Ottavia Spaggiari’s “When a migrant drowns, a whole community feels the loss” puts the spotlight on the devastating impact parents, spouses, siblings, and children suffer on top of their grief. We never hear this side of the story. News focus on the tragically growing number of young people drowning in the Mediterranean in the attempt to reach Europe for a better life. Spaggiari goes to South Senegal Pakour to meet these invisible victims. A mother who sold her cow to finance her son’s trip and lost her only remaining lifeline. A teenage widow who gets remarried to the brother of her disappeared husband as no one else can support her. A brother left to provide for additional family members and now contemplates, as the only possible future, embarking on the trip which killed his sibling. I have no word to end this paragraph.   Scott Galloway’s “The sonic (entrepreneurship) boom” argues that the coming decade will see an explosion of entrepreneurship in real estate, higher education, healthtech, and cryptocurrency. Galloway recalls that post-crisis years are the most productive. He then shows that remote work will reshape the residence-office space dynamics while online education, health services, and finance will flourish. I agree with the broad trends but am less convinced by their intensity. Indeed, after over a year of working from home and schooling, socializing and celebrating online, I mostly wish for more human and analog experiences.   Esteban Ortiz-Ospina’s “Who do we spend time with across our lifetime?” uses a decade worth of data from the American Time Use Survey to show the amount of time Americans spend with others based on their age. First, it scared me because at my age the “time spent alone” segment grows and never peaks. Then, I told myself that it was probably different for French people. Finally, I checked the evidence shared by Ortiz-Ospina showing that alone does not mean lonely. I am partly relieved.

My quote this week is the advice given to CEOs by Essilor-Luxottica Hubert Sagnieres in the first episode of my Mission to Change podcast: “To dream, to dare and to do. And when I say do, when you are able, like us, to articulate such a powerful mission…. if you do it, do it first class.“