Ten questions with Professor Gbenga Ibikunle

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1. What does innovation mean to you? 

Delivering progress efficiently and with positive socioeconomic impact

2. What has been your biggest success? 

Balancing my home life with my career – it still needs some work however!

3. What failure has helped shape you? 

Failing to rank at the top of my class during one term in primary school. The experience taught me the importance of consistently working hard at retaining excellence – a minor slip up can be very costly, but most importantly my mum’s reassuring and calming reaction to the development made me realise I was not defined by slip ups. I learnt early that there was more to life than winning class prizes.

4. What is most important to you? 

My family.

5. What book do you recommend to others? 

A Promised Land by Barack Obama. It is by far the best memoir I have ever read, it is a 700+-paged stunningly detailed, insightful and self-critical account of the early years of perhaps the most consequential presidency in modern US history.

6. What would your friends say your greatest strengths and weaknesses are? 

I think my friends would say that my greatest strengths are commitment to hard work and endurance, while my biggest weaknesses are perhaps not knowing when to quit and being terrible at telling jokes.

7. What scares you?

Waking up to discover that I had lived my entire life in a computer-generated simulation… in The Matrix.

8. What piece of advice has stuck with you? 

I read a lot; hence, most of the advice I take to heart come from what others write. I remember this one at least once on most days: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” – Lucio in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

9. What future innovation would you like to see happen in your lifetime?  

I want to see a new sustainable economy defined by the need to constrain greenhouse gas emissions.

10. What gives you hope?  

The Gen Zs have an impressive level of social awareness, and they are prepared to take action to address societal challenges. They give me hope that our best days as humans are ahead.