LINKEDIN CEO JEFF WEINER: LEADING WITH PURPOSE AND INSPIRATION

LINKEDIN CEO
JEFF WEINER
LUMINARYEnlightening Business
PROFESSIONAL
GRAPH OF LINKEDINLINKEDIN FROM SOCIAL NETWORK TO AN ALL-IN-ONE PUBLIC RESUME CRAFTING
SERVICE, BUSINESS RECRUITING TOOL AND CONTENT PLATFORM.
35 RESTRUCTURE BEFORE
IT’S TOO LATE
19 A DECISIVE DECADE?
39 INNOVATION AT GLANCE

Can I truly
make a
difference?
Do I invest in the world I’m in?
Or the one I want?
ubs.com/makeadifference
Together we can explore new and innovative ways
of creating lasting positive change. Establishing
sustainable portfolios that seek to maintain your
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LUMINARY | 05
CONTENTSDecember 2015/January 2016
CEOs are in the spotlight, constantly scrutinized as they
29 Raising Money To Support A Great Idea?
61 Ahead of the Game
Exclusive Interview with Jake Schwartz
CEO General Assembly
39 Innovation at Glance
Four Reasons To Be Exhilarated About Tech
Innovation
45 Tech Innovation
Immortality
30 Switzerland’s biggest banks to face more
stringent regulations
introduce tough new regulations.
46 Insurance Industry
67 MENTAL HEALTH
66 Eating a Healthy Diet May
Reduce Brain Shrinkage
19 A Decisive Decade?
CEOs are in the spotlight, constantly
Switzerland to

LUMINARY | 06
BUSINESS23
BUSINESS
14 Astex Pharma Demonstrating Open Innovation
11 Global News Stand
12 Concept Of The Minimum Viable Product
Astex Pharmaceuticals believes that open innovation in the pharmaceutical industry can invigorate
internal research groups and inspire more strategic collaborations
Your MVP isn't really viable until your potential customers say so
MANAGEMENT
20 Employees Management
Seven ways to manage your most motivated
and talented employees
FINANCE
30 Switzerland’s biggest banks
to face more stringent regulations
Reliance on the financial sector has led Switzerland
to introduce tough new regulations.
35 Restructure Before It’s Too Late
Many companies get bad press when they
announce they are to restructure - but such
reorganisation can be a very positive step
TECHNOLOGY
49 Tech & Science
Real-life 'Tractor Beam' can levitate objects
using sound waves
INNOVATION
What all companies must know about innovation,
( JAMA SOFTWARE)
52 Business Innovation
Chemicals in personal products may
stimulate cancer more than thought
HEALTH
65 Life Style
Q&A
Managed print services is increasingly becoming
a full-service data industry. key player Konica
Minolta is committed to leading the way...
61 AHEAD OF THE GAME

LUMINARY | 09
The holiday season is a time for gratitude and, here at LUMINARY, our deepest thanks
of all go out to you. After all, it’s your support that makes our work possible. Your input
allows us to stay nimble and meet the evolving needs.
Despite worries about the global economy and volatile stock markets, US consumers
appear more confident than analysts had expected, but industrial production in the
country fell for the second month in a row.
Meanwhile hopes that the US Federal reserve would decide not to raise interest rates this
year after all helped stock markets end the week on a positive note.
In the UK, Bank of England policy maker Kristin Forbes said in a speech in Brighton that
fears about emerging markets were overdone, and the next move in UK interest rates was
up - and not far off at that. Not all of her colleagues at the Bank agree, however.
Eurozone slumped back into negative inflation, putting more pressure on the European
Central Bank - which meets next week - to extend its quantitative easing program.
Tesla Motors delivered the first batch of its new Model x car to customers, two years
behind schedule.
Volkswagen's new chief executive, Matthias Muller, presented to a board commit-tee the
first findings of an internal investigation into the carmaker's cheating of emissions tests.
It was also another bad week for Glencore, which saw its
share price fall by a third after investment-bank analysts
issued grim warnings about the mining and commodi-
ty-trading company's balance-sheet if commodity
prices do not rebound. Investors are worried by
Glencore's high levels of debt. Its insistence that it is
"operationally and financially robust" and has access to
strong lines of credit sent its shares up again.
The oil industry absorbed Shell's decision to abandon
plans to drill in Arctic seas off the Alaskan coast,
because the results of initial tests were disappointing.
Ralph Lauren decided to call it a day as chief executive of the American fashion house he
created in 1967, which is best known for Its Polo label.
Who is the best CEO in the country? According to one rating service, its Jeff Weiner,
CEO of social networking giant LinkedIn. In 5 years of running the company, Jeff has
inspired his team, the industry, and Wall Street, and he has helped build LinkedIn into a
$25 billion powerhouse. An exclusive interview with Jeff Weiner read on page 23.
GA the world’s most innovative company of 2015 in the education sector, GA is recog-
nized for teaching the skills workers need now based in New York with 13 campuses
worldwide, find out more details about Jake Schwartz 36 year old Co-Founder and CEO
of General Assembly (GA) Page 39
By James Galbraith
editor@luminary-magazine.com
EDITOR'S NOTE
WE ARETHANKFUL
FORYOU
LUMINARY

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Volkswagen's new chief executive, Matthias Muller,
presented to a board committee the first findings of an
internal investigation into the carmaker's cheating of
emissions tests. Mr. Muller was the boss of Porsche, a subsidi-
ary of VW, prior to the resignation of Martin Winterkorn as
Volkswagen’s CEO over the affair, who was placed under
criminal investigation by German prosecutors vw also
recalled up to um vehicles worldwide to refit the
emission-cheating software. It has lost around a third of its
market value since the scandal broke.
HOW THE MIGHTY TUMBLE
It was also another bad week for Glencore, which saw its
share price fall by a third after investment-bank analysts
issued grim warnings about the mining and commodi-
ty-trading company's balance-sheet if commodity prices do
not rebound. Investors are worried by Glencore's high levels
of debt. Its insistence that it is "operationally and financially
robust" and has access to strong lines of credit sent its shares
up again.
Alcoa said it would split in two, a move that had been long
anticipated given the decline of aluminum and other
commodity prices. The company's aluminum and mining
divisions will retain the Alcoa logo; its metal-products
business, which serves the car and aerospace industries, will
go by a new name that has yet to be decided.
The oil industry absorbed Shell's decision to abandon plans
to drill in Arctic seas off the Alaskan coast, because the
results of initial tests were disappointing. Environmentalists,
who had rallied against the decade-long project under the
banner of "Shell No" were delighted. But it is one of the most
costly failures to date in the energy industry, for which Shell
will take a big write-down, leading to many job cuts in
Alaska.
Investors gave a thumbs down to the announcement that
Energy Transfer Equity is to take over Williams in a $37.7
billion transaction that creates one of the world's biggest
oil-pipeline and energy-infrastructure companies. In June
Williams rejected a much higher offer from ETE, but, like
others in the industry, its share price has since fallen.
Valeant's share price plunged by 20% after Democrats in
Congress asked the drug company to submit evidence to
their investigation into big price increases on certain pills.
The issue has gained traction in America Okra Biotech
Company talked of raising the price of one of its drugs by
5%. The Democrats want to question Valeant about price
rises of up to 525% for two treatments for heart disease.
NEW DESIGNS
Ralph Lauren decided to call it a day as chief executive of the
American fashion house he created in 1967, which is best
known for Its Polo Label.
His successor is Stefan Larsson, a Swede who made his mark
at the more downmarket H&M and is credited also with
reinvigorating Gap's Old Navy brand. Mr Lauren is staying on
as executive chairman.
In a surprise move India's central bank made a hefty cut to
interest rates, reducing its main rate by half a percentage
point. to 6.75%. It is the fourth, and biggest, cut this year.
Although inflation is stable, the central bank is worried that
India's far from robust economy could be hit by weakening
global demand.
The euro zone dipped back into deflation. as consumer
prices fell at an annual rate of 0.1%(excluding energy prices,
they rose by 1%). Inflation has been below the European
Central Bank's target of 21, for more than two years now; it
will decide at its meeting on October 22nd and whether to
increase the Euro 60 billion ($67 billion) in asset purchases it
makes through its quantitative easing program me each
month.
The European Union formally released its proposals for a
capital markets union with an aim to stream line myriad rules
on investment and lending to business among the EU’s 28
member states. Many European startups, for example,
commonly have to turn to American funds when they
expand their activities and need more investment. The EU
plan was generally welcomed by banks and investors, but
getting 38 countries to agree on what the initiative should
actually deliver will be a tough task.
DRIVING THE FUTURE
Tesla Motors delivered the first batch of its new Model x car
to customers, two years behind schedule. The pioneering
electric-car company thinks the Model x. a sport-utility
vehicle, will help It reach its target of selling half a million an
worldwide by 2020, ten times more than it expects to sell
this year. It has opened a factory in the Netheriands, its first
in Europe, to speed deliveries of its Model s saloon to
European buyers. But in Denmark the government said it
was ending a tax break on electric cars, which will up the
price of a Tesla by 18o%.
LUMINARY | 11
GLOBAL NEWS STAND
BUSINESS

LUMINARY | 12
Eric Reis and Steve Blank’s concept of the
minimum viable product (MVP) has
become the philosophy thousands of
entrepreneurs across the world
subscribe to when developing products
and ideas. The problem many of these
entrepreneurs run into is they don’t
effectively test the viability of their MVPs.
THE IMPORTANCE OF STRINGENT
TESTING
Nine out of ten startups fail. That’s a 90
percent failure rate. Pretty sobering, eh?
Well, that number is a bit misleading.
Roughly 42 percent of startup founders
claim their ventures failed as a result of
“no market need” for their product or
service. Nearly half of all failures are the
direct result of learning their irrelevancy
the hard way.
Reis and Blank are always quick to point
out that failed startups “begin with an
idea for a product that they think people
want.”They then spend months perfect-
ing the product without ever turning the
“idea”into a tangible product that can be
shown to customers, tested and refined.
YOUR MVP ISN'T REALLY VIABLE UNTIL
YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS SAY SO
Only when the startup fails do they
realize the product was doomed from
the start.
This can all be fixed with stringent
testing and basic prototyping. The MVP
is a basic version of the end product that
can be tested. You can gauge whether
the product is likely to succeed based on
response from your target market.
A sloppy MVP may misrepresent your
end product and skew the testing
results. So, first and foremost, focus on
creating an MVP that’s both “minimum”
and“viable.”
3 WAYS TO TEST YOUR MVP
Once you have a quality MVP you are
confident to stand behind, it’s time to
start testing. Here are some methods
you’ll want to try:
Interviews and focus groups: The more
people you talk with, the more accurate
your results will be. Start with interviews
and focus groups. There’s a lot of value in
using the Internet for quick feedback,
but nothing beats face-to-face interac-
tions. Every penny you spend on
interviews and focus groups will be
well worth it in the long run.
Social monitoring: Social media is an
excellent tool for gauging market
receptiveness to your MVP. Run a
social campaign and send out free
prototypes, then follow up with users
and listen to what they’re saying. You
will get an accurate idea how the
product will be received.
A/B split testing: If you’re finding
resistance among your test groups, it’s
important that you get to the bottom
of the issue. While it’s possible users
don’t like the entire product, it’s more
likely they find a particular aspect or
element undesirable. Use split testing
to isolate these problems.
Testing is key to a successful MVP. In
the end, accurate prototyping and
thorough testing will help you
determine whether your startup is
headed for success, or in need of a
pivot. Just leverage the tips
mentioned in this article and you’ll be
better off than 42 percent of startups.
ANNA JOHANSSON
CONTRIBUTOR

LUMINARY | 13
ASTEX PHARMA DEMONSTRATING
OPEN INNOVATION
Astex Pharmaceuticals believes that open innovation in the pharmaceutical industry can invigorate internal research
groups and inspire more strategic collaborations
Used originally in the 1960s to describe a situation in which
knowledge and expertise is imported and exported by a
company to foster internal innovation and expand opportuni-
ties for its products, open innovation has made a return in
recent times. Embraced, largely by R&D organizations, to foster
transparent interactions between companies, the concept has
done a great deal to inspire the very latest industry develop-
ments.
The role of open innovation within the pharmaceutical industry
has been immense the industry has suffered a significant
decline in productivity in the last 25 years, although recent data
indicates an improvement in the last few years.
One of the key reasons for this decline was that internal R&D
groups were unable to deliver the same output of new
medicines as during the golden decades of the 1970s and
80s.Many industry observers cited a lack of internal innovation
as a contributory factor to this reduction in productivity, and
encouraged large pharmaceutical companies to embrace the
wider biotech and academic ecosystems. As a result, open
innovation has now taken hold in the vast majority of pharma-
ceutical companies, and has invigorated internal research
groups as well as providing significant opportunities for both
biotech companies and academic institutions to establish
strategic partnerships with big pharma.
BUSINESS

Historically it has been difficult to secure funding from public
market; there has been limited investor appetite for biotech
stock in the UK, given the size and sophistication of the
London market. Some observers believe it is a legacy left over
from the failure of some of the early UK biotech companies,
such as British Biotech in the 1980s, and the resulting losses
made by investors. However, others are of the opinion that
London investors tend to have a lower appetite for risk
compared with US investors, which explains a more general
reluctance to fund technology companies. Whatever the
reasons, it is clear that this has held back the development of
UK biotech firms, and for now some of the most promising UK
companies are choosing to launch their IPOs on US exchang-
es such as NASDAQ. However, in the last two years there has
been some cause for optimism, as several biotech companies
have successfully gone public in London, with one called
Circassia raising a record amount of finance.
In the first two rounds of funding Astex raised about £45m in
total, one of the largest VC funding rounds in Europe at the
time. Later on were also able to generate significant finance
from a range of strategic partnerships that Astex established
with major pharmaceutical companies, such as Johnson &
Johnson, Novartis, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, who
wanted to access our technology platform. These deals
typically involved multi-million dollar upfront payments, in
addition to downstream milestones and royalties on future
marketed products originating from the partnerships, also
accessed smaller amounts of finance from research charities,
foundations and organisations such as the Wellcome Trust.
Astex pioneered a novel approach called fragment-based
drug discovery to discover new small-molecule medicines.
This approach has certain advantages over the conventional
methods that most big pharma companies typically use to
discover new drug candidates, but requires sophisticated
biophysical techniques. One of key goals is to maintain Astex
leadership position in this technology by developing new
methodology, as there are now many competitors in this
area. Furthermore, Astex also continue to focus on primary
therapeutic area of oncology, in which we are discovering
multiple new drug candidates which one day may become
effective medicines for patients with cancer. More recently,
Astex have begun to work on neurodegenerative diseases
such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, a major challenge for our
ageing society. In both oncology and neurodegenerative
diseases, pursuing a strategy of trying first to understand
the molecular basis of the disease and then developing a
targeted therapy which can arrest its progression. This
approach is generally referred to as‘precision medicine’.
The most exciting thing to come from this research so far is
collaboration with Novartis, in which they have developed a
drug candidate, called ribociclib that has shown significant
promise in clinical trials of patients with breast cancer. Indus-
try analysts speculate that this may be a future blockbuster
drug, which could help many cancer patients. Clinical trials
performed by Novartis have shown that ribociclib is a highly
targeted anti-cancer agent, which has reduced tumors in
patients with breast cancer when used in combination with
other oncology drugs. Assuming the development of riboci-
clib continues well, Novartis is planning to file for market
approval in 2016.
Cancer is a disease that involves some normal cells in the
body losing their ability to control their growth. Rapid
growth and division of these cells results in tumors, which
eventually damage the surrounding organs and often cause
fatal outcomes. In the past, there was a very poor under-
standing of how and why these cells lose the ability to
regulate their growth. However, in the last 30 years, funda-
mental research has provided answers to these questions
and revealed the mechanisms that result in cancer.
Targeted therapies are designed specifically to block these
mechanisms and have shown spectacular efficacy against
some types of cancer, such as melanoma.
As a private company, Astex has turned to alternative financ-
ing means as funding from public sector is almost nil thus
was largely financed by European and US-based life science
venture capital firms, such as Abingworth, Astex founding
investor.
LUMINARY | 14
Better
interactions
between
pharmaceuti-
cal companies
and third
parties have
inspired some
of the latest
industry
advances.
Nowhere is
this better
illustrated
than in the
case of Astex

LUMINARY | 15
Astex now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary and is a
key component of the Otsuka organisation. Astex future is
bright, as they begin to apply there leading fragment-based
drug discovery technology to new therapeutic areas, such as
neurodegeneration, in addition to ongoing commitment to
oncology.
Furthermore, there location in Europe’s premier biomedical
cluster, Cambridge, Astex will be able to play a central role in
open innovation relationships with some the world’s leading
academic institutions.
Astex Pharmaceuticals – structural biology revolutionises drug discovery
Another area of great excitement in oncology drug develop-
ment is immuno-oncology. Here, drugs are being developed
that are designed to stimulate the body’s own immune
system to fight cancer cells, and recent examples have
shown very impressive results with some types of cancer.
One of the main advantages of targeted cancer therapies
over traditional chemotherapy is that the side effects are
significantly reduced. Chemotherapy is not designed to
target only cancer cells and so often kills many healthy
normal cells, which can result in devastating side effects for
the patient. Chemotherapy can still be very effective against
some cancer types, but the side-effects need to be carefully
managed. There are also some side effects associated with
targeted therapies, but these tend to be milder in compari-
son.
In 2013, Astex was acquired by Japanese pharmaceutical
company Otsuka for $886m, which was the seventh-largest
global M&A transaction in the biotech sector that year. The
primary driver for Otsuka in this deal was Astex’s leading
position as a drug discovery technology pioneer, in addition
to portfolio of cancer drugs.
NEWS RELEASE
2015 Astex Pharmaceuticals Announces Orphan Drug
Designation for Guadecitabine (SGI-110) in the
Treatment of Acute Myeloid
Leukemia
2015 Astex Pharmaceuticals Announces Publication of
Key Clinical Data for Guadecitabine (SGI-110) in
The Lancet Oncology
2014 Astex Pharmaceuticals Presents Final Results of
Phase 2 Study of SGI-110 in Treatment Naive Elderly
Acute Myeloid Leukemia at the European Hematolo-
gy Association Meeting
2014 Astex Earns Milestone Payment on Initiation of
Phase 3 Study
2013 Astex Pharmaceuticals to Present at
AACR-NCI-EORTC
2013 Otsuka Pharmaceutical Completes Acquisition of
Astex Pharmaceuticals
Open innovation has now taken hold in
the vast majority of pharmaceutical
companies, and has invigorated internal
research groups as well as providing
significant opportunities for both biotech
companies and academic institutions
BUSINESS

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A DECISIVE
DECADE?
CEOs are in the spotlight, constantly scrutinized as
they steer firms through significant transformations.
If this is what they face today, who knows what they
can expect in 2020
going and lead it there by example – to
coaching and affiliative styles, which value
the contribution of teamwork to end
goals.The majority of the executives who
took part (64 percent) also believe CEOs of
European service providers should be
driven, in 2020, by a passion for innova-
tion, and would provid the most value to
the organization through ideas and strate-
gy (first) and innovation (second), ahead
of financial governance (third), good
corporate governance (seventh), and
good operational management (ninth).
What leadership styles, qualities, skills and
approaches will successful CEOs need to
take their companies into the next
decade? These were the questions that a
new global study – commissioned by
Amdocs with strategy consultancy
Telepresence – sought to answer.
In-depth interviews with CEOs and other
senior management executives at the
world’s top-tier service providers, includ-
ing some of the largest in Europe, provid-
ed insights that uncovered views and
forecasts for how CEOs will be running
their organizations in 2020.The local
industry believes collaborative styles will
be needed to allow service providers to
scale into the future.
Management styles are changing
The typical CEO of today has worked in
different countries, and has held at least
three different roles at their current
company. However, professional diversity
may not be enough to be effective in
2020. The survey found that in Europe,
100 percent of respondents who
expressed an opinion believe that current
CEO management styles need to change
for them to remain successful just five
years from now.
The local industry believes collaborative
styles will be needed to allow service
providers to scale into the future. This
means moving away from today’s favored
styles of visionary and pacesetting leader-
ship – in which the CEO is expected to
know where the company is
C-suite transformation
In Europe it’s not just CEO leadership
styles that will change. New areas of focus
and lines of business are already opening
new C-level opportunities. Respondents
felt that today, the most commonly added
roles hold responsibility for commercial
activities (first), and customer experience,
digital and people (tied second). Execu-
tives predicted that, in 2020, the most
commonly added role will still be for
customer experience (first), followed by
big data (second), digital (third), and
cloud (fourth).
Today’s C-suite team is likely to be the
breeding ground for future CEOs. So it’s
interesting that 64 percent of senior
executives in Europe believe that the CEO
in 2020 will most likely come from a CFO
background, implying that the former is
expected to drive innovation while
keeping the numbers right.
Roadblocks to success
The top barriers to Europe’s CEO success
by 2020 will be ‘no clear strategy’ (first)
and ‘lack of resources’ (second), ahead of
lack of ideas (third), and competition a
distant ninth. Reinforcing the need to
overcome the challenge of executing
innovative ideas, executives in Europe
believe that, by 2020, the most important
innovation skill the future CEO will have is
the ability to create organizational
structures that support innovation and
change.
So, it’s unsurprising that the region’s
senior executives plan to invest in
outsourcing strategies to supplement
internal resources in
support of innovation investment impera-
tives. In 2020, CEOs in Europe are most
likely to invest in customer experience
(first) and cloud services and networks
(tied second). To drive change, it is
believed that a blended approach of both
outsourcing and insourcing will be
required. For example, more than half are
expected to outsource at least some
support for cloud services (82 percent)
and digital services (64 percent).
In what has been termed ‘the new world
of customer experience’, customers
expect to be inspired and excited by a
constant drum of new services, delivered
in an intelligent manner through person-
alization and contextualization, and
shaped by a dynamic quality of experi-
ence, regardless of device or network. All
this needs to be accomplished in a
manner that accelerates business value
for the service provider, speeding up time
to market, optimizing business processes,
and reducing costs. As players continue to
consolidate, innovation is increasingly
challenged by back-end system complexi-
ty, impacting service providers ability to
deliver on customer expectations.
LUMINARY | 19
MANAGEMENT

LUMINARY | 20
Any manager who tells you that motivating the troops is the
first thing on his mind is lying. That’s because managing people
is never a job title and it’s rarely a priority. Like it or not, that’s
just the way it is.
While managers do have direct reports, their job is to manage a
function of some sort: marketing, finance, HR, product develop-
ment, operations, whatever. And that’s usually the way their
goals and priorities are written. Getting the job done is top of
mind. Managing people is not.
Don’t get me wrong. The best managers figure out how to walk
and chew gum at the same time. They know that the
hands-down most effective way of accomplishing their goals is
to figure out how to motivate their people to work together like
a well-oiled machine, so that is a priority. It’s just not the
priority.And while some do have a knack for getting their
folks so fired up they’ll work tirelessly and ask for more,
most don’t. They got promoted for their functional
ability, not because they’re good managers. Don’t
think of that as a bad thing; it’s just the way it is. Some
learn in time, others not so much. It’s just the natural
order of things.
In any case, if you manage talented people, or plan to
someday, it’s a good idea to understand what really excites them about
their work and what makes them proud to be part of a company. Granted,
everyone’s different, but most achievement-minded folks get off on more or
less the same things.
A CHANCE TO MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE
It’s funny to read about the importance of employee engagement and how Millennials
want jobs where they can have a big impact, like those are new concepts. They’re not. Those
same factors have motivated go-getters forever. I should know. I was once one of them.
A MERITOCRACY WHERE THEIR EFFORTS AND TALENTS ARE RECOGNIZED AND REWARDED
Those who reach for the stars can’t have limits on how high they can climb. Nobody ever
thinks about how former CEOs of Micron (Steve Appleton), Verizon (Ivan Seidenberg)
and so many others literally started at the bottom and worked their way up. It inspires
up-and-comers to know the opportunity is there.
EMPOWERMENT TO TAKE ON AS MUCH RESPONSIBILITY AS THEY CAN HANDLE
AND THE TOOLS TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR LOFTY GOALS
For overachievers, a little responsibility is a dangerous thing. It’s like a
gateway drug. They always want more. If you want them to stick
around and help your company to become wildly successful, be smart.
Don’t just give it to them; empower them to take the initiative and take
responsibility.
AN ENVIRONMENT THAT CHALLENGES THEM TO REACH NEW HEIGHTS
AND MENTORS TO HELP THEM DO IT
B e s i d e s responsibility, everyone who wants to go places in life wants a challenge. Once
the challenge is gone, they’ll be next. That’s why startups are such a big draw for success-oriented people. They get to be big fishes
in little ponds and wear lots of new hats. If nothing else, startups are characterized by constant challenges.
EXCEPTIONALLY COMPETENT AND DRIVEN MANAGERS WHO WORK HARDER THAN THEY DO
Few things are harder for hard-working employees to do than leaving the office while the boss is still there. Smart, ambitious people
love working for like-minded bosses who walk the talk.
A SUCCESSFUL, GROWING COMPANY THAT MAKES KILLER PRODUCTS CUSTOMERS LOVE
Everyone wants to work for a winner or at least a growing company with great prospects. Being the underdog is fine but you’ve got
to at least have a shot at making it. Even when Apple was down, folks loved to work there, but I bet they love to work there even more
now. There’s nothing like knowing you help make awesome products customers can’t live without.
A PIECE OF THE ACTION
What I’ve always loved about the culture of the technology industry is equity. I got my first stock bonus as a young engineer at Texas
Instruments and boy, did that motivate me. Nothing tells employees that you value them more than putting your money where your
mouth is in terms of ownership. It goes a long way.
While some of these tips are written for top executives with significant control over how organizations are structured and employees
rewarded, that’s OK. You may not be in the corner office today, but if you play your cards right, you never know. Just remember, if it
motivates you, it will motivate others like you.
WAYS TO MANAGE YOUR MOST
MOTIVATED AND TALENTED
EMPLOYEES

THE NAVITIMER 46 mm
A N I C O N J U S T G O T L A R G E R

LUMINARY | 23
COVER STORY
JEFF WEINER
CEO

LUMINARY | 24
LUMINARY: You write these wonderful essays on
management and being a CEO. One of the most popular
was your lesson that the pitcher never wants to come out of
the game. It’s your job as CEO, the manager, to come in
and say, “Sorry, I’m going to take you out and replace you.”
It’s obvious on the baseball field: you can’t hit the strike
zone. What does it look like in the office?
Jeff Weiner: Leaving the pitcher in the game is less about
the pitcher missing the strike zone. It’s more about the
arm tiring and the other team teeing off. If you remember
the American League World Championship with the Red
Sox — Pedro was up to the mound and it was very obvious
his arm was tiring. And the Yankees were starting to get
around on his fastball, and then the manager comes out
and says, “Are you OK?” and he says, “Of course I’m OK.”
It’s Pedro Martinez, one of the greatest pitchers in the
modern era. And hit after hit, the Red Sox lost the game.
I’ve been in business for roughly 20 years, and the entire
time I’ve been managing people, not a single person has
ever approached me and said, “I can’t do my job.” Not
once. So the key is knowing what to do proactively. I think
this is one we all learn the hard way, because we have the
best interest of people at heart. We’re always rooting for
people on our team. We also sometimes act, or don’t
act,out of fear. We’re fearful over what people will think if
we let that person go. We’re fearful of the morale hit. We’re
fearful of the unknown. So we all just look away. And it will
come back and bite you virtually every time.
And so when you have to ask yourself whether or not
someone’s doing the job the way you hope they’re going to
do the job, you already know the answer. And it’s been my
experience that at that moment you actually put them on
the clock. You do it in the most compassionate and most
constructive way you know how.But you give yourself and
you give that person some kind of timeline where you say:
“I’m going all in with you; I’m going all in. Here is where
I’ve observed the gap exists between your current perfor-
mance and what we need from you. And I’m going to be
transparent with you all the way.And if it doesn’t work out,
we’re gonna figure out another role for you here hopefully,
and if that doesn’t make sense, I’ll do everything I can to
make sure you’re successful elsewhere."
LUMINARY: So you say that you set aside 90 minutes a
day to think?
Jeff Weiner: Up to two hours, yes. If you were to see my
calendar printed out you would see these gray blocks, and
it’s not a mistake. It’s done very much by design.
LUMINARY: Does it say, "Thinking," "Jeff Time"?
Jeff Weiner: Jeff Time — it’s like the Seinfeld episode with
Jimmy! It says buffer. I think as we evolve, there are two
continuums that it’s very important we all navigate
successfully in order to help scale the business. One is the
difference between problem solving and coaching.
Problem solving is much easier than coaching. Coaching
takes a lot of energy. It’s exhausting, because you need to
understand what the person’s about, their strengths and
weaknesses, their hopes, dreams, and fears. And then you
have to deliver messages in such a way that’s tailor-made
for them so they can internalize it, and most importantly —
this is where true scale begins to happen — they can start
coaching people on their team to do it.
The other continuum is tactical execution vs. proactive,
strategic thinking. And again, you’re a smaller startup, it’s
all about building, it’s all about getting it done. Your
competitors are going to be waiting for a misstep; they are
waiting for you to become defocused. Thinking proactively
and thinking strategically and starting to revise or refine
your vision, your mission, your strategic objectives that
takes a lot of time. So that’s where a lot of my buffer time
goes.
LUMINARY: What are the most important strategic
decisions you've made to contribute to the success of the
company?
Jeff Weiner: One is defining the core of the company. I
remember we were in the process of recruiting our first
PROFESSIONAL
GRAPH OF LINKEDIN
Linkedin From Social Network To An All-in-one Public Resume Crafting
Service, Business Recruiting Tool And Content Platform.

LUMINARY | 25
independent board member and I was interviewing Leslie
Kilgore, who at the time was the CMO of Netflix. She
became our first independent board member.She's amaz-
ing. She said: "So tell me about LinkedIn. How do you
describe the company?"And I gave an answer and I
thought it was a pretty good answer. She said: "That
sounds pretty good, but that sounds like a lot of stuff. Let
me ask it a different way. If you could only build one $1
billion business, what would it be?" Came back to the
office, and I ended up on the whiteboard, and I drew a
target. And above the target I drew our core value proposi-
tion, which was connecting talent and opportunity at
massive scale. [Later, I said:] "Hiring solutions. Let's
make that our first $1 billion business." I think that was an
important decision.
LUMINARY: You are the highest-rated CEO. HIGHEST.
Way above all these other guys we read about all day long
at all these other companies that have even more, some-
times, visibility than you do. Do you have a CEO coach, or
did you?
Jeff Weiner: No.
LUMINARY: No?
Jeff Weiner: Just bear in mind, I never aspired to be a
CEO. Ever.
LUMINARY: So you were shocked when Reid Hoffman
said to you, "I would like you to be CEO."?
Jeff Weiner: I wasn't shocked. I just, growing up, I never
aspired to be a CEO. And when I was at Yahoo, I really
didn't aspire to be a CEO. And I especially didn't aspire to
be a public company CEO. There were things that I wanted
to do, I was very purpose driven, but I wasn't title driven.
LUMINARY: If you go back to Silicon Valley in the 1990s,
the wisdom was, “The crazy founder: sure they’re great to
get the prototype up and running, and maybe they get a
few sales and so forth, but then you bring in the profes-
sional CEO to run the place.” Now, thanks to Andreessen
Horowitz and others, the prevailing wisdom is, “No, you
keep the wacky, crazy founder as CEO and you hire a
Sheryl Sandberg to represent to the world that they’re not
quite so wacky and crazy.” You are a throwback to the
1990s because you didn’t actually found LinkedIn.
Jeff Weiner: Is that a compliment, or just an observation?
“You’re a throwback!”
LUMINARY: Yes! How do you look at that? Why does it
work so well?
Jeff Weiner: I don’t think there’s ever been an explicit
discussion about where we sit along that evolution. I think
it’s what worked best for us. And Reid is an extremely
bright guy — very, very thoughtful. I don’t think he likes to
make the same mistake twice. And before I got to Linke-
dIn, Reid had been the founder and the CEO, and then
hired the professional CEO. And they had a lot of mutual
respect for one another, but it was challenging because
Reid maintained the title of President of Product, report-
ing to the CEO, who then reported to Reid, who was the
Chairman and the Founder and the largest shareholder.
They liked each other quite a bit. But it was just a really
challenging situation.
Hear the full exchange on Reid Hoffman:
So the night before I started, I was interim president with
all the responsibilities of a CEO. The night before I started,
I called him and asked, “How is this going to work in terms
of decisions? You’re in title the CEO, the founder of the
company. I’m President. Which decisions would you like
to make; which decisions would you like me to make?” He
said, “This is very easy. It’s your ball, you run with it.”
That was the entire discussion. And he went further, so
this is a great example of how thoughtful Reid is. After I
started, for the first 8-10 weeks that I was at LinkedIn, he
LINKEDIN EMPLOYEES LOVE THEIR CEO FOR FOSTERING TRANSPARENCY

was out of the office for 6-8 weeks; he had scheduled travel.
Because he knew no matter what we explained to people, in
terms of my calling the shots, there was muscle memory there
and people would go back to him. I just have a lot of respect
for him and he's not only a mentor, he's become a very good
friend.
LUMINARY: A very simple question: Is being CEO funda
mentally different from being a manager?
Jeff Weiner: Yes. The more people you're responsible for, the
more your words and the way you communicate those words
and your body language and essentially everything you do is
taken into consideration by the team. You have to be that
much more aware of the way in which you're coming across.
And I think the best leaders maintain awareness of their
environment and in real time can course correct. It doesn't
matter if they're in a one-on-one, a staff meeting, an
all-hands, or speaking to thousands of people at a keynote.
They are always aware of the way they are being received.
They can course correct so they can ensure that what they're
saying is resonating and that it's bringing people together.
LUMINARY: One of the issues in the economy right now is
wages are at an all-time low, while CEOs, senior managers
and shareholders are making out like bandits.
Jeff Weiner: I'm smiling because you have been all over this
for years.
LUMINARY: And the average CEO pay now at Fortune 500
Companies has gone from 30 times the average employee to
350 times. You got a very nice raise last year — first of all, if
anybody deserves it, you deserve it. It is a huge number,
though. My question is: How do you decide what's fair?
Jeff Weiner: I think that's going to be different for every
individual. I think oftentimes when determining compensa-
tions for people, I think you have to draw upon your own
experience, I think you have to draw upon.
Jeff Weiner is an American business-
man CEO of LinkedIn, a businessrelat-
ed social networking website. He
started with LinkedIn in December
2008 as Interim President.
Weiner graduated from The Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylva-
nia in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science
in Economics. Weiner served in
various leadership roles at Yahoo for
over seven years beginning in 2001,
most recently as the Executive Vice
President at Yahoo's Network Divi-
sion. As EVP ofYahoo, he led a team of
over 3,000 employees, managing
products reaching over 500 million
consumers. While serving Yahoo’s
Network Division, he was part of the
Search leadership team that directed
the acquisition and integration of
Inktomi, AltaVista, and FAST as well as
the development of Yahoo Search
Technology.
He has worked at Warner Bros. as Vice
President of Warner Bros. Online,
developing its initial business plan.
He was an Executive-in-Residence for
leading venture capital firms Accel
Partners and Greylock Partners.
In 2011 Weiner and Reid Hoffman
were the U.S. Overall winners of the
EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award
In 2014, Weiner was recognized by
LinkedIn employees via Glassdoor's
annual survey as among "the top 10
CEOs at U.S Tech Companies".
Weiner is also active in the non-profit
sector, serving on the Board of Direc-
tors of donorschoose.org and Malaria
No More
PORTFOLIO IN BRIEF:
LUMINARY | 26

LUMINARY | 29
RAISING MONEY TO
SUPPORT A GREAT
IDEA?
CONSIDER FORMING AN
ADVISORY BOARD
BY MICAH JOHNSON
FINANCE
RAISING MONEY
TO SUPPORT
A GREAT IDEA?
Sometimes, a great idea can run away
from you if it becomes an immediate
success -- especially if you do not
have the proper plan in place to meet
that instant demand for your product.
After seven years running a service
business that helps large organiza-
tions with multiple locations manage
social media and online reputation,
my company and I decided to make a
leap into the mobile app world. I took
the largest problem that didn’t have a
solution -- one we run into on a daily
basis -- and sketched out what a
mobile app might look like to solve it.
Distributing the sketches to our
internal team helped me further
refine the idea and overall direction
of the app. With that refinement in
place, I built a few Photoshop
mock-ups, a sales presentation and
started test marketing it to our
current clients.
The initial results were in. The
existing clients loved the concept. We
took the development one step
further and started building a beta
version. One that would allow us to
demo the app firsthand to anyone
who was interested. This is where
things got a little crazy. We set up a
no-frills booth at an automotive trade
show to demo an experience with our
initial beta version of the app. The
auto industry is our biggest no-brain-
er target industry. During the
two-day show, we ended up being one
of the most trafficked booths and had
a total of 400 dealerships interested
in using our app.
At the same time, our test marketing
was
spreading and, in total, we identified
three industries that our app would
work perfectly for, easily generating a
high demand in all of them.
The problem? We didn’t have an
app ready for that demand
At first we thought, “Let’s raise some
capital! We can increase our develop-
ment
team size and get this app built pronto!”
However, as we reached out to potential
investors, a few things became clear:
• We need money, yes. But at what cost?
• We need more insight and connec-
tions into our target industries.
• We don’t need dumb money, we need
a strategic investor that can provide
these insights and connections.
Enter the advisory board
By building an advisory board, we’re
accomplishing a few things right away:
• We are making connections in the
major industries where we want
strong market share.
• We giving incentive to our advisors to
help us grow the business.
• We are leveraging advisors that have
connections to smart capital and can
be introduced through them as a
third-party instead of seeking capital
directly.
the solution to the problem and can
build
an app to solve that solution, there is
still a lot of knowledge we do not
possess. Initial discussions with poten-
tial advisors have already refined our
revenue model and shaped the way
we’re thinking about the rollout. This
kind of information is extremely
valuable and helps us stay leaps ahead of
any competition
Start building your advisory board
• Define the objective you want your
advisory board to fulfill.
• Build your dream list of people you’d
like on your advisory board. As tempt-
ing as it is to ask buddies, it’s ideal to
have a mix of representatives with
experience in your target industries
and the capital world. Left and right
brains should help dissuade too much
conformity.
• Contact every person on your wish list
with an individualized pitch. Whether
it’s a direct ask to be an advisor or
some serious wooing, do your best to
get them as excited about the offering
as you are.
• Set the expectations for board mem-
bers such as meeting frequency,
bringing solutions with problems,
honesty, transparency, etc.
• Establish the compensation (options,
stipend, travel, meals, etc.)
• Create an advisory board contract that
keeps everyone on the same page with
expectations, term, compensation and
confidentiality.
Finally, we don’t want to dread meetings
with our advisory board. Hopefully these
tips will help you avoid that too.

Switzerland’s financial regulatory body
Finma has recently set out plans to
strengthen the country’s banking
regulations, including an increase in
various different capital requirements.
Since then, however, the head of the
body has stated that the country’s two
biggest banks – Credit Suisse and UBS
– would be forced to further increase
their capital requirements.
The regulatory requirements
announced in mid-October will bring
total capital requirement based on
risk-weighted assets will also rise from
19 percent to 28.6 percent. The new
rules will also require what banks hold
of their exposures in going and gone
concern capital to rise from less than
five percent to 10 percent. New
requirement for loss absorbing capital
were also announced as part of the
plan, meaning taxpayers should not
have to bailout financial
that the rate would be at around 5.5 to six
percent.
Switzerland’s economy is heavily skewed
towards its banking sector, leading
to concerns that of the impact of
another financial crisis. The
country’s banking monoliths were
heavily hit by the 2008 financial
crisis, after losing large amounts on
mortgage loans.
institutions should any new crash arise
in the future. Further, Switzerland’s
leverage ratio closer will be brought in
line with global banking standards, at
around five percent. The UK currently
has a ratio of four percent, while the
US’S sits at around five percent.
However, according to Mark Branson,
Chief Executive of Finma, the leverage
ratio will rise even further if the
country’s banking giants expand their
size further. “If the size were to
expand, the capital requirement would
gradually rise,” Mr Branson said in an
interview, suggesting
LUMINARY | 30
Switzerland’s biggest banks to face more stringent regulations
Reliance on the financial sector has led Switzerland to introduce tough new regulations. UBS and Credit Suisse
could see these become even stricter if they increase their market share
BY MARK BRANSON, CEO FINMA
“Switzerland’s economy is
heavily skewed towards its
banking sector, leading to
concerns that of the
impact of another finan-
cial crisis”
“Once you go over certain
thresholds, you come into
the next bucket”

‘Company to be restructured’, ‘everything to be put to
the test’, ‘restructuring necessary’ – companies that
appear in the press under such headlines often have a
hard, uphill struggle ahead of them. Nevertheless,
such news also has its good side. The crisis-stricken
company is taking action – trying to turn the boat
around by means of a restructuring programme.
Restructuring processes can be initiated either
internally or externally. Internal initiators may be the
LUMINARY | 35
FINANCE
executives (chairpersons, managing directors), the
supervisory bodies (supervisory or advisory board
members) or the owners (partners, shareholders).
The basis for this is that the instruments required for
detecting a crisis at an earlier stage are in place. As
regards corporate planning requirements, the legal
system only includes rudimentary rules. However, the
requirements grow sharply with the onset of insolven-
cy. It is, therefore, up to the stakeholders to lay down
RESTRUCTURE BEFORE
IT’STOOLATEMANY COMPANIES GET BAD PRESS WHEN THEY ANNOUNCE THEY ARE TO RESTRUCTURE - BUT SUCH REORGANISATION CAN BE A VERY POSITIVE STEP
THEEARLIERACOMPANYADMITSACRISIS,THEGREATERTHECHANCES
OFATURNAROUND.STILL,MANYONLYACTWHENIT’STOOLATE

LUMINARY | 36
MANY COMPANIES GET INTO DIRE STRAITS AS A
RESULT OF PLANNING WITHOUT EARLY WARNING
SYSTEMS
The conventional external initiators of restructuring
processes are lending banks. On account of the provi-
sions in loan agreements (e.g. covenants) and banking
supervisory regulations relating to risk exposure,
banks only reach positive loan decisions if the
borrower has proof of restructuring capabilities.
However, while banks were previously reliable initia-
tors of turnarounds – on account of harsh banking
supervisory regulations – restructuring measures are
now often initiated inconsistently or too late. One
reason for this is that it is possible to resell non-per-
forming loans. This means that restructuring process-
es are no longer subject to banking supervisory
regulations. Therefore, in more and more cases,
investors will have the task of initiating and main-
taining restructuring processes, since merely
continuing business as usual will not create any
added value in the long run.
FINANCIAL AND STRUCTURAL REORGANIZATION
But what does restructuring actually mean in
practice? Just as in the field of medicine, there are
two approaches – you can combat the short-term
symptoms or eliminate the causes of the illness over a
long period of time. Intervention from outside is
financial reorganization. This involves contributions
from creditors and equity capital providers as a
means of improving balance-sheet ratios. This can
include deferment of payments, forfeiture of claims
by creditors, and conversion of liabilities to shares.
An alternative could also be a reduction in share
capital.
Completely different instruments are used in a struc-
tural reorganisation, which entails restructuring the
entire enterprise internally. This means changing
production and distribution processes, reorganising
departments such as purchasing and operations, and
reorienting the company’s strategy.
In practice, the financial aspects often have greater
clout. Without any doubt, the best thing that creditors
and owners can do to ease the financial situation in a
crisis is to sit down at one table. However, experience
shows that such measures alone are often insufficient.
Many a long-established company has once more
been in the headlines just a few years after a suppos-
edly successful financial reorganisation. The decisive
reason for this is that, although these companies had
less debt and fresh capital, they were still working
with the same structures and a strategy that was only
gradually changing.
ELIMINATING THE CAUSE
The main goal of restructuring is to eliminate the
causes of the crisis. All measures are taken to ensure
that a company will once more become competitive
and generate a return which is normal for the respec-
tive sector. Analysing causes is often a laborious task,
since they are usually a combination of out-of-date
production methods, entrenched distribution
channels, a neglected control system and other
factors. Only those who have the courage to leave
familiar paths and reorganise structurally can get
back on the road to success on a long-term basis.
Without the help of external advisors, such an analy-
sis often gets bogged down halfway to its goal. And
even during the following implementation phase, it is
easier for an external advisor to ease old structures
away and modernise an enterprise.
Restructuring only bears fruit after some time, when
new processes take effect, new products are launched
and new distribution channels are well established. It
is not possible to restructure an enterprise compre-
hensively within quarter of a year; the impact of a
reorganisation based on structural criteria is only
noticeable in the following quarters. The ability to
implement efficiently is of crucial significance to the
success of the restructuring programme.
THE PERFECT PLAN
Integrated corporate planning is crucial to the success
of a restructuring programme. Up until now, it has
often been the case that a plan was not devised until a
crisis occurred. Many companies get into dire straits
as a result of planning based on nothing but their own
viewpoint, without deploying modern planning and
early warning systems. The consequences are fatal –
they recognise earnings and liquidity risks too late,
come under time pressure, and can only concentrate
on financial reorganization.
Those who are really serious about restructuring their
enterprise cannot avoid looking at integrated
suitable rules in the company’s memorandum and
articles of association, management guidelines or
information regimes, so that the causes of a crisis can
be recognised well in advance.

LUMINARY | 37
FINANCE
planning. This means linking various plans for areas
such as sales, investments and staff, and transferring
them to an integrated earnings, assets and liquidity
plan. Only when all essential reciprocal influences
have been included in the plan can a reliable and
objective-oriented result be achieved. The degree of
detail, as well as the organisation and intensity of the
plan, depends on such factors as the company’s size
and complexity. What » is decisive in this respect is
that the objectives are precisely defined and that a
specific plan of action (that can be monitored) is
devised.
FLEXIBILITY WITHOUT RED TAPE
Companies in a crisis have many options for action –
this not only applies to an out-of-court turnaround,
but also to insolvency proceedings under the supervi-
sion of a court.
The US has been a role model in this respect for many
years. If a US company is threatened by insolvency,
they can file for insolvency proceedings pursuant to
Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. The debtor is
then granted protection from creditors for a limited
period of time, so that restructuring measures can be
implemented. A company is allowed to continue
business operations during such proceedings, in
accordance with US insolvency law. Moreover, as a
rule, a restructuring concept is devised together with
creditors and examined by the insolvency court. The
management may then apply for further loans to help
them to get back on their feet. New creditors have
priority above all over other lenders.
England is also well known for the flexible options that
the country’s insolvency law allows restructuring
companies, without too much red tape. Two options
from the variety of proceedings offered by English
insolvency law are administration and company
voluntary arrangements (CVA). A CVA is a kind of
out-of-court settlement agreement between the credi-
tors and the debtor company.
ABUNDANT ALTERNATIVES
In countries like France and Germany, governments
have adapted their insolvency law to the Anglo-Saxon
model and, by doing so, have given restructuring
efforts a lot more weight. In Germany, the Law on
Further Facilitating the Restructuring of Companies
(ESUG) came into effect in March 2012. Obviously,
the objective is to make it easier to turn around
companies in a crisis. This can be achieved by in-court
restructuring proceedings without an insolvency
administrator, such as debtor-in-possession and
protective shield proceedings. This means that the
previous management is allowed to lead the company
through the crisis itself – in each case supervised by an
independent custodian and generally supported by a
restructuring expert with insolvency experience.
This is a good idea in principle. However, up until
now, a large number of ESUG reorganisations have
failed. In reality, one in four proceedings in Germany
ends in ordinary insolvency. The decisive reason for
this is insufficient preparation and lack of time. Ideal-
ly, a restructuring concept will already have been
devised in advance and can provide a basis for a
feasible turnaround plan. Anybody who begins from
scratch on the day the application is submitted has
very little chance of devising a convincing plan, in view
of the complexity of the proceedings. In such cases, it
is often only the deployment of outside experts that
can help.
THE VALUE OF EXPERTISE
Business law firms are the right restructuring
partners, provided they have a good feeling for
business and the ability to implement efficiently. Only
then is it possible to create an integrated corporate
plan, a due diligence review and restructuring
concepts, as well as to manage M&A processes. At the
same time, law firms already know prior to insolvency
what is crucial in a worst-case scenario.
ABOUT PLUTA
The company was founded in Ulm in southern Germ
ny, more than 30 years ago. PLUTA is an expert in
restructuring and turning around companies that have
been affected by a crisis or insolvency. The law firm
concentrates on legal advice and insolvency adminis-
tration, together with consultation on and implemen-
tation of restructuring programmes. With more than
35 appointed insolvency administrators and over 330
employees in more than 40 offices in Germany, Italy,
Spain and Poland, PLUTA has been one of the leading
restructuring companies for many years.
The insolvency and restructuring business has become
global like every other business activity. Enterprises
have branches, customers or suppliers outside their
own borders, so require cross-border advice. The
international network BTG Global Advisory, of which
PLUTA is a member, will in future increase its efforts
to offer international services for cross-border restruc-
turing. The network used to focus on insolvency
administration, but nowadays important pre-insol-
vency restructuring has been added to the range of
services.
BTG Global Advisory covers wide parts of Europe,
North America and Asia. This year, newcomers to the
network included GlassRatner Advisory & Capital
Group in the US, as well as Rodgers Reidy with
headquarters in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and
New Zealand. Farber Financial Group in Canada,
Begbies Traynor in the UK, and Integrated Capital
Services in India have all been members of the
network for several years now. PLUTA supports the
network from its offices in Germany, Italy, Spain and
Poland.

SUCCESS WILL BE WHEN THERE’S A VOWS COLUMN
WITH TWO PEOPLE WHO MET HERE,
THAT’S MY DREAM, THAT’S COMMUNITY
LUMINARY | 39
Portfolio in brief: Jake Schwartz 36 year old
Co-Founder and CEO of General Assembly (GA),
the tech education company based in New York with
13 campuses worldwide.
Jake Schwartz grew up in Oregon, and had an early
love of music. Switching from violin to fiddle to
guitar, he found that music developed his thinking
and communication styles, a tool which came in
handy later as CEO of General Assembly, the compa-
ny behind the learning facilities of the same name.
The company offers online and in-person courses and
workshops in business related tools such, as market-
ing, design, product development,
and data science. Under his leadership, General
Assembly has scaled to nine cities (Berlin, Boston)
Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, San
Francisco, Sydney, and Washington, D.C.) in less than
three years, working with more than 70,000 students
along the way.
Prior to founding General Assembly, Jake worked for
Associated Partners, a multistage private equity firm
focused on telecommunications, media, and technolo-
gy. He has a B.A. in American studies from Yale
University and earned an MBA with honors from The
Wharton School. Schwartz, 35, is based in New York
City.
TOGETHER WE’RE CREATING
A WORLD OF INNOVATION
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
CEO and Co-Founder General Assembly
INNOVATION AT GLANCE
Jake Schwartz
Q&A

LUMINARY | 41
LUMINARY: Which technology sector excites
you most?
Jake Schwartz: I think self-driving cars are going to
change how we live in fundamental ways and radically
alter the real estate market. Sociologists talk about how
the Interstate and the car are what created suburbs and
sprawl. Once you don’t have to drive, all sorts of neigh-
borhoods, towns, and lifestyles become attractive.
LUMINARY: Is business school necessary for
entrepreneurs?
Jake Schwartz: We get that question often at General
Assembly because you could argue that business school
is something we’re trying to disrupt. And it’s tricky
because I’m also an MBA [graduate] from Wharton. I
definitely use all the knowledge and experience I gained
to run GA now that we’re 200-plus person company, but
I’m not sure how useful it was when we were getting
started. I think if GA had been around when I was in my
20s, I wouldn’t have needed to go to Wharton at all.
LUMINARY: What is the best advice you ever
received?
Jake Schwartz: Howard Schultz once told me that if he
could go back, the one thing he’d do differently at
Starbucks was “hire the best HR person and give them a
seat at the table.” That resonated with me in a huge way,
and so I went back to GA and did just that. We hired our
amazing Chief People Person, Jill Maguire-Ward. She’s a
C-level executive, and she’s involved in all the major
decisions at the company. It has literally changed our
company’s course, and I don’t think we’d have been able
to scale past 200 employees without her.
LUMINARY: What is one goal that you would
like to accomplish during your lifetime?
Jake Schwartz: When I was a little kid, my dad would
read me science fiction books about interstellar travel,
and it’s had a huge impact on me. I really want to be able
to go up in space with him while we’re both still alive.
LUMINARY: What was your biggest missed
opportunity?
Jake Schwartz: I almost started a crowd-funding
business in early 2007, before Kickstarter or any of those
companies took off. I saw the trend and could have
ridden the wave, but I chickened out. It’s a great lesson in
taking the leap when you see something like that coming.
LUMINARY: What do you do to live a balanced
life?
Jake Schwartz: I’m not sure I do live a balanced life. I
try to read novels, work out, hang out with my girlfriend;
things like that. But GA is a huge part of my life, and I’m
glad that it is. That was what I set out to have my work be
— a core passion and calling — and so I’m happy that it’s
almost all-encompassing.
LUMINARY: What was your first job?
Jake Schwartz: I worked as a tour manager for a
singer-songwriter I knew who had a record deal in the
late ’90s. It was awesome. I drove, met a lot of interesting
characters, and sometimes I got to run the soundboard.
Being in the music business is the ultimate entrepre-
neurial experience — nothing happens if you don’t make
it happen, and so you have to be a hustler. It makes
GA THE WORLD’S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANY OF 2015 IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR, GA IS
RECOGNIZED “FOR TEACHING THE SKILLS WORKERS NEED NOW.”
Q&A

LUMINARY | 42
Silicon Valley startups look easy.
LUMINARY: What do you do for fun?
Jake Schwartz: I’m always trying to learn a new musi-
cal instrument. I’ve tried to learn the banjo a few times,
and right now I’m working on it again. It’s hard, but it’s
so different than my work that I find it really relaxing.
LUMINARY: What is one unique or quirky habit
that you have?
Jake Schwartz: Ask anyone on my team and I’m sure
they’ll have a laundry list. One of the biggest is I’ve been
on a no-carb diet, off and on, for several years, and it’s
still a daily struggle. Sugar is like crack [cocaine] for me,
and so it’s better if I completely abstain.
LUMINARY: If you could have one superpower,
what would it be?
Jake Schwartz: I’d love to be like [X-Men leader]
Professor Xavier and have telepathic abilities. It would
make running a company way easier.
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of
this story described General Assembly as a series of
WE DON’T USE THE WORD ‘UNIVERSITY’ BECAUSE IT’S A LITTLE PRETENTIOUS,” HE SAID.
“WE WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE PRACTICAL
“coworking-meets-learning facilities.” The company no
longer offers coworking.
LUMINARY: Why so successful?
Jake Schwartz: “Persistence and resilience. There
have been so many times where taking an entrepreneur-
ial path felt like the difficult, unsafe and risky way to go.
It was my persistence that allowed me to overcome the
uncertainty. I literally couldn’t get it out of my head.”
LUMINARY: No. 1 role model?
Jake Schwartz: Richard Barth, CEO of KIPP and GA
board member: “He is an incredible individual, manager
and leader. I hope to someday be even close to as good as
he is”
Luminary: we went to take a portrait of him reclining in
his pod and he straightened up — “I’m supposed to start
looking like a CEO,” he said, laughing.
“Success will be when there’s a Vows column
with two people who met here,” he said. “That’s
my dream. That’s community.”
He said universities have been intentionally slow to
teach practical skills. On this he was animated.
“There’s something relgious about it — when we think of
college, we think robes, gothic — like a church. These
diplomas look like indulgences,” he said. “Universities
are selling salvation in way more of a symbolic than
actual way.”

TECHNOLOGY
FOUR REASONS TO BE EXHILARATEDABOUT TECH INNOVATION
echnology is advancing at a much
faster pace today than it was 26
years ago. The progress we will
experience in the next five to 10 years will
definitely out-measure that of the last five
to 10 years. We are just around the bend
from life- and world-changing technolo-
gies we can’t yet imagine.
Here are four reasons to be really excited
about tech innovation, which is
transforming everything:
1.TECH FOSTERS COLLABORATION
AND CONNECTEDNESS.
Technology is blamed
for causing less commu-
nication and connection
between people.
Although innovations
like smartphones and
social media were built
with the intention of
bringing people closer
together, in many ways
they have done just the
opposite.
We are constantly on our
phones, missing out on
face-to-face interactions
and distracting us from
what’s happening in the
moment. In fact, people
between the ages of 18
and 36 check their
smartphones an average
of 43 times per day,
according to research
published by SDL in 2014.
But as technology becomes more
advanced and more integrated into our
lives via the internet of things, we will
become more connected and social than
ever before. There will no longer be
physical blocks that we carry around and
stare at while dining, chatting or working.
Everything will be seamless and integrat-
ed, which will yield unbelievable collabo-
ration and connectedness.
2. TECH IS IMPROVING MEDICAL
CARE AND HEALTH
Innovations in technology are radically
changing the way healthcare is delivered
and monitored. Smartphones, tablets and
wearables are increasingly being used and
are allowing patients to take control of
their own health.
After all, seven in 10 U.S. adults already
track at least one health indicator such as
weight, diet or a symptom of a condition,
according to a 2013 survey from Pew
Research. In this new system, healthcare
is evolving to become proactive rather
than reactive, allowing patients to poten-
tially catch and treat problems earlier.
In addition, technology allows treatment
to become more individualized. Those
with rare and specific illnesses, disabili-
ties and injuries will benefit from new
technology and the tailored treatments
theyallow.Providers,hospitalsandhealth
systems can personalize and track
treatment plans to better fit the needs of
individual patients, and patients can
personalize their exercise regimens, diets
and health goals.
Not to mention that advances in science
and technology are ushering in a new era
of medical research that will likely cure
many diseases in the coming decade or
two.
Health tech and biotech have the power to
transform the lives of millions, if not
billions, of people in the not-too-distant
future.
3. TECH INCREASES THE ABUN-
DANCE OF RESOURCES.
Technology is being used to spread food,
wealth and other resources around the
world. Agritech innovations are aiming to
increase the amount of water and food
supplies, as well as their quality. Crowd-
funding websites are allowing charities to
better connect with communities around
the world, to raise the funds they need.
Innovations are
allowing medicines
and vaccines to be
created and distribut-
ed at lower cost,
increasing access to
necessary treatments
around the world.
Technology will show
where the greatest
needs are and then
help to alleviate them.
With the help of new
innovations in
technology, poverty,
hunger and disease
will decrease tremen-
dously in the coming
decades.
4. TECH GIVES US
MORE TIME
Technology is increas-
ingly eliminating jobs. The workforce is
being automated, and robots can
perform many jobs more efficiently
than humans can -- and this will contin-
ue at an exponential rate.
As more and more jobs are automated,
and resources become abundant, we
will have more time to grow our
intellects and our hearts. We can focus
on the arts, obtain knowledge and
personally grow and help others. We
will live less by the sweat of our brow,
and more by the inspiration of the mind
and heart.
LUMINARY | 45

TECH STARTUPS ARE PRODDING THE DINOSAUR
That Is the Insurance Industry
Here’s a sentence you don’t read every day: Insurance is so hot
right now.
Entrepreneurs and investors have finally woken up to the
opportunity in the insurance industry. At $831.5 million,
investment in insurance tech this year is already up nearly 10
times what it was in 2010.
The opportunity has been staring entrepreneurs and investors
in the face for years. The first insurance companies in the U.S.
were started in the 1700s, and that cottage industry has
grown into one of the biggest markets and sources of capital
in the world. Premiums in the U.S. insurance industry total
around $1 trillion, or approximately 7 percent of gross domes-
tic product. On top of that, insurance companies invest nearly
$7 trillion in assets.
And here’s the kicker about all that insurance money -- it’s
generated by millions of agents, with lots of paper, in process-
es that look much the same way they did 30 years ago.
In my previous life as a McKinsey consultant, I advised the top
insurance companies on projects that were, at their core,
incremental. They were always about increasing the produc-
tivity of the agent-based sales force, or improving the efficien-
cy of paper-based claims operations. In other words, what I
was doing was putting the dinosaur on a diet and prodding it
with a stick. What needed to be done was bring a whole new
breed of animal into the insurance game.
So I left McKinsey in 2013 to do just that and started a digital
consumer insurance company, PolicyGenius. At PolicyGenius,
we want to do for consumer insurance what TurboTax did for
taxes: Make a complex and intimidating financial task easy
enough to do it yourself online.
While raising seed capital for my insurance tech company last
year, the most common question I got from prospective
investors was, “Why is now the right time for tech to disrupt
insurance?”The obvious answer for those unfamiliar with the
insurance industry is the Affordable Care Act, which was
signed into law in 2010. The law created exactly the kind of
macro shakeup that attracts entrepreneurs. Indeed, since
2010, 56 percent of all insurance tech startups are focused on
LUMINARY | 46
JENNIFER FITZGERALD
CONTRIBUTOR
CEO and Co-Founder of PolicyGenius

health insurance, either delivering new employer brokerage
models (Liazon, Zenefits, Benefitter), new consumer broker-
age models (Gravie, Stride Health) or even new health
insurance (Oscar). These startups are pushing the brick-and
mortar incumbents to deliver better services and providing
much-needed options to consumers.
Beyond the Affordable Care Act, there are other forces at work
that have opened the floodgates, allowing creative entrepre-
neurs to reshape the insurance industry more broadly. These
are the market disruptions I see:
1. THE END OF AN ERA
Americans used to rely on their employers for retirement
security. After 20 years of service, you’d get a gold watch and a
pension to fund your sunset years.Then, in the 1980s, growing
pension costs and a legislative change replaced the corporate
pension with the 401(k) and gave rise to the modern retail
investment and retirement industry.
That shift -- from employer to consumer responsibility -- is
exactly what’s about to happen to insurance. Employer-spon-
sored insurance is the legacy of an IRS ruling after World War II
that allowed employers to deduct employee health insurance
as a business expense and employees to receive that benefit
as nontaxable income. Sixty years later, we have a sprawling
and bloated system, where the extra employer layer adds
billions of dollars of cost and empowers employers to make
intrusive decisions about their employees’ healthcare. Add to
that, the cost of health insurance premiums growing at four
times inflation and workers changing employers far more
often than they did 60 years ago, and you have a system that’s
going to break.
The cracks are already showing. The number of workers at
small and medium-sized companies who get employer-spon-
sored health insurance has steadily declined since 2000. The
CEO of Aetna has called for the creative destruction of health-
care and taking the employer out of the health insurance
equation. Startups that can effectively step into that employer
insurance void, the same way companies like Fidelity and
Schwab stepped into the employer pension void, will enjoy a
massive opportunity.
2. A CHANGING WORKFORCE
It’s no secret that the workforce is rapidly changing. The
average worker changes employers every 4.6 years. And, more
disruptively for insurance, more workers are finding
themselves outside the typical employer relationship. Spurred
by on-demand services like Uber and countless “Uber for X”
startups, freelancers and independent contractors are project-
ed to grow from 42 million people to 65 million in the next 5
years.
These workers need individual insurance (like health, disabili-
ty and life) and business insurance (liability and property).
Insurance companies, and the traditional insurance agent
model, are ill-suited to serve the self-employed and provide
them with the advice and products they need to financially
protect themselves and their families.
Ask 100 freelancers how they navigate the insurance maze
and they’ll all say same thing -- with tremendous difficulty.
Easing that difficulty for them represents a tremendous
opportunity.
3. AN AGING SALES FORCE
Most insurance in the U.S. is still sold by human agents, same
as it’s always been. But it won’t be for long. The average age of
an insurance agent in the U.S. is 59, and one-fourth of the
industry’s workforce is expected to retire by 2018. In other
words, insurance companies are standing on a burning
platform. And they’re already starting to feel the heat.
For example, life insurance ownership is at a 50-year low, not
because the need has changed -- in fact there’s a $20 trillion
life insurance gap, but because the agent sales channel can’t
reach the modern financial consumer. To their credit,
insurance companies realize this reality, but the fact of the
matter is that they can’t move as fast as startups can. So
they’re investing in startups.
Insurance companies have dramatically increased their direct
investments in tech startups to the tune of $1.8 billion since
2010. Much of this investment has gone to the first waves of
financial technology:lending (Prosper) and wealth manage-
ment (Learnvest, Betterment). But talk to any insurance
company directly investing in startups, and you’ll learn that
they’re hammers in search of nails, that is, smart entrepre-
neurs tackling the fundamental problems in insurance.
4. UNMET NEED
Finally, and most importantly for a mission-driven company,
there is a tremendous unmet need for insurance in the U.S.
According to a recent survey by the Federal Reserve, 47
percent of households couldn’t cover an emergency expense
of $400. Insurance is intended to fill in this savings void for
unpredictable emergencies. However, too many Americans
have low savings and inadequate insurance, which leads to
financial disaster. For example, health problems and disability
contributed to half of all home foreclosure filings and over 60
percent of all personal bankruptcy filings. It’s not easy or sexy
to sell insurance to middle America, but it’s an important
problem to solve -- and the first company to do it will be huge.
These are the tailwinds that made me excited about insurance
tech two years ago and which continue to drive my company
forward. We recently closed a $5.3 million Series A round,
which included the participation of insurance companies’
venture arms, including AXA Strategic Ventures and Transa-
merica Ventures. We, and our insurance partners, are excited
to make insurance the next big thing in tech.
LUMINARY | 47
TECHNOLOGY

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REAL-LIFE 'TRACTOR BEAM' CAN LEVITATE
OBJECTS USING SOUND WAVES
t may seem straight out of "Star Trek," but it's real: Scien-
tists have created a sonic "tractor beam" that can pull,
push and pirouette objects that levitate in thin air.
The sonic tractor beam relies on a precisely timed
sequence of sound waves that create a region of low
pressure that traps tiny objects that can then be manipulated
solely by sound waves, the scientists said in a new study.
Though the new demonstration was just a proof of concept,
the same technique could be adapted to remotely manipu-
late cells inside the human body or target the release of
medicine locked in acoustically activated drug capsules, said
study co-author Bruce Drinkwater, a mechanical engineer at
the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
LEVITATING OBJECTS
In the past, scientists have used everything from laser beams
to super conducting magnetic fields to levitate objects. And
in 2014, researchers at the University of Dundee in Scotland
showed that acoustic holograms that act like a tractor beam
could theoretically suck in objects.
"They really just showed the force was there; they weren't
able to grab or pull anything," Drinkwater said.
The principle behind the new system is simple: Sound
waves, which are waves of high and low pressure that travel
through a medium such as air, produce force.
"We've all experienced the force of sound — if you go to a
rock concert, not only do you hear it, but you can some-
times feel your innards being moved," Drinkwater told Live
Science. "It's a question of harnessing that force."
By tightly orchestrating the release of these sound waves, it
should be possible to create a region with low pressure that
effectively counteracts gravity, trapping an object in
midair. If the object tries to move left, right, up or down,
higher-pressure zones around the object nudge it back into
its low-pressure, quiet zone.
But figuring out the exact pattern of sound waves to create
this tractor force is difficult, scientists say; the mathematical
equations governing its behavior can't be solved with a pen
and paper.
REVERSE-ENGINEERED FORCE FIELD
Researchers recently created an acoustic hologram, or a 3D sound field projected onto a 2D space, which can be used as acoustic tweezers,
cages and twisters that manipulate objects as they levitate in air.
Credit: Image courtesy of Asier Marzo, Bruce Drinkwater and Sriram Subramanian © 2015
LUMINARY | 49
TECHNOLOGY

So Drinkwater, his Ph.D. student Asier Marzo and
other colleagues ran computer simulations
through myriad different patterns of sound waves
to find the ones that produced the signature
combination of a low-pressure region surrounded
by high-pressure zones.
They found three different acoustic force fields that
can twirl, grab and manipulate objects. One works
like tweezers and seems to grab the particles in
thin air. Another traps the object in a high-pressure
cage. The third type of force field acts a bit like a
swirling tornado, with a rotating high-pressure
field surrounding a low-pressure, quiet "eye" that
holds the object in place, the researchers reported.
To accomplish this task, the team used a tiny array
of 64 mini loudspeakers, made by a company called
Ultrahaptics, that produce exquisitely timed sound
waves with accuracy to the microsecond level. Past
acoustic levitation systems have used two or four
arrays of these transducers to essentially surround
the system, but the researchers' models allowed
them to create the same force field using just one
array. The team demonstrated their tractor beam
using tiny balls of polystyrene, the same material
used in packing peanuts.
WAVELENGTH AND INTENSITY
The size of the low-force region depends on the
wavelength: The longer the wavelength, the larger
the region of low pressure. The sound intensity
determines the maximum density of an object that
can be pushed and pulled by the acoustic force,
Drinkwater said.
In this instance, the sound waves operate between
140 and 150 decibels. That would be an ear-split-
ting volume if people could hear it, but the sound
waves operate at 40 kilohertz, at a wavelength of
about 0.4 inches (1 centimeters), well above the
human hearing range but audible to dolphins and
dogs.
"I think, if you pointed this device at a dog, it would
hear it for sure," Drinkwater said. "It wouldn't like it;
it would run away."
The team currently levitates lightweight polysty-
rene balls that measure up to 0.2 inches (5 millime-
ters) across. But for the system to be useful for
medical operations, the team would need to minia-
turize it to manipulate objects on the micron scale.
Doing so would mean using higher-frequency
sound waves — a relatively simple tweak, Drinkwa-
ter said.
"The fact that we do it as a one-sided system is so
important," Drinkwater said. "To get at the body,
you have to apply it to one side."
LUMINARY | 50

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THE 6 MOST COMMON INNOVATION
MISTAKES COMPANIES MAKE
Because innovation is a system-level
problem, a point solution – trying to drive
widespread change by doing a single thing –
is wholly ineffective. It is equivalent to
attempting to turnaround a failing school
plagued by disinterested students,
overwhelmed teachers, and crumbling
infrastructure by painting the walls blue.
Soothing, perhaps, but unlikely to have any
real impact. Here are the six most common
innovation mistakes to avoid.
YOU NEED AN INNOVATION STRATE-
GY
Why is it so hard to build and maintain the
capacity to innovate? The reason is not
simply a failure to execute but a failure to
articulate an innovation strategy that aligns
innovation efforts with the overall business
strategy.
Without such a strategy, companies will have
a hard time weighing the trade-offs of various
practices—such as crowdsourcing and
customer co-creation—and so may end up
with a grab bag of approaches. They will have
trouble designing a coherent innovation
system that fits their competitive needs over
time and may be tempted to ape someone
else’s system. And they will find it difficult to
align different parts of the organization with
shared priorities.
IS INNOVATION MORE ABOUT
PEOPLE OR PROCESS?
What’s more critical to producing a
breakthrough innovation – finding creative
people or finding creative ideas? This is a
question Pixar head Ed Catmull has asked a
great many people, and he says they tend to
be pretty much split on it.
THE DISCIPLINE OF BUSINESS EXPER-
IMENTATION
The data you already have can’t tell you how
customers will react to innovations. To
discover if a truly novel concept will succeed,
you must subject it to a rigorous experiment.
In most companies, tests do not adhere to
scientific and statistical principles. As a result,
managers often end up interpreting statistical
noise as causation—and making bad
decisions.
To conduct experiments that are worth the
expense and effort, companies need to ask
themselves several questions.
HOW COMPANIES CAN LEARN TO
MAKE FASTER DECISIONS
SpaceX had a problem. Managers at the
aerospace manufacturer wanted to make
faster decisions for one of their big
clients—NASA—by finding alternatives to
the high volume of meetings and cumber-
some spreadsheets used for tracking projects.
Initially, NASA sent a fax (yes, a fax) whenev-
er they had a query, which SpaceX added to a
list of outstanding questions. The company
then assembled a weekly 50-person meeting
to review product status information
contained in spreadsheets, addressing each
question individually before sending the
responses back to NASA.
SpaceX’s dilemma is not an uncommon one.
In today’s organizations, the speed of
decision making matters, but most are pretty
bad at it. One-third of all products are
delivered late or incomplete due to an inabili-
ty or delay in decision-making, according to
research from Forrester Consulting and Jama
Software. Others at Gartner cite “speed of
decision making” as the primary obstacle
impacting internal communication. No
doubt you’ve been part of a team that
waited… and waited… for a higher-up to
make a decision before you could resume
your work.
LUMINARY | 52
INNOVATION
WHAT ALL COMPANIES MUST KNOW ABOUT INNOVATION, BROUGHT TO YOU
COMPLIMENTS OF JAMA SOFTWARE

THE SINGULARITY, VIRTUAL IMMORTALITY
AND THE TROUBLE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS
(OP-ED)
According to techno-futurists, the exponen-
tial development of technology in general and
artificial intelligence (“AI”) in particular —
including the complete digital replication of
human brains — will radically transform
humanity via two revolutions. The first is the
"singularity," when artificial intelligence will
redesign itself recursively and progressively,
such that AI will become vastly more power-
ful than human intelligence ("super strong
AI"). The second revolution will be "virtual
immortality," when the fullness of our mental
selves can be uploaded perfectly to non
biological media (such as silicon chips), and
our mental selves will live on beyond the
demise of our fleshy, physical bodies.
AI singularity and virtual immortality would
mark a startling, transhuman world that
techno-futurists envision as inevitable and
perhaps just over the horizon. They do not
question whether their vision can be
actualized; they only debate when will it
occur, with estimates ranging from 10 to 100
years.
I'm not so sure. Actually, I'm a skeptic — not
because I doubt the science, but because I
challenge the philosophical foundation of the
claims. Consciousness is the elephant in the
room, and most techno-futurists do not see it.
Whatever consciousness may be, it affects the
nature of the AI singularity and determines
whether virtual immortality is even possible.
It is an open question, post-singularity,
whether super strong AI without inner
awareness would be in all respects just as
powerful as super strong AI with inner
awareness, and in no respects deficient? In
other words, are there kinds of cognition that,
in principle or of necessity, require true
consciousness?
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
Consciousness is a main theme of "Closer To
Truth," and among the subtopics I discuss
with scientists and philosophers on the
BY ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN
program is the classic "mind-body problem" —
what is the relationship between the mental
thoughts in our minds and the physical brains in
our heads? What is the deep cause of conscious-
ness? (All quotes that follow are from "Closer To
Truth.")
NYU Philosopher David Chalmers famously
described the "hard problem" of consciousness:
"Why does it feel like something inside? Why is all
our brain processing — vast neural circuits and
computational mechanisms — accompanied by
conscious experience? Why do we have this
amazing inner movie going on in our minds? I
don't think the hard problem of consciousness can
be solved purely in terms of neuroscience."
"Qualia" are the core of the mind-body-problem.
"Qualia are the raw sensations of experience,"
Chalmers said. "I see colors — reds, greens, blues
— and they feel a certain way to me. I see a red
rose; I hear a clarinet; I smell mothballs. All of
these feel a certain way to me. You must experi-
ence them to know what they're like. You could
provide a perfect, complete map of my brain
[down to elementary particles] — what's going on
when I see, hear, smell — but if I haven't seen,
heard, smelled for myself, that brain map is not
going to tell me about the quality of seeing red,
hearing a clarinet, smelling mothballs.
CAN A COMPUTER BE CONSCIOUS?
To Berkeley philosopher John Searle, computer
programs can never have a mind or be conscious in
the human sense, even if they give rise to equiva-
lent behaviors and interactions with the external
world. (In Searle's "Chinese Room" argument, a
person inside a closed space can use a rule book to
match Chinese characters with English words and
thus appear to understand Chinese, when, in fact,
she does not.) But, I asked Searle, "Will it ever be
possible, with hyper advanced technology, for non
biological intelligences to be conscious in the
same sense that we are conscious? Can computers
have 'inner experience'?"
"It's like the question, 'Can a machine artificially
pump blood as the heart does?'" Searle responded.
"Sure it can — we have artificial hearts. So if
we can know exactly how the brain causes
consciousness, down to its finest details, I
don't see any obstacle, in principle, to
building a conscious machine. That is, if
you knew what was causally sufficient to
produce consciousness in human beings
and if you could have that [mechanism] in
another system, then you would produce
consciousness in that other system. Note
that you don't need neurons to have
consciousness. It's like saying you don't
need feathers in order to fly. But to build a
flying machine, you do need sufficient
causal power to overcome the force of
gravity."
"The one mistake we must avoid," Searle
cautioned, "is supposing that if you
simulate it, you duplicate it. A deep mistake
embedded in our popular culture is that
simulation is equivalent to duplication. But
of course it isn't. A perfect simulation of the
brain — say, on a computer — would be no
more conscious than a perfect simulation of
a rainstorm would make us all wet."
To robotics entrepreneur (and MIT profes-
sor emeritus) Rodney Brooks, "there's no
reason we couldn't have a conscious
machine made from silicon." Brooks' view
is a natural consequence of his beliefs that
the universe is mechanistic and that
consciousness, which seems special, is an
illusion. He claims that, because the
external behaviors of a human, animal or
even a robot can be similar, we "fool
ourselves" into thinking "our internal
feelings are so unique."
CAN WE EVER REALLY ASSESS
CONSCIOUSNESS?
"I don't know if you're conscious. You don't
know if I'm conscious," said Princeton
University neuroscientist Michael Grazia-
no. "But we have a kind of gut certainty
about it. This is because an assumption of
Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer and host of "Closer to Truth," a public television series and online resource that features the world's leading thinkers
exploring humanity's deepest questions. Kuhn is co-editor with John Leslie, of "The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything at All?" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
This article is based on "Closer to Truth" interviews produced and directed by Peter Getzels and streamed at www.closertotruth.com. Kuhn contributed this article
to LUMINARY
LUMINARY | 53
INNOVATION

consciousness is an attribution, a social
attribution. And when a robot acts like it's
conscious and can talk about its own
awareness, and when we interact with it, we
will inevitably have that social perception,
that gut feeling, that the robot is conscious.
"But can you really ever know if there's
'anybody home' internally, if there is any
inner experience?" he continued. "All we do
is compute a construct of awareness."
Warren Brown, a psychologist at Fuller
Theological Seminary and a member of
UCLA's Brain Research Institute, stressed
"embodied cognition, embodied
consciousness," in that "biology is the
richest substrate for embodying conscious-
ness." But he didn't rule out that conscious-
ness "might be embodied in something non
biological." On the other hand, Brown
speculated that "consciousness may be a
particular kind of organization of the world
that just cannot be replicated in a non
biological system."
Neuroscientist Christof Koch, president
and chief scientific officer of the Allen
Institute for Brain Science, disagrees. "I am
a functionalist when it comes to conscious-
ness," he said. "As long as we can reproduce
the [same kind of] relevant relationships
among all the relevant neurons in the brain,
I think we will have recreated conscious-
ness. The difficult part is, what do we mean
by 'relevant relationships'? Does it mean we
have to reproduce the individual motions
of all the molecules? Unlikely. It's more
likely that we have to recreate all the
[relevant relationships of the relevant]
synapses and the wiring ("connectome") of
the brain in a different medium, like a computer. If
we can do all of this at the right level, this software
construct would be conscious."
I asked Koch if he'd be "comfortable" with non
biological consciousness.
"Why should I not be?" he responded.
"Consciousness doesn't require any magical
ingredient."
RADICAL VISIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS?
A new theory of consciousness — developed by
Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at
the University of Wisconsin (and supported by
Koch) — is based on "integrated information"
such that distinct conscious experiences are
represented by distinct structures in a heretofore
unknown kind of space. "Integrated information
theory means that you need a very special kind of
mechanism organized in a special kind of way to
experience consciousness," Tononi said. "A
conscious experience is a maximally reduced
conceptual structure in a space called 'qualia
space.' Think of it as a shape. But not an ordinary
shape — a shape seen from the inside."
Tononi stressed that simulation is "not the real
thing." To be truly conscious, he said, an entity
must be "of a certain kind that can constrain its
past and future — and certainly a simulation is not
of that kind."
Regarding the promise of brain replication to
achieve virtual immortality, Tononi is not
convinced. According to his theory of
integrated information, "what would most
likely happen is, you would create a perfect
'zombie' — somebody who acts exactly like
you, somebody whom other people would
mistake for you, but you wouldn't be there."
Inventor and futurist extraordinaire Ray
Kurzweil believes that "we will get to a point
where computers will evidence the rich array
of emotionally subtle types of behavior that
we see in human beings; they will be very
intelligent, and they will claim to be
conscious. They will act in ways that are
conscious; they will talk about their own
consciousness and argue about it just the way
you and I do. And so the philosophical debate
will be whether or not they really are
conscious — and they will be participating in
the debate."
Kurzweil argues that assessing the conscious-
ness of other [possible] minds is not a
scientific question. "We can talk scientifically
about the neurological correlates of
consciousness, but fundamentally, conscious-
ness is this subjective experience that only I
can experience. I should only talk about it in
first-person terms (although I've been
sufficiently socialized to accept other people's
consciousness). There's really no way to
measure the conscious experiences of another
entity."
"But I would accept that these non biological
intelligences are conscious," Kurzweil
concluded. "And that'll be convenient,
because if I don't, they'll get mad at me."
LUMINARY | 54

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