Last week’s Xconomy IMPACT event at the Museum of Science in Boston tackled a big theme—“innovation that matters”—but our speakers did not disappoint.
The program explored a broad mix of ambitious ideas and advanced technologies—brain-computer interfaces, self-driving cars, collaborative robots, interactive entertainment, and much more. Speakers also offered solutions to some of the most pressing issues the tech and business community faces right now, such as accessing enough talented workers.
Special thanks to our gold sponsors, Autodesk and GE; our innovation supporters, the CIC and TimeTrade; and our reception co-host, Cinch Financial. Also, a big shout-out to Keith Spiro Photography for the pictures above.
We’ll leave you with six memorable quotes from the program:
Katie Rae, The Engine: “There’s been a brain drain toward [working on] easier things, which might be great for an individual, but for a society is not a great thing because you leave a lot of the next inventions on the shelf or to be invented by somebody else.”
Paul English, Lola: “A lot of times as technologists, I want to make sure that we’re not ignoring human solutions, which sometimes can work better than technology.”
Sandy Pentland, MIT: “Data is the new oil. Data also gets an amount of press that’s incredibly negative, about privacy and all those sorts of things…The truth is we’re not going to give up our cell phones. Cell phones make data. We’ve got to find a way to live with this and turn it into good things.”
Jodi Goldstein, Harvard Innovation Labs: “I feel like it is our responsibility to create the environment and the circumstances by which the people who want to solve the world’s biggest problems can do that.”
Russ Wilcox, Pillar: “We should hold [business] leaders accountable for integrity and for earning a profit.”
Mohamad Ali, Carbonite: “It was striking when Jamie Dimon gets up and says companies have a moral obligation to do the right thing. When have you ever heard that before? Something is different. And that’s a good thing that something is different. People are waking up.”
