Arturo Calvo - Blog

I just finished reading " The 7 habits of highly effective people ", a best-seller by Stephen R. Covey, that has inspired me in many levels. I am sharing some of the learnings I got, mostly as a personal bookmark, but hopefully this post can be useful for the community. Habit 1: Be Proactive It is not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.  There is a space between stimulus and response, and the key to our growth and happiness is how we use that space. While reactive people feel victimized and out of control, proactive people have the power to choose how to respond to any circumstances (i.e., smiling with bad weather). We must focus our efforts on the things we can do something about, and accept what we can't change (past events, weather,...). Try replacing victimized language (i.e., " There is nothing I can do ", " I have to do it ",...) with proactive language (" Let's see all the options "...

I recently had the honour to speak at the Ethics in Research and Innovation workshop  organized by ADAPT Centre in Trinity College Dublin. The topic of my keynote was " The Business Value of Ethics ", where I reflected about the need to practice ethics in research and innovation environments, and the benefits that these practices can bring to an organization or company. Here I leave some highlights from my presentation. Why Ethics in Technology is a must? Emerging technologies such as AI, Connected Home, Autonomous Vehicles or Human Augmentation have unprecedented levels of potential harm in our society if ethics are neglected. The impact of these technologies can be spread from 0 to billions of people in a matter of hours. High-tech is no longer a privilege of large corporations and organizations. Access, development and knowledge of cutting-edge technology is now affordable and available to SMEs as well, which account for 99% of the businesses in the EU ...

Some weeks ago I published a post  on Linkedin  asking my connections for their  best tricks to have more effective meetings .  This is a summary of the techniques that are being used successfully in world-class companies and institutions: Invites.  State a clear purpose, specific agenda points and share the slides upfront (if available). Make sure you have invited only the right participants by stating the roles and responsibilities for each one in the invite. Set up.  Prepare the context to start on time: room, tooling, material, connectivity, etc. Be on time.  Start your meetings at :05 to allow people to arrive from other meetings and grab a coffee.  No devices.  Mobile phones are not allowed on the desk or attendees' hands. Laptops are not allowed in the room except for the presenters. Stand-ups.  Meetings that are about status and decision making shouldn't be long. Chair-less rooms are ideal for this. Meetings ...