Tosin Oyeniran

If I had a lot of money and some free time I would start a fund focused on the one goal of disrupting Hollywood. I can’t believe the lack of creativity and the absurdness that has been churned out of that place over the last decade or so. To make it worse, it’s not like they’re doing it at cheaper costs or more efficiently. The price tags of movies are at an all time high. Hollywood is long over due for a disruption…from the quality of the movies to the way they are produced to the medium of distribution. We need more companies like Netflix (who using technology has sent the TV networks into an existential crisis) ready to challenge the Hollywood industrial complex. Admittedly, this doesn’t rank high on the list of world problems to be solved but gosh darn it, I like movies and they’re sucking and way too expensive. Someone make it better.

I recently saw an ad stating that 1 in 3 children born today will live to 100 years of age. Although intended to be a somewhat inspiring ad, It turns out that the current world life expectancy is actually still just under 70 years of age with Japan having the highest at about 83. I can’t help but be disappointed to think that it’s 2013 and not only are there no flying cars but people are still considered lucky to live past 75. The life expectancy growth has slowed significantly since the late 19th century, and it seems that despite stem cells, artificial hearts, Higgs Bosons, and the $1.4 trillion a year spent on medical research there still isn’t a medical innovation as effective as the invention of the toilet and improved sanitation. 

It is these types of observations that lead economists and technology enthusiasts to believe that innovation and new technology development is slackening or worst stagnant. However, I don’t believe this is the issue. In fact, I believe we are in an age of fundamentally ground breaking innovation where awe inspiring technologies are being developed at lightning speed and succession. The issue is that these disjointed development efforts only serve to increase the technological entropy of the world, creating an increased state of chaos and disorder due to what I like to call unintended consequences. The way I see it for every major medical breakthrough that increases life expectancy there are probably just as many technological developments that decrease it. For example, researchers may come up with life saving cancer treatments while companies and industry simultaneously develop new products that unknowingly result in new carcinogens and forms of cancer. Case in point: paper receipts now leading to cancer.  

With all that said, all is not lost. Big data is the key companion technology to resolving the chaos. It will allow us to develop new technologies while simultaneously analyzing petabytes of seemingly unrelated data to provide clarity on any possible unintended consequences and distinguish between causation versus correlation. If utilized properly, I believe big data can turn the cacophony of individual, academic, national, and corporate pursuits of innovation into beautiful, synchronized, world changing music.  

“Many of today’s big data companies are trying to tackle problems that just aren’t nearly big enough. Most are focused on marginally improving existing, digital businesses, but I believe the next big wave of opportunities exists in centralized processing of data gathered from primarily analog systems.   -Max Levchin’s DLD13 Keynote

I wrote a hand written letter today and it was surprisingly enjoyable. Extremely enjoyable in fact. It wasn’t anything deep or romantic..just a simple thank you letter to a family friend for a gift, but it was probably the best part of my day. I’m not sure exactly what about writing a letter is refreshing, but I will have to invest in some custom stationary and do my part to keep the post office in business.

If you pay close attention to the news these days, you can’t help but be amazed at the turnaround some of the major stories over the past 3 years have taken

• Within 3 years of a global recession, humiliating recalls, and a major tsunami and flood disrupting production..Toyota is back at #1 in car sales with a record setting 9.75 million vehicles sold. In fact loyalty and its brand has increased over the past 3 years.
• BP, despite its plethora of law suits leading to discharging of money and sale of subsidiaries, is still the largest deepwater driller
• The Dow is on the verge of breaking 14,000 for the first time since 2007
• California has erased a $20 Billion deficit and now has a slight surplus
• Greece is surprisingly still part of the EU and the worst seems to be over

Some of my key takeaways:

1. Don’t underestimate the value of a loyal customer base. They’ll stick with you through the hard times for the most part
2. Honesty and transparency is the best policy
3. People in general quickly forget 
4. Boom and bust cycles allow for hard decisions (previously avoided) to be made, new strategies to be explored, new shareholders to be able to participate, and opportunities to refresh growth curves.

Moral of the story is no matter how bad things get, it doesn’t have to be the end. If you stay calm, get ahead of the problem, and focus on tangible and practical solutions your crisis can become the beginning of a remarkable comeback story.

Kids are an amazing and yet kind of mysterious phenomena. Sometimes they provide heartfelt introspective moments like this recent one I had with my Godson’s mother:

..being an adult can be rough. It definitely helps running around with a 1 year old. I was watching Alex run around this atrium today spinning and laughing and I wondered when I last felt that way (in the absence of him). He has completely unfiltered emotion. The awesome thing is, for him that’s almost always joy, wonder, and love.

and other times they’re a soul sucking terror.  Somehow kids are at the same time both parents’ biggest source of frustration and despair as well as their biggest source of happiness and fulfillment. Anyone who is friends with a new parent knows that they spend half their time complaining about the stress of their kids and the other half forcing any and everyone to watch them, full of pride and love, flip through pictures of their kids. Something about this dichotomy is extremely interesting to me. How is it possible to have such a beautiful and tender love amidst and despite the unrelenting chaos?

It turns out to be really simple. The love that a parent has for her child is the purest kind of love. It is a completely selfless love devoid of expectations or desires for something in return. It is not a barter or an exchange or any form of currency. It is freely given. It’s what the Greek called agape love and what I’ve found to be an important life lesson. Love focused on others versus the typical secular/romantic love focused on self (how do you make me feel?) is what leads to lasting relationships that are able to grow and deepen despite the turmoil of life. Agape or Godly love is the inexplicable life force that moves the world forward, and I believe the real motivation behind God’s commandment to be fruitful and multiply. How else but through having children could we not only truly understand God’s unconditional love for us but also experience what it is like to express real unconditional love to others. I can’t wait to have kids, but until then I’m going to try and live life expressing selfless love to the people that matter in my life.