In a June commencement address at Stanford University, Bill and Melinda Gates explained the power of optimism, which is at the root of the most important innovations.
Jillian D’Onfro summarized it this way in the Business Insider:
Both Gates shared stories about times when they witnessed heart-breaking circumstances. Bill described visiting an over-crowded tuberculosis hospital in South Africa that felt like “hell with a waiting list.” The people there had MDR-TB — multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis — which has a cure rate of under 50 percent. The hospital was extremely depressing, but Gates didn’t let that reduce his optimism: Instead he left with an even fiercer determination to figure out a solution to this crushing problem. Now, several years later, there’s a new TB drug regime in its third phase of testing that could boost patients’ cure rates to between 80 and 90%.
“Optimism is often dismissed as false hope,” Gates said. “But there is also false hopelessness. That’s the attitude that says we can’t defeat poverty and disease. We absolutely can.”
(READ the article from Business Insider – or WATCH the 24 min. speech below)