UnGrounded: British Airways Attempts to Bottle Some Startup Spirit

theodp writes "Bill Gates already called dibbs on polio, so British Airways had to settle for tackling the 'global misalignment of talent' problem, putting '100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers' on a flight from San Francisco to London to 'innovate and collaborate to find an effective solution to this growing global challenge.' UnGroundedThinking.com showcases the winning concepts, which include Advisher (an online community to help foster women in STEM), INIT ('nutritional labels' to disclose products' 'STEM ingredients'), DGTL (rewards young women with fashionable clothes for completing coding challenges), Beacons in a Backpack (solar powered backpacks pre-loaded with videos, multimedia content, and game-powered educational tools that also serve as mobile hotspots for rural/remote areas), Tech21 (STEM education program aimed at 21-years-and-older post-college grads in the workforce), Certify.me (allows STEM talent from across the globe to audition for potential employers via standardized-quality assessments), and STEAM Truck (a mobile dance lab where STEM art installations teach kids that science is fun and valuable). 'This has the feel of Southby [SXSW],' gushed a Google Ventures general partner. "It's a serendipitous occasion. It's about time we presented engineers to kids as role models — not just firefighters, cops, doctors, detectives. Who knows? Maybe The Internship changes that.'"

Comments

The B-Ark?

[linuxwrangler]

Obligatory Hitchhiker's reference aside, who thinks it's a good idea to stick a bunch of the professed best and brightest together on the same trans-Atlantic plane? Apparantly they are ignoring the lessons learned by corporations that have had their entire leadership killed in a single crash and therefore forbid members of upper management from taking the same flight.

Re:The B-Ark?

[fredrated]

These aren't the best and the brightest, these are the CEO's and funders of the best and the brightest, so considerably less loss than you imagine.

Cut from the list...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"STEM: because your outsourced replacement isn't going to train himself"

Would anyone care if it crashed?

[Strider-]

These are the people that are generally what's wrong with the world, not what's right.

Fill the plane with Engineers, Computer Scientists, Scientists, Technicians, and the other people who actually make the world work, and you might have something. The only problem is that these people are actually too busy making a living rather than leeching off their employees and customers.

All this is is an excuse to fill an airplane with a lot of self congratulatory reacharounds and hot air.

Re:Would anyone care if it crashed?

[Nerdfest]

I'd guess that you'd prefer to have funding, not be wasting time begging for it, and be working on developing or improving your ideas. Just guessing of course.

Re:Would anyone care if it crashed?

[Stiletto]

Unlikely. People that are good at implementing solutions are not always the same people that are good at envisioning them. My experience is that techies are the worst people to have at a brainstorming session. When an idea is floated, instead of expanding on it, they start nitpicking the technical details. Example: The people on the plane came up with some interesting and provocative ideas, and nearly every comment here is "This won't work because ...."

But they did not come up with interesting nor provocative ideas. "Education is good"--wow, that's provocative. They came up with boring, politically correct, half-ideas that won't be implemented because no participant can or needs to (they're already rich and successful). In reality, what happened was: Silicon Valley's self-professed "elite" got onto a plane and pitched half-baked "ideas" at each other for hours and saying STEM a lot. By "elite" we mean "people who substitute money for brains and talk for ability". Basically venture capitalists, CEOs, and "founders" taking a few hours to brainstorm ridiculous ideas, unburdened from actually having to fund or build any of it.

Missed the Problem

[Nishi-no-wan]

It appears that they're all trying to find technical or social engineering methods to get females interested in STEM subject. My daughter is very good at math and science and would like to explore the field more. But with college a couple of years away, the main issue is money. How are we going to pay for her to go to a good school where she can explore STEM subjects more?

She thinks that she wants to go to the U.S. to study, but as soon as recent help for student aid was announced, the prices at most colleges went up to match it, especially for out-of-state / out-of-country students. The in-state tuition was a bit pricy for a good STEM university, even that is crazy now.

renationalise BA

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Britain lacks talent is because everything has been handed over to the private sector to pillage. Universities have become degree mills at undergrad level, and any interesting postgrad projects are quickly spun off into a private company and gobbled up by either a defence leech or a blue chip. Most of the mathematical talent walks into the City, earns a few £100k/year, then retires at 40 with a nice place Cornwall or on the Isle of Skye. At least that's my experience as an ex public school toff.

And, appropriately enough, British Airways is one of the best examples of a company which has languished since going private - a firm which ironically saw its last magnificent positive turnaround under a Tory government, just before ideology took over and forced a sell-off.

You want wonderful new things created? Retain public ownership and nurturing of research projects for far longer. Foster a spirit of productivity for its own sake in the private sector - where profit is necessary, but does not have primacy. Look back to the British microcomputer revolution, glorious until the early '90s, by which time Thatcherite ideology had broken its spirit. Everyone old enough in the US remembers the old HP. That didn't exist to make money. It existed to make stuff which made money. So many other tech firms used to be like that.

Better idea

[Overzeetop]

Why not take them to a conference center and then burn 150,000lbs of Jet A in the parking lot for spectators while they work their intellectual magic. Same effect, except they won't get the normal elevated dose of radiation, but I'm sure we could throw together something to zap them while they think deep thoughts.