Several questions actually. As the chief executive officer of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies (C-PET), Washington DC’s independent think tank on science and technology policy, his role is to ask questions to which nobody yet has the answers.

Most people aren’t entirely comfortable with this concept — certainly not at the management and board levels. But Cameron argues those who challenge the status quo are probably some of the most important participants in an organisation.

The former research professor and associate dean at the Illinois Institute of Technology and director of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society has long railed against what he terms as ‘public enemy number one’ — groupthink — the propensity for thinking to move in the same direction to the exclusion of any serious questioning.

“The faster change is taking place, the more important leadership becomes,” says Cameron, in Sydney for AMP’s recent .

“But there is a tendency to sign off on other people’s agendas — it’s a coalition in politics but it’s not just conscious in this context — rather than having our own independent view of these things. It’s a basic tribal behaviour and it is very, very dangerous.”