Eight Questions With Featured Grey Swan Guild Member: Mitchell Halpern
Senior Innovation & Strategy Executive to Companies and Academic Institutions Globally.
Our Eight Questions is part of our ongoing series profiling some of the amazingly talented members of our global Grey Swan Guild and get behind the curtain of what makes them think and sense the world differently and more effectively than others.
Mitchell Halpern — A Common Sensetrist Evaluating White Space, Originally From the East Coast, Refined on the West Coast and Practicing in the Mid-West
Bio: Mitchell has more than 20 years of experience as a consultant and
thought leader specializing in the identification and commercial exploitation of plausible future scenarios and utilizing those scenarios to make innovation programs more successful.
Mitchell combines design thinking, scenario planning, IP landscape analysis, and consumer trend analysis rapidly to develop platforms that reduce R&D costs and increasing the success rate for new products and services He holds a BA (honors) in Chemistry from Columbia University and a PhD in
Chemistry from UC Berkeley.
A Sensemaking Metaphorical Tool You Personify:
A magnetic stud finder. The ability to find a solid innovation framing and opportunity for value, even when elements aren’t entirely visible.
1. Who are you/ what makes you tick?
I am an autodidact who almost unconsciously made the transition from chemistry lab rat to management consultant in order to employ both technical skills and business creativity to provide clients with actionable and profitable “aha” moments and to allow for the easy identification of root strategic issues.
I am jazzed when I sense my clients are having their perspectives shift in order to make their innovation initiatives successful. I think I am also part entertainer since I do enjoy performing.
2. What are some of the important questions that you are making sense of nowadays?
- What is the role of language in blocking or boosting innovation and can we create a more useful language for innovation?
- Can we create a methodology that efficiently unites Future/Sensemaking with Scenario Planning and Innovation Management?
- Are there areas where the languages of continuous improvement/Agile and innovation can be merged for mutual benefit?
3. How are some of the ways you go about making sense of the world?
I look for technology, market, business, and political trends and generate
hypotheses on what the implication of these trends might be in disparate areas. This is where my broad tech, industry, and psychographics background comes in handy.
I also participate in various discussion groups where different
perspectives can be discussed and combined regarding these trends. Finally I
use this knowledge to populate scenarios for planning purposes and to prompt
thinking about potential future unmet needs for innovation purposes.
4. What is overhyped? What is underhyped?
- Overhyped: Pick your favorite Tech buzzword: AI, nanotechnology, IoT,
innovation. - Underhyped: Sensemaking, Generalists, Non-digital innovation.
5. Who is at your sensemaker last supper? Four people?
- George Carlin, American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, and author
- Malcolm Gladwell, English-born Canadian journalist, best-selling author, and public speaker
- Rachel Maddow, American television news program host and political commentator.
- Carl Sagan, American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator.
6. What big and small question would you love answered or solved?
Big question: If the universe was created in a Big Bang, how did the condensed star stuff get there?
Small question: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
7. When you are not thinking deeply about the world, what else are you passionate about in your day to day life?
- Classical music
- Collecting functional art
- Politics
8. What do you enjoy about being in the Guild, Global League of Sensemakers and Expert Team?
Being affiliated with like-minded people interested in making Sensemaking useful and profitable.
Find Mitchell at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchellhalpern/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbhalpern
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Interested in Joining the Grey Swan Guild:
Visit our website: https://www.greyswanguild.org/
Become a member: https://bit.ly/gsgsmemberform
Attend our next new member onboarding regatta: https://bit.ly/gsgregattaOct21
Join our Futures & Sensemaking Discussions: https://www.clubhouse.com/join/grey-swan-guild/gJ5MfbZv/maA88zZW
Join us October 27th for our October Feature City Boston Town Hall — https://bit.ly/gsgBoston
This Week’s Events
We assemble Friday and Sunday on Clubhouse this week for these two mind expanding events :
Grey Swan Guild — Our Mission
To Make Sense of the World’s Biggest Challenges and Next Grey Swans — curating and creating knowledge through observation, sensemaking, critical thinking, informed futurism, strategic foresight and analysis. www.greyswanguild.org
