Lawrence National Centre's Romel Mostafa leads an engaging discussion with renowned biographer, Walter Isaacson at Ivey's 100th Symposium
Renowned biographer, journalist and professor, Isaacson highlights the importance of curiosity, creativity, and mission-driven pursuits in driving impactful innovation.
At the Ivey 100 Symposium, Walter Isaacson, renowned biographer, journalist, and professor, shared insights from his lifelong work into the minds of leading innovators, including Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna, and Elon Musk. His keynote speech was followed by a fire-side chat with Ivey Professor Romel Mostafa, Director of the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management.
According to Isaacson, curiosity is a key tenet of genius and a driving force of innovation that he has traced to all the major innovators he studied. “Leonardo didn’t need to know why the sky was blue to paint the Mona Lisa. But he was curious,” observes Isaacson. It was this curiosity, he asserts, that led da Vinci to conceive his many remarkable ideas well before their time.
For Jennifer Doudna, the focus of his 2021 book The Code Breaker, curiosity-driven research led to the groundbreaking invention of CRISPR, the gene editing technology. In sixth grade, Doudna’s father gave her a copy of The Double Helix, jumpstarting her fascination with DNA. It continued from there.
“Once again, pure curiosity, leading to a translational invention,” says Isaacson.
He cautions, however, that curiosity and experimentation must be nurtured. “That's something that’s also been a little bit lost in this day and age,” he says, referring to the adventurous and curious spirit of innovators. He believes that is what great universities should offer; three to four invaluable years to experiment, make connections in the arts and sciences, and if lucky, translate the findings into transformative business ideas.
Driven by Mission
Isaacson is quick to assure that high intelligence alone does not make a master innovator. “The reason they're geniuses is not because they're smart…What really matters is being creative, being able to think differently and think out-of-the-box.”
He points to Steve Jobs, who “did it by pursuing a mission rather than just pursuing problems.” Jobs had a mission to create tools that could enhance humankind, and he used an interdisciplinary approach to achieve it. While at Reed College, Isaacson says, Jobs already had the technical know-how to build great products, so he skipped the coding and science courses for calligraphy, dance, and poetry.
Any number of products could have solved his problem, but it was his out-of-the-box approach of merging beauty with function in product design that achieved his mission and made him genius.
Intensity and Empathy
Isaacson touches on the responsibility of geniuses to pursue their missions with empathy and morality in mind. Entrepreneurs like Musk and Jobs took substantial risks, leading with intensity and pushing the limits to fulfill their missions. Isaacson adds, however, “I don’t think you have to be as much of a jerk as Musk and Jobs were.”
In his 2023 book Elon Musk, Isaacson documents Musk’s several outbursts, noting that the entrepreneur often slips into ‘demon mode’. He agreed with Professor Mostafa’s observation that in the quest for radical innovations there is a role for “tough love”— striking a balance between intensity and empathy. “But I do think that they [Musk and Jobs] were that way because they were fanatically devoted to a mission and they would roll over people who they thought were pulling away from getting that,” Isaacson notes.
Technology and Morality
It’s also imperative, Isaacson says, to address the moral and ethical considerations faced in the pursuit of mission-driven work. “The moral consequences of technology started with Einstein and the atom bomb, and now through to social media, artificial intelligence, and gene editing.” Isaacson again points to universities as a way for young innovators to think critically about the moral qualms they’ll encounter, urging students to find a balance between sciences and humanities.
In closing, Professor Mostafa observes that Isaacson’s lifelong scholarship provides a pristine window into the complex minds, works, and impacts of influential innovators and leaders. “What lies ahead,” Mostafa notes, “remains, of course, uncertain. But you [Isaacson] have convincingly argued that the fortune favors the bold, the astute, the curious, and perhaps those who, at times, are also a bit nutty.”
As Canada struggles with questions about its own innovation potential, Isaacson's insights are a compelling reminder that fostering a culture of boldness, creativity and curiosity are keys to bringing more dynamism to the economy.
Brigitte McIntyre MBA’23, is a Research and Policy Analyst at the Lawrence National Centre.
