Purposeful Action Blog

Here are video clips from a talk on Technology Leadership and Ethics by Prem Chopra at the Chattanooga Engineers Club on Monday, February 9, 2009.
Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5
Comments are welcome…
P.S. Venkat, who recorded and edited this talk, is exploring ways to improve the exposure (the lights we dimmed to [...]

In the accompanying post, we discuss the global distress resulting from the dramatic nosedive of world economies.  The general belief is that this situation was brought about by greed and corruption in financial firms, while our government loosened regulations and oversight. Most of you will agree that the lack of integrity (excerpt from lecture in [...]

We are all aware of the dramatic nosedive of the stock markets, which has eroded trillions of dollars from the value of US and foreign corporations, and is causing economic stress globally.  A CNBC TV series suggests that a major cause for this situation, at least in this country, is American Greed. Others blame our [...]

My friend Raj Diwan, a retired DuPont scientist, and I were discussing over dinner this evening how a person would feel if he or she were to suddenly become wealthy. Being engineers, we stretched the hypothetical situation of this “blessed” person to the “limit” and asked what if this person were to own “everything” in [...]

We know of many similarities between entrepreneurs and managers. However, to clearly understand these archetypes it is helpful to compare them. Think, research and discuss how these two archetypes differ from each other. Refer to your Archetype-Attribute matrices and research the Internet as you present and discuss your views on this question.
Play BrookMaster, emulating a [...]

Following our live and archived discussions from last week and tonight, and your research and experience, what light can you shed on this question? Asked in other ways, the question could be:
Are entrepreneurs innovative?
or,
Are innovators entrepreneurs?
Illustrate your comments with examples from industry, providing references and links.

The answer to this question is found in the metaphor of the brook. Just as the brook is the flow of water, so too life is the flow of action. Without the flow of water, there is no brook; without the flow of actions there is no life.
Since flow creates the flow of what is [...]

Here is a systematic way to find out:

Consider any two prominent politicians - say, one from the US Congress and one from the US Senate - perhaps one Republican and one Democrat. Compare what the say they stand for with what they actually vote for and promote. Investigate how they were first elected and then [...]

It is a commonly held belief that “entrepreneurs are risk-takers.”
Consider also the statement, “gamblers are risk-takers.”
Are entrepreneurs gamblers?
Or do you believe that: “Entrepreneurs calculate risk and pass it on to those who are greedy?”
Let’s research and share views on these statements.