Albright Challenge

Overview

The Mission of the Albright Challenge is to stimulate inventive, collaborative solutions to today’s major societal issues while informing a new generation of leaders AND to reinforce the critical need for and value of prevention in all areas of societal concern.
 

 

2013 AC Participants
2014 AC Participants
 
 

 

Background

The problems of the 21st Century are complex, over-lapping and universal. It is the strong belief of MIT Collaborative Initiatives that these issues should be tackled in concert not independently, through collaboration not in isolation.

In order to do this effectively we need strong leaders who recognize, foster and share innovation: Leaders who understand the value of prevention in terms of identifying and avoiding foreseeable crisis: Leaders who are open to reaching beyond their own areas of expertise to find creative, productive answers to critical issues.

Our plan is to convene rising leaders, the best and the brightest, from varied backgrounds to create a dynamic collaborative environment around a critical issue. The focus of the Challenge will be an intense 5-day working session based at MIT. In that session our leaders will be put into teams of 8-10 people and given a specific challenge to work through. The sessions will be facilitated using design methodology uniquely suited to managing complex problems and promoting idea generation. The teams will also be given an opportunity to work with some of the most powerful leaders of our time in small group or lecture settings.

We are looking to the long-term and we will put processes in place to maintain contact with participants and to enable us to develop any promising outcomes of the Challenge.

 

Advisors

  • Norm Augustine Ret Chairman and CEO Lockheed Martin Corp
  • The Honorable Michael Bloomberg Mayor of New York City
  • Gary Hirshberg Chairman Stonyfield Farms
  • General Patricia Horoho Surgeon General US Army
  • Muhtar Kent Chairman and CEO Coca-Cola Company
  • Robert Langer Institute Professor MIT
  • Admiral and Mrs. Michael Mullen Fmr Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Madge Meyer Fmr EVP and Chief Innovation Officer State Street Corporation
  • Darryl Rhea, Rhea Insight
  • Marco Steinberg Director Strategic Design SITRA Finnish Innovation Fund

Quotes from New Models 5 meeting

“You get all these smart people together, and they think they’re going to somehow, think their way into new acting. And it almost never happens. You have to turn it around and create some action and combinations of people so that instead, they can act their way into new thinking.”
Edward M. Hundert, MD, Division of Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School

“You can tell who a leader is, even if they’re not in a “leadership position” – and that is someone who feels responsible for everything.”
Denis A. Cortese, MD, Foundation Professor, Arizona State University, W.P. Carey School of Business; Fmr President and CEO, Mayo Clinic

“I’m actually a pretty strong advocate for change because we’re changing whether we know it or not and we have to change for the future, no matter how well things are going or how poorly things are going, we’ve got to advocate for what we need, to make our investments based on that.”
Michael G. Mullen, Admiral, Fmr Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Albright Challenge symposiums

2015 Albright Challenge

Technology is moving in a direction, which enables individuals to monitor vital health signs through wearables and other easily portable devices.  We can diagnose specific gene mutations that might make an individual susceptible to various diseases.  We have medicines and treatments that supply an almost endless array of tools to fight disease, to treat illness, to fix people.    As a result people are living longer.  But at what cost?   Are people living healthy longer?  Are we so busy testing new treatments for the common good that we lose sight of the individual good?   Have we lost sight of the need for dignity and empathy and a focus on the wellbeing of people at all stages of their lives, including at the end of life?

2014 Albright Challenge

Focused on the inherent conflict between increasing personalization and the 'status quo' of existing systems, with one Participant team focusing on a specific education case and the other on a specific healthcare case.  Essentially, the fact that the capability to individually track activity levels, health data, learning ability, etc. now exists has opened the door to tailoring healthcare and learning to the individual, or clusters of like individuals.  However, our current healthcare and education systems are geared towards catering to the "norm" or average.  Can these two ideals co-exist?  In areas such as these can we foster disruptive change while avoiding destructive change?  What are the implications for/of big data? Privacy?  These are some of the questions the teams explored.

 

2013 Albright Challenge

Intersection of education/environment and well-being.    In the U.S. we are challenged by an education system with huge disparities in quality, access and achievement and looming environmental issues, which threaten the very quality of life.  The inaugural Albright Challenge will take a design driven view of the nexus of these two issues.  One group of participants will look at the education system through the lens of environmental awareness and stewardship. The other will look at environmental issues through the lens of access to quality education.