What Responsible Innovation Means in this New Tech Era
What have we wrought? Many in the tech community are increasingly pondering that question in the past year as public scrutiny roams from election hacking on Facebook to #metoo charges in the Valley. One tech veteran has been thinking about what tech has wrought longer than most and has developed some ideas about what could be done about some of these unintended consequences. Julie Hanna has founded and been a founding executive of five venture-backed startups (including Healtheon, now WebMD), and currently is an advisor to X (formerly Google X) and Executive Chair of the Board at Kiva, to name just some of what she does. She has spent a lot of time thinking about purpose-driven profit, values-based leadership and what responsible innovation in this era of technology means. Hanna discussed these topics and many more at May’s What’s Now: San Francisco at Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange. She not only started a conversation about these increasingly important themes, but encouraged viewers to approach new hurdles with curiosity and interest.
Responsible innovation is important for all companies, but particularly tech companies that aspire for scalable solutions with broad reach. It is critical for X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory, which by definition is trying to come up with solutions to humanity’s most pressing challenges, specifically those that positively impact at least 1 billion people. How can the tech world look ahead to minimize unintended consequences without blocking out-of-the-box thinking necessary for breakthrough ideas? Julie’s work with Kiva and serving as President Obama’s Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship gives her an experienced and yet fresh perspective on how innovation plays out abroad too.
Julie also raised the issue of the consequences of hiring practices, intentional and not. She has always been able to successfully navigate the male-dominated world of Silicon Valley, but she said her mentoring of younger women entrepreneurs in the last couple years has deepened her perspective on gender and cognitive diversity in the tech world. She had some thoughts about what might be done but by no means has all the answers. Julie answered many questions about the issues facing the tech world and spoke on how we can all find common ground even on the most divided topics. Though she does not claim to have all the answers, her concise and thoughtful discussion spurred many more conversations that we can all hope leads to change.
