formula that says
this is exactly why time should
exist.
And so we work very well in this
construct time, past, present,
and future, and I think there
are ways of working with time or
viewing time or even seeing
things that might be in and out
of time that could be
instructive for us.
Well, I went to undergrad at
Berkeley in 1967 to 1970.
You might imagine what those
years were like for me and were
actually wonderful.
I graduated in 1970.
And then I took off about three
years.
And this was probably one of the
most fascinating journeys that I
ever went on in my life.
I was in a Land Rover, took off
for nine months, and went
through Europe, northern Africa,
down through the Sahara Desert.
It took 28 days to cross the
desert and found myself
eventually in Liberia.
Sold the Land Rover to a diamond
mine, got enough money to pay
for a freighter ticket to get
back to the United States.
And I just hope if anybody here
has some inkling or an idea that
it'd be great to take a year
off, by all means do it.
The things that you can run
across and the experiences you
can have can be invaluable.
I couldn't imagine today even
contemplating doing something
like that.
But you never know when your
mind is open and you have an
opportunity to take some time
off, wonderful things can
happen.
So in 1976 after work that I did
in pharmaceutical chemistry, and
I worked for three years as a
development scientist at
Scientific Protein Labs in
Waunakee.
I was talking with some people
at the university here in
McArdle Laboratories, and they
said we really are tired, as
graduate students, of making
these enzymes that are used to
cut and splice DNA.
And so I kind of took that on as
a challenge, and I thought, you
know, I'm pretty good with the
lab, I'm pretty good proteins,
and let's see what I can do with
that.
So in 1978, with a lot of help
from a lot of people here at the
university, I started Promega.
I was 31 years old at the time.
And what I was doing was making
a group of products that the
students didn't want to make
anymore, they were in short
supply, it was difficult to get
some of these, and I was kind of
a local supplier.
So, again, it was kind of this
curiosity about a new field and
what might be possible that sort
of led me in that direction.
And within a couple years I was
trying to work also in another
laboratory in Holland.
In this case, this is in Leiden,
Holland, and we were growing up
some blue-green algae to make
one of the restriction enzymes.
And it was a rather challenging
situation there because what I
discovered was that the culture
in Holland wasn't necessarily
amendable to what you need to do
if you're going to be making
some of these enzymes.
So, for example, they would come
in at exact time in the morning.
At 11:45 you had to take off and
spend about an hour at lunch.
4:45 you're out the door, and if
it's a Friday, you don't come
back until Monday.
And as any of you know if you've
been trying to isolate and
purify an enzyme, there are
certain points where you just
can't drop it and then come back
two days later and hope that
it's still surviving.
So I tried to do that for about
a year and a half and kind of
gave up on that idea.
But it was a fun experience to
try that.
I also wanted to give credit to
some of the people that I
mentioned earlier but many, many
people at the university that
were really helpful.
There's a young man right here
that I think I might see in the
audience, Jim Dahlberg, Janet
Mertz, I think this is
Fred Blattner, Waclaw Szybalski.
It was in Howard Temin's lab
that I got the first idea from
one of the graduate students to
make some of these products.
But again, these are all people
at the University of Wisconsin,
and this is really a large part
of the reason why Promega got
established here was through
some of this incredible help
that I had in methods, in
bacterial cultures, and all the
methods that I had help with.
DNA reference samples and so
forth.
So it was really a great place
to start the business.
So if we fast forward now from
those very early days to what
the company looks like today, we
really celebrated last year the
35th year of the company.
And just a few highlights.
This is not really a business
lecture.
It's really going into a couple
different directions here.
But in 2013 we had revenues of
just over $350 million,
1300 employees, 15 countries,
and about 2700 products which
span technologies from genomics
all the way to cell biology and
proteomics and many of the other
techniques involved in life
science and between.
If you haven't been to our
campus recently, I'd be
delighted to host you there.
We have a new building that just
opened in October.
It's just under 300,000 square
feet.
We called the Richard P Feynman
Center after a Nobel Prize
winning physicist Richard
Feynman.
He was a true renaissance man,
brilliant in science but also
really gifted in the arts,
culture, and he had a great
sense of humor.
So he wasn't a life scientist,
but I think he represents much
of what we aspire to when we
think about what we can do as
individuals and also the kinds
of people that we hope to bring
into the company.
This building expands our
capability, particularly in
molecular diagnostics, and it's
referred to as a CGMP, current
good manufacturing practices
facility.
But size and growth, while
they're important, they're not
the most important factors, and
I'd like to spend just a couple
of minutes on what makes Promega
different.
What are some of the things that
we've aspired to do as an
organization that I hope goes
beyond just some of the normal
values that you often find in
business.
I think just like a person, an
organization you can view as
something that's living.
It has something like a mind or
maybe a brain.
I think it's got a body.
And let's imagine that it has
soul and spirit too.
So let's maybe explore these
ideas just for a moment.
This slide, if you look in the
middle, talks about Promega in
the year 2078.
And one of the things that we've
been talking about in the last
few years is how to build a
company and how to set a
foundation for a business that
can last a hundred years.
And 2078, of course, would be
the anniversary of Promega at
that point in time.
So to kind of follow this idea
of the mind and the body and the
spirit in business, the body
might be considered to be the
products and the services that
we offer, the mind is our plan
for how we want to expand the
business technology
developments, and the generation
of resources which would be
positive cash flow to finance
the things that we're going to
be building in the future.
But the soul and the spirit is
really why we do this.
Being a private company,
we don't have to report out
earnings to Wall Street.
We're not working for venture
capitalists who might expect a
high rate of return in three to
five years And fortunately our
stage of maturation after 35
years is such that we're allowed
to view our present and our
future from a different
perspective than just survival
and early adolescence of a new
business.
And that's why we're now looking
at what are the things that we
want to focus on as a company
that will enable us to survive
until the year 2078 and possibly
beyond that.
So our long range goals include
contributions to society, the
community, exploring the
frontiers of course of science,
for better technologies,
medicines, better tools for
doing basic and applied
research, and also creating a
unique environment for our
employees and our business
partners.
Now, we've borrowed also an
image that you normally see when
you take a course in psychology.
And this is based on Abraham
Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
And one of the reasons that I
like to use Maslow is that he
was a student, and in fact I
think he got his PhD here at the
University of Wisconsin.
Came from New York.
He didn't get along well with
his parents, and so if you don't
get along well with your
parents, where do you go?
You go to Madison to gain some
degree of freedom.
And he came here and he got
married here and it was while he
was here that he began to
develop this idea of the human
potential movement that became
really embedded within
psychology.
And the idea was at the very
base of our existence we meet
our physical needs.
Food, clothing, shelter, all the
things that enable us to live
day to day.
And as we establish that, we can
then turn our attention to other
kinds of things.
If you don't have enough food or
you're worrying about where
you're going to live, you're not
going to spend a lot of time
being concerned about these
other aspects of this hierarchy.
But once you do have that
established, then you can think
about things like your safety
and security and pension plans
or other kinds of things that
might help you in the future.
Love and belonging become
important in this hierarchy.
And then esteem, your standing
in the community, once these
other things are established.
And then he identified something
that he said once these other
things are fulfilled, each
person has an opportunity to go
beyond that and to say, what is
it that I'm really here for?
And what can I do that will make
my life meaningful beyond just
the things that might be
normally accepted in the
community or normally accepted
within our business practices?
What more is there in life?
And he called that
self-actualization.
And so we kind of looked at this
and we said this really has some
interesting characteristics to
it, and perhaps there might be
something that we can learn from
this from the business
standpoint as well.
But to take a little bit of a
deeper dive into this aspect of
these levels of these layers of
human development, we began to
talk more intentionally within
the company about some other
things that had to do with other
levels of human development
which are not meant to be so
much hierarchical as they are
opportunities for further growth
individually.
So the very base is perhaps the
characteristic of an individual
that might be called impulsive
And this is where a person is
just acting to meet their
survival needs.
A little bit like that very base
in Maslow's hierarchy.
And then next would be more
opportunistic.
They might work or manipulate
other people for their own
self-gain.
As they grow in their awareness
and their ability to better
interact with others, you might
have a diplomat, people who are
very good at working with others
and are better able to get to a
certain point through peaceful
means and not through so much
manipulation.
And then the expert.
And, of course, a lot of our
universities, a lot of our
businesses, we look for experts.
So it's not as though each of
these levels is necessarily
negative or overly positive, but
in fact it's often the
combination of these that enable
us to get the right mix of
people for the right kinds of
jobs.
The achiever, the person who
sets goals, motivates, looks for
feedback because they're looking
for ways in which they continue
to self-improve themselves.
Many individualists, and this is
often the person then who's
ready to take the next step and
leaps to the second tier, which
then gets into the realm of
strategy.
Being able to see things from
new perspectives.
And it uses what they've been
able to accomplish and perhaps
the power that they've created
through what they're doing and
who they are to do positive
things, to help transform others
or their work environment or
their university environment.
Then the alchemist, of course
the person who can transmute.
They work in deep processes.
They're willing to accept
mystery.
And then at the top, the
unitive, the person who acts
simply, they pass through deep
complexity, and they've gone to
the other side of more
simplicity.
They lead by who they are and
not so much by saying I'm the
CEO or I'm the president of this
or the head of that.
And then this just kind of gives
a spread of where this often
happens within the population.
At the bottom you really don't
find a lot of leaders.
I say at the bottom, but at this
core.
At the impulsive opportunistic
diplomat, only a few leaders
then.
Then the expert achiever
individualist, we see many more
of our leaders there.
Again, whether it's government
institutions, academic
institutions, or business.
And then going to this second
tier, often also reflects and
individual's ability to exhibit
more wisdom and compassion in
how they interact with others.
And to be able to do that in a
way that, they bring peace both
internally and externally to
their environment.
But this idea of wisdom and
compassion are some of the two
attributes that enable a person
to go to the strategic alchemist
and the unitive levels.
So we're working on these
because we think some of these
attributes are very fundamental
to understanding more of who we
are.
And these are important
characteristics that as we learn
more about these, as we learn
where we fit into these models,
help us in our dialog with our
coworkers, with the people that
we may have an opportunity to
provide guidance to and
leadership with.
I like this circle because what
this says is this is not a
top-down hierarchy.
That there is a movement to it,
but that it's not that any one
is above somebody else.
It's different but there is also
a progression going from the
impulsive to the
transformational individual.
So we're thinking quite a bit
about this.
We're bringing this into
practice, and this becomes a
part of our dialog again in our
daily business.
So going back for a moment to
the hierarchy and then taking
the individual hierarchy into
the company, let's look at how
that might translate into
business terms.
So at the very bottom is, just
like food, clothing, and shelter
for business, you need to have
cash flow.
You want to create value.
You have to bring something
that's meaningful and you have
find people who are willing to
pay for it.
So that's basic business
principles.
And once you do that
successfully, then you can
expand the business, as we've
done both geographically and
also in our new facilities that
we build in various parts of the
world.
We can differentiate the company
through the services we offer
employees, through the products
that we bring to the market,
technologies we deploy.
Operational excellence refers to
increasing levels of quality and
compliance.
And then finally we reach this
top pinnacle, and then the
question is, what is the real
purpose why we're doing all
this?
Is it just to give people jobs?
Is it just to give return to
shareholders?
What is it really all about?
Sure we get a paycheck every two
weeks, but at the end of the
day, what are we doing it for?
And so we've given this a lot of
thought, and we said wouldn't it
be an amazing thing if we could
take this idea of purpose, this
idea of transformation of a
business and overlay that with
this idea of self-actualization
for individuals.
And to say that the real purpose
of the organization is to help
and support the ability of each
individual to know more about
themselves, to be able to
self-actualize their own
development, and that's the real
purpose of the organization.
And the power of that is that
each person then working there
realizes that the organization
exists with them.
It's not about a parent
organization that just takes the
cash out of the company.
It's not about other purely
financial gain or objectives,
but it really has to do with
themselves personally and what
is most deep and meaningful to
them, which is what is their
purpose in realizing that the
purpose of the organization is
to help them discover that and
to take the steps that will help
them transform into that
direction.
And so there's this interesting
purpose then that we can depict
by kind of this little triangle
circle.
The value individually to the
person, the value to the
customers that result when
people are motivated and
energized by what they're doing
every day, and then what we can
bring to the community.
Many of the things that Ron
mentioned, our daycare center,
the nonprofit educational and
science endeavors, and many of
the other things that we bring
and support within the
community.
That community is a global
community.
So then I want to take just a
little bit of time now and talk
about when we think about the
future what are some
possibilities for where science
is going, what are some
possibilities about what we're
doing as a business thinking out
into the future.
And when we celebrate a hundred
years in the year 2078, and I
hope some of you are here to
help us celebrate, I probably
won't be, but what can we think
about or what are some of the
things that we can contemplate,
especially if we were to kind of
send a message out into the
future to the people who will be
talking about that 100-year
celebration.
What are some of the ideas we'd
like to convey to them.
Well, interestingly, when we try
to forecast the future, it's a
very, very difficult thing to
do, particularly for people who
are involved in technology and
companies that are built around
technology and that includes a
life science company.
In 1900 people in France
commissioned some artists to try
to imagine what the world was
going to look like in the year
2000.
And what you'll see are ideas or
problems or opportunities that
they had an interest in trying
to solve, but what makes these
quite funny is the fact that
they were using the technology
of 1900 to solve problems that
they envisioned would be there
in the year 2000.
And so let's take a look at how
they envisioned solving some of
these problems.
Who would have guessed that they
would be thinking about video
conferencing in the year 1900,
but that's what this picture is
depicting.
Someone talking into a
microphone and some strange
device that's broadcasting a
picture and there's this woman
talking back to the guy.
It's not clear how she sees him.
But here you see the technology
existing in the year 1900 trying
to solve this interesting
problem of video conferencing.
And of course, if you're going
to get news every day, you sit
back, light a cigarette, and
you've been delivered, maybe
it's a home delivery, a little
cylinder and you put it on your
gramophone and you play the news
of the day.
So that's how you're going to
get the news.
And transportation, you want to
get quickly from point A to
point B.
Well, all you need to do is
train a whale, attach some kind
of an interesting submarine to
it, and you have that guy on top
who's kind of steering the whale
and the guy in back with this
rudder, and that's how you're
going to get to your next
vacation in the Caribbean.
Now remember that at that time,
lighter than air travel was just
travel in the air.
Any kind of way to travel in the
air is an imagination.
People were coming up with all
kinds of inventions, but that
problem had not been solved.
But they envisioned that if you
want to be putting out a fire in
a highrise, then you just strap
on your wings and there you go.
You can even rescue the mom with
the little baby up on the 50th
floor of the highrise.
And high speed rail.
We still envision that today.
It just looks a little bit
different.
So, again, trying to apply
today's technologies to what we
envision the world is going to
look in the year 2078 is an
extraordinarily difficult thing
to do.
I imagine that probably
two-thirds of the people here
have iPhones, iPads.
None of those devices existed
12 years ago, 10 years ago,
15 years ago.
So our life has been transformed
in a very short amount of time
by inventions that now we think
are almost indispensable.
Just imagine what that's going
to be like in another 65 years.
It's very hard to imagine.
But the problems or the
opportunities or the things that
we can say are basic to what we
want to solve, medical problems,
labor saving, transportation,
communication, those are the
things that we'll still be
trying to solve but using
different technological means.
Then getting back to really a
topic I think that is common to
just about everybody here, it's
neuroscience.
And the biology, the chemistry
of the brain, the study of what
is the meaning of mind, what is
consciousness, and how does this
affect our health, our healing,
and in general our capabilities.
And I think this is probably the
greatest frontier ahead of us in
life science, in our
communities, and in society.
And so as I think about the
future, this is kind of what
I envision is going to be
consuming much of our research
in the future.
We know we have about roughly
100 billion neurons, and these
all together create about 100
trillion neuronal connections.
There was an interesting article
that just came out in Scientific
American about the brain, and
just fascinating imaging of what
they're now able to pick up and
the communication pathways that
are just extraordinarily
intricate.
We have yet to develop the tools
to understand what's really
happening, and we still have not
a clue as to how we can take an
idea and hold that idea or take
that idea and say a few words
and try to communicate what that
idea means.
How does all that happen?
It's still very much a mystery.
So, most of you have studied
some of these pathways, so when
we think of some of the things
that are exhibited in our minds,
exhibited in the brain, we have
all these various receptors and
various systems that all
together result in behavior,
human behavior.
And just taking a simple outcome
of some of these very complex
behaviors that are exhibited
through how we think and how our
brain works, just taking one
example which would be, let's
say, stress.
And all the things that are
affected in our human systems as
a result of stress that can
occur to us in anything, through
the environment, through our
work, through relationships.
And there's a list of two pages
of all the things that can
result in terms of symptoms of
the body and of the mind as a
result of that chest pain,
fatigue, stomach upsets, sleep
problems, anxiety, restlessness.
It's just a very, very long
list.
And yet, interestingly, stress
is not necessarily solved by
addressing the symptoms.
It's solved by how we think
about and how we react to what
comes into our lives.
And it's really that study of
consciousness and the study of
how we interpret the things that
are coming in, and that
interesting interpretation of
reality that can result in
changes in our state and give us
better health outcomes the more
we begin to recognize these
intricate connections between
how we're thinking, how we
respond to our environment, and
then how that affects us
throughout our day and
throughout every part of our
body.
And, finally, I just want to say
that because I view the frontier
of the mind, the frontier of the
brain, as being one of the
largest challenges in life
science, I also think that the
more we learn about that, the
more the possibilities are for
how we can change our view of
our society, change our view of
our relationship to the world.
I kind of like this picture
because it shows the infinite
possibilities that exist in the
human mind.
I think we're starting to unlock
some of the potential within the
mind.
The Doors of Perception was a
book written by Aldous Huxley
many years ago.
And it just begins to suggest
that there is incredible
possibility, almost infinite
possibility that is still in a
way locked up because we don't
understand much of how the brain
works.
But our community practices and
our system of values as we have
them today are just not
sustainable for the planet.
And we all inherently know that,
that the way that we practice
our values, our consumptive
philosophies as far as how we
accumulate things.
If we look at the finite
resources on the planet, we have
to change how we view this
relationship that we have in our
communities and ourselves to the
planet itself.
An ancient African proverb says
that we have borrowed the future
from our children instead of
inheriting it from our
ancestors.
And, again, that's this shift in
perception.
How we view the planet, how we
view our relationship within our
communities.
And what will the people of a
hundred years from now think
about our stewardship and how we
viewed the planet and its
resources?
And how will they judge our
wisdom as we make decisions,
both individually and
collectively every day?
So we know that sustainable
solutions to problems arise from
perspectives that lie outside
the dimensions from which the
problem arose.
That was one of Einstein's
favorite sayings.
You can't solve a problem in
looking at it from the same
plane, from the same dimension
that the problem arose.
You have to look at it from a
different perspective, and we
have to learn how to create
these different perspectives,
how to see things differently.
And I kind of like this because
gateways suggest a transition
from one perspective to another
perspective.
And that's our challenge and
that's what we need to do.
Every aspect of learning and
every aspect of how we conduct
business, particularly in our
aspects of how we interact with
one another and how we interact
with every creature and every
living thing on the planet and
the natural resources on the
planet.
We have to learn how to bridge
the gulf between our thinking
and our beliefs and the wisdom
that is inherent in nature every
where we look.
It's just opening eyes.
It's seeing things in a new way.
And I think there can be a new
partnership between humans on
the planet and every element of
nature.
I think it's time that we open
some of these doors, that we go
through the gateway and look for
the answers that really are all
around us.
They are here.
The answers are here, and we
just have to see things in a
different way to be able to see
these answers.
As the gifted and autistic
Temple Grandin observed, this is
another doorway and we're all
standing at that threshold, and
I'm going to suggest this is now
the time to walk through
and see things through new eyes.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]