Kink’s Peter Acworth Speaks at The Economist Innovation Summit

I tend to read The Economist whenever I fly. It is usually available in airports and I find its coverage of pretty much everything that matters, with a particular focus on the economic impact of current events, to be thorough, interesting, and intelligent. The Economist recently held a summit in Berkeley, at the Haas School of Business, called Innovation: Fresh Thinking for the Ideas Economy. I’d think that was pretty awesome to begin with, but The Economist ably demonstrated their blinders-off approach with their selection of speakers.

Peter Acworth, head honcho of Kink.com, was on a panel with Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, Judy Estrin, author of Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy, and Kris Halvorsen from Intuit whose business card apparently reads “Chief Innovation Officer”, which is a great title.

The topic of the panel was the concept of successful failure, innovating in crisis, and dealing with failure and risk. One of the biggest issues for the American economy is intellectual property. A lot of people online seem to think that stealing music, photos, video, and suchlike its fine and this presents huge difficulty in the USA where entertainment and other intellectual property product has been our top export for decades. Peter Acworth kicked off saying that he felt his company’s speed at bringing product to market makes them more nimble in adapting to a briskly changing landscape.

Then there was a brief joking discussion of whether all the people in the audience who had seen Peter Acworth’s sites would like to raise their hands. I hope either Kink.com or The Economist post the entirety of the panel discussion at some point and I’ll let you all know if they do.

Full disclosure: I have had an affiliate promotion relationship with Peter Acworth’s company for many many years. I won’t ask for a show of hands because recent stats suggest that your favorite sites of his include Effing Machines, Ultimate Surrender, and Hogtied. As the topic is innovation, I’d also suggest now checking out the new Upper Floor and Kink Live. I’d mention that these links are NSFW, but, if you are reading a Blue Blood article about someone from Kink.com speaking at a conference put on by The Economist, you are smart enough to know that.

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Posted by Amelia G on April 7, 2010. Filed under Blue Blood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry