Why is necessity the mother of invention?
If positivity leads to high performance, then why is it that breakthrough innovations have a tendency to emerge in the depths of the worst types of crises? Terrorist attacks, pandemics, political revolutions, financial meltdowns, natural disasters, and the like have forged our modern world in the fiery furnaces of destruction and misery. This presentation will explore the double-edged role of risk and reward and its ability to pull us towards higher forms of growth via innovation. It will differentiate positivity from happiness, and will challenge the tacit tenet that we alone, through our personal aspirations and agency, move ourselves to higher performance. Instead, it will frame our growth, both personal and communal, as a natural dynamic of integrated structures and systems, and suggest how these underlying forces often bring unique opportunities.