Guest Columnist:  Jeff Cobb

Did you know that 65 percent of the U.S. workforce of 2020 – a date to which so much planning about the future tends to be pegged – is already outside the reach of our elementary and secondary education schools?

Did you also know that for the slice of that 65 percent lucky enough to earn a college degree, the shelf life of that degree is only about five years?

There is a lot of passionate debate these days – and rightly so – about improving our K-12 and higher education systems, but even as these debates rage, the …

More than four years ago, in early 2009, I published a column saying that the great recession we had just entered would be a green recession.  In February 2009, in a column titled  “This Great Recession is Actually Green” I wrote:

“The view here is that when the U.S. does emerge from this recession in 2010-11 it will be a greener country with a new vision actually taking root in the realm of alternative and renewable energy.  It will prove to be true that this recession will change habits, stop rampant consumerism, increase conservation and provoke investment in renewable and alternative …

Recently there has been a lot of media coverage on new views of women in the workplace and what is a good work/life balance. The 50^th anniversary of the publication of “The Feminine Mystique” and the publication of “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook are primary triggers of this conversation. Another is Marissa Mayer taking the CEO job of Yahoo while pregnant and then setting up a nursery next to her office. These two dynamic executives are rare women in the male dominated world of Silicon Valley.

Sandberg is jump-starting an empowerment movement for women. …

The politically delayed confirmation of Chuck Hagel to become the Secretary of Defense could well be a pivot point, and an essential one, for the future of the Department.  It is time for this most important arm of the government to become more aligned with 21^st century realities.

Much of the thinking in the United States, and particularly in Washington D.C., is what I call legacy thinking.  We have powered into the 21^st century thinking thoughts from the 20^th century.  Certainly if one is over 40 much of what one thinks was shaped in the last century.  If you first developed …