Event Videos
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Book Discussion with Authors: Team of Teams
MIT Club of Northern California is pleased to welcome General McChrystal and Mr. Fussell for an interactive discussion of their book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for A Complex World, on how to effectively manage and scale team innovation, hear about their experiences and lessons from JSOC, and how these tactics can be applied beyond the battlefield.
When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2003, he quickly realized that conventional tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The Allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. General McChrystal and his colleagues remade the task force, in the midst of a grueling war, into something new: a network that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. In Team of Teams General McChrystal and his coauthor Chris Fussell, show how the challenges they faced in Iraq, Afghanistan, and over a decade of special operations missions around the globe can be relevant to businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations here at home.
A retired four-star general, General McChrystal is the former commander of US and International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) Afghanistan and the former commander of the nation’s premier military counter-terrorism force, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). He is best known for developing and implementing the current counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, and for creating a comprehensive counter-terrorism organization that revolutionized the interagency operating culture.
Chris Fussell, a co-author of Team of Teams, is a Senior Fellow at New America and spent 15 years on U.S. Navy SEAL Teams from war-torn Kosovo to Iraq and Afghanistan to the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. Fussell served as Aide-de-Camp to then-Lieutenant General McChrystal during General McChrystal’s final year commanding the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for A Complex World is a masterful discussion of how and why organizations with deep roots in Taylorism and in classic command-and-control must change if they are to survive let alone thrive. The never-ending quest for efficiency must give way to a tireless effort to ensure adaptability and that, in turn, hinges on developing a team of teams. Each of the 12 chapters contains a bullet point list of key points at the end of the chapter. -
COVID-19 Front Lines - Non-Healthcare Alums Fight Back
For those of us who do not have expertise in the healthcare sector, we may be scratching our heads to figure out how we can contribute to COVID-19 alleviation efforts. In our 3rd event in the series of COVID-19 Front Lines focusing on MIT alums from outside of the healthcare sector, come hear from rockstars who are contributing to alleviation efforts in the community, and get inspired in your path to figuring out what you can do to make a Better World in the midst of COVID-19. -
Living Decisively When it Matters Most
Join Patrick J. McGinnis the creator of the term FOMO as he previews his latest book "Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice,” tells the history of FOMO, and shares how it has evolved in the age of COVID-19.
McGinnis, who invented FOMO back in the early 2000s while a student at Harvard Business School, will also talk about how to make better, faster decisions and how to manage your career to navigate through the current crisis. -
COVID-19 Front Lines: Situation & Response
During this time, we've found that the MIT Alumni community coming together, and there is no one more that we'd love to hear from than our very own making a Better World.
"MIT Alumni Front Lines" series brings forward amazing members of the MIT community who are doing some excellent work fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. -
Demystifying COVID-19: Therapies & Diagnostics in Development
In this second installment of our Demystifying Covid-19 series, Michael Ison will provide an overview on the virology of Covid-19 as well as prevention and treatment strategies. Hadley Sikes will provide an overview of the different kinds of tests that have been deployed as well as the newer tests that are currently under development. -
COVID 19 Front Lines Community's Call of Duty
Many MIT alums in the health and academic sectors are working tirelessly to help lessen the impact and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. For those of us who do not have expertise in the most directly relevant fields, there are also many ways to get involved. In our series of COVID-19 Front Lines - Community's Call of Duty events, come hear from MIT alums who are contributing to alleviation efforts in the community, and get inspired in your path to figuring out what you can do to make a Better World in the midst of COVID-19. -
Masks & Protective Gear Shortages: Challenges and Solutions
The world has a global shortage of N95 masks. What can we do?
Health care professionals and experts say we now have a shortage of masks, gowns, gloves, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors, nurses, and other medical staff.
In this environment, health care workers worry they might get sick — perhaps forcing them to take up a hospital bed that would otherwise go to someone else — or die. The situation not only threatens health care workers’ well-being, but it could also limit US health care capacity even as experts warn we need to scale up to confront the rise in coronavirus cases.
What can be done about the shortfall in protective equipment? Should the US create a new supply chain - a cottage industry around protective equipment - a new "gig" economy? Is there a need to fix the existing supply chain? or Both?
The tactics to get PPE into the hands of healthcare professionals also continue to evolve day-to-day. Strongly influenced by government policy (CDC, FDA, US Customs, FEMA, and Chinese Government).
There are reports by several States including and healthcare systems that shipments of ventilators and protective gowns, gloves, and masks are being intercepted and diverted without explanations. -
2020 Global Challenges - MIT Solve
Join us for an interactive webinar with Solve – an initiative at MIT with a mission to solve world challenges. Through open innovation Challenges, Solve finds incredible tech-based social entrepreneurs all around the world. Solve then brings together MIT’s innovation ecosystem and a community of Members and mentors to fund and support these entrepreneurs to help them drive lasting, transformational impact. Find out how you can engage with Solve through its 2020 Global Challenges: Good Jobs & Inclusive Entrepreneurship, Health Security & Pandemics, Learning for Girls & Women, Maternal & Newborn Health, and Sustainable Food Systems. More information at solve.mit.edu. -
COVID 19 Front Lines: Situation and Response
During this time, we've found that the MIT Alumni community coming together, and there is no one more that we'd love to hear from than our very own making a Better World.
"MIT Alumni Front Lines" series brings forward amazing members of the MIT community who are doing some excellent work fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our second guest is Sudeb Dalai. He is Class of '02 Alum (BS Course 9), former Trustee on the MIT Corporation, and currently a Stanford Infectious Disease Physician on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic at Stanford Hospital and Palo Alto Medical Foundation. He is also a Medical Director at Karius, an Infectious Disease diagnostics startup helping to address the diagnostic gaps in the pandemic. -
Investing in Healthcare: Opportunities & Challenges
The digital health sector has undergone—and continues to undergo—explosive growth: From 2018–2019, investors poured an unprecedented $25B into more than 1,500 digital health deals. In 2019, 53 digital health companies were acquired, and, after a three-year IPO hiatus, several companies went public, including Livongo Health, Health Catalyst, Change Healthcare, Phreesia, Pelaton, and Progyny.
As we enter a new decade, digital health investors and founders need to ask themselves key questions: What are the most undervalued opportunities for VCs and entrepreneurs in the space? How have top VCs reshaped criteria for investing at seed, A, B, and C? And how can investors focus on both doing good while maximizing returns?
Join us on the evening of April 15th to learn from an expert panel of veteran digital health investors, who will be answering these questions and more as they explore the future of the sector, moderated by Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar and MIT alum.
This is a great opportunity to network with other founders, executives, innovators, and investors shaping the future of digital health. -
Smartphone Contact Tracing for Coronavirus or Privacy?
Behind the global efforts to make a privacy-first coronavirus tracking app Safe Paths is MIT associate professor Ramesh Raskar. The hope is that smartphone tracking — combined with widespread testing — can help create a framework for cities to let people resume their lives.
MIT Safe Paths is a citizen-centric movement to develop free, open-source, privacy-by-design tools for citizens, public health officials, and larger communities to flatten the curve of COVID-19, reduce fear, and prevent a surveillance-state response to the pandemic.
Smartphones can help reduce the spread of the virus but any network analysis could cause unacceptable intrusion to privacy and human rights. We have crafted and deployed a privacy-first solution, Safe Paths, with serious consideration of technical and human factors https://safepaths.mit.edu/. The app is up and running and available for download in both IOS and Android app stores. The initiative has senior advisors that include Ron Rivest (Encryption), Yoshua Bengio (machine learning) and social physics (Sandy Pentland), as well as Kevin Esvelt and Kent Larson on the team. Early articles in Wired , MIT Tech Review, Popular Mechanics and WSJ articles summarize the direction of the effort. Implementation pilots are under development across the globe and in the US in various states.
In the early phases, the emphasis is on rapid iteration and deployment for solutions for epidemic tracking. In the later phases, the goal is building encrypted computational methods that can be useful in any future societal disruptions. -
MIT Full STEAM Ahead - Online Resources for K-12
Learn about a global community of young explorers and lifelong learners as we move Full STEAM Ahead into digital teaching and learning.
MIT FULL STEAM Ahead is a collection of resources that MIT is putting together for Teaching, Learning, Parenting and Gaming. These resources are meant as a rapid response to the need for online resources during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MIT FullSTEAM mission is to create and share high quality resources to facilitate digital and non-digital learning for K-12 and lifelong learners. By providing science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) based instructional materials and an open forum for users to share insights, we aim to inspire a diverse global community of educators, students, and parents to find innovative solutions to the challenges of learning at a distance.