Jorge Walter's Blog

By Venkat Atluri & Miklos Dietz

Read this one in preparation for my new elective on “Advanced Strategic Management.” And I agree that “The Ecosystem Economy offers a compelling new take on how the global economy is being fundamentally transformed by the acceleration of new technology development, evolving consumer preferences and behaviors, business models and organizational and performance management constructs.”

Just finished the second book authored by clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour. Complementing and extending her prior book, “Untangled,” her most recent book, “The Emotional Lives Of Teenagers” combats the prevalent myths that (1) emotion is the enemy of reason, (2) difficult emotions are bad and should be avoided at all cost, and (3) their amped-up emotions make teens psychologically fragile. Instead, this book provides a detailed and illustrative discussion of how we as parents could support our teenagers to understand and manage their emotions to become capable and compassionate adults.

And for all of us it contains the important reminder that: “Mental health is not about feeling good. Instead, it’s about having the right feelings at the right time and being able to manage those feelings effectively.”

Just finished reading–OK, I was listening to it on Kindle–this book that came highly recommended by a number of friends. “Untangled” by Dr. Lisa Damour offers indispensable advice for all of us who are raising strong and independent teenage daughters:

“Raising a young woman will be one of the most vexing, delightful, exhausting, and fulfilling things you will ever do. Sometimes all on the same day. The job is hard enough even under the best conditions, and anyone doing a hard job deserves support. When we get that support, when we understand the developmental tour de force that is adolescence, we can truly enjoy and empower our girls.”

Ever since my old friend and mentor Christoph invited me to a talk by Jacques Herzog in Switzerland many years ago, I always loved it when an expert in a field manages to invite the audience into his/her mind. This is also why I had so much fun listening to David Kyle Johnson’s course on “Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy.” As part of “The Great Courses,” this audio course discusses contemporary and classic science fiction–from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dr. Who, and Star Trek, to my personal favorite, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar–to explore key questions of philosophy.

With Sophia being a rising high school junior, I am starting to wrap my head around the fact that we will have to make some plans for college soon. After almost two decades of being a university professor, “The price you pay for college” by Ron Lieber was incredibly helpful for me to see the college landscape from a student (and parent!) perspective and understand what empirical evidence we have about college choices and outcomes.