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№ 2014.012 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Commencement address
Ellen Kullman
Chair and CEO, DuPont
DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman addressed MIT's 2014 graduates, noting DuPont's long historical ties to MIT alumni and comparing both institutions as drivers of innovation. She framed her advice through an engineer's metaphor of heat, light, and water—representing intensity and drive, transparency and openness to diverse ideas, and the resources and personal fulfillment needed to nurture growth. Kullman encouraged graduates to embrace challenges, viewing them as opportunities for better directions, and told them that many of tomorrow's problems would be solved by them.
Key moments
- 01 DuPont's historical connection to MIT alumni leaders
- 02 Comparing MIT and DuPont as hothouses of innovation
- 03 The engineering metaphor of heat, light, and water
- 04 Encouraging graduates to embrace challenges and solve future problems
Visual speech map
Ellen Kullman at MIT, 2014
A commencement address about innovation hothouses, DuPont's MIT ties, heat, light, water, challenge, diversity, growth, and solving tomorrow's problems.
- 01 DuPont ties
- 02 MIT innovation
- 03 Heat
- 04 Light
- 05 Water
- 06 Diverse ideas
- 07 Challenges
- 08 Tomorrow
Lineage
Two innovation cultures meet
Kullman connects DuPont's history with MIT alumni leadership, framing both institutions as places built to turn science into durable public value.
DuPont and MIT share a long record of technical leadership and industrial invention.
The address treats innovation as an environment, not a lone spark.
Graduates inherit a standard of solving problems beyond the campus.
Heat
Intensity turns pressure into drive
The heat metaphor stands for the energy required to pursue hard work, confront uncertainty, and keep moving when the system resists.
Ambition supplies the temperature needed for growth.
Pressure can reveal better directions instead of closing the path.
Engineers learn by staying with difficult conditions long enough to adapt.
Light
Transparency opens better ideas
Light becomes a call for openness: seek different perspectives, make assumptions visible, and let diverse thinking improve the answer.
Clearer work invites critique before mistakes harden.
Different viewpoints expand the design space.
Illumination means seeing the human and technical dimensions together.
Water
Growth needs resources and fulfillment
The final metaphor asks graduates to keep themselves and their communities nourished so innovation can mature into useful solutions.
Sustained work needs relationships, resources, and renewal.
Personal meaning helps technical careers endure.
Tomorrow's problems become the class's opportunity to serve.
Transcript
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