In the middle of a busy working day? Need to pull your head out of the to-do list and get some perspective? This one always does the trick for me. I’d recommend watching from 6min onwards.

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

To quote a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055 “Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?”

The Age of Stupid: EPK clip 2 - Pete as the Archivist from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

This project taps into sociology, artificial intelligence, robotics, biomimicry, and lots more in an ambitious, exciting attempt to learn how to live at sea. You can watch them building things here through this webcam .. they set sail next weekend, 13th June!! Will see some of you out there.

Open_Sailing 4 minutes concept from cesar harada on Vimeo.

Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.”

- Herman Hesse

This is super exciting. Nike, Best Buy and Creative Commons are bringing the logic of network efficiencies and open innovation into solving the problems of sustainability.

They’re going to be asking companies to share more of their hard-earned IP where:
a) they are not using it, or don’t mind sharing it with certain terms & conditions and
b) it might be helpful for solving a sustainability challenge.

GreenXchange team will be looking at things like patent pools and research non-assertions - trying to find ways to help companies open up their IP in ways that is safe for them to do so commercially.

Now that we’re in a recession, what does that mean for companies trying to sell us stuff?

Word is that companies need to focus on core business, and shift production to be leaner and meaner. Men and women across the world are wiping the sweat from their brows, and buckling down to lower costs, increase efficiency, choose the most profitable customers and revenue streams. They say this is not the time for creativity and innovation, for experimenting with new ideas.

I don’t think this approach is going to work. Whether you believe GDP represents real happiness, or is just a superficial measure of monetary transactions, we can’t ignore the fact that this is the first time in centuries we’ve seen such a serious downturn. This is not just another recession, it runs much deeper, maybe even revealing a new status-quo.

In psychology they say that we tend to respond to crisis in two ways (1) Neurosis, including the ‘more and more of the same’ approach, and (2) Creativity, exploring a different approach. The former usually makes the problem worse, the latter gives people an opportunity to heal and progress. Just the same goes for the economy today - applying old logic is not going to create a better economy.

To put it in the words of Umair Haque talking about Constructive Capitalism - Collateralized Debt, Hummers, McMansions and Big Macs are what got us into this dumb mess in the first place, and there’s no way they will get us out. Companies can’t get away with ‘hawking the same old mass-produced, toxic, self-destructive junk slightly different.’

So then the question becomes: ‘What are the new ideas, ideals, markets, and industries for tomorrow’s economy?’ I think the only sure bets are things that create real value, that genuinely improve our lives, and restore the health of our communities and the planet. After the current detox, we might find that quality creeps up our priority list.

Why do I think this?

1) People are thinking twice before spending. As wallets shrink, we’re all asking ourselves (yup, even bankers) what is really important to us? Companies can and will create perceived value (ie. a bigger car will bring me bliss) but times are tough, and people are getting savvier about what improves their lives, really making them healthier, smarter, fitter, happier, vs. what merely clutters it.

2) Trashing the environment is getting expensive. As natural resources deteriorate and ecosystems reach their tipping points, eco-costs are finally hitting the balance sheet. We’ve seen the evolution of mechanisms such as water privatisation, carbon emissions trading, and landfill tax. Companies are having to start reducing and renewing to survive this.

3) Ideals mean something. After an decade of growth in CSR, these budgets are now being slashed. But I wonder if idealism is still the best way to stand out in increasingly crowded markets? Saying you care, and following through on that, is bold, is engaging, and makes people like you more. Without creating meaning, you’re easily forgotten when the next company iterates your product with a new celebrity, or extra whistle.

During the coming years no doubt incumbents will continue to fail en masse. But I reckon others will succeed by creating whole new levels of value. To do this they will have to change what and how we produce, consume and organise ourselves, not merely how the same old goods and services are bought and sold. For companies that have what it takes, this is the time to step up with the confidence to create better stuff.

Lol! Does anyone else remember this ridiculous ad on indian TV in the 1980s? My brother and I used to love it, dancing around the kitchen (don’t deny it Jigs!). Dug this out to celebrate Lijjat Papad’s 50 years of success. This is the original grassroots, micro-financed, community-owned, sustainable, rural development, women’s empowerment programme, disruptive social innovation, and social enterprise. Its the real deal, set up when NONE of those words were actually being used! Thank you Lijjat for all the lives you’ve transformed, and for inspiring so many of us young ones to eat more papads, and to consider the power of such a simple idea.

There are enormous basic changes ahead. We cannot continue or last in the nihilistic absurdities of our time where nothing we do makes sense. The scene around us compels us to look away quickly, if we are to cling to any sanity. We are the age of pollution, progressively burying ourselves in our own waste. We announce that our water is contaminated by our own excrement, insecticides, and detergents, and then do nothing. Even a half-witted people, if sane, would long since have done the simple and obvious… Apparently we would rather be corpses in clean shirts… Until the last, we’ll be buried in bright white shirts.”

- Saul Alinsky, in Rules for Radicals, 1971

A poetic slap in the face.

Rules for Radicals is Alinsky’s last book, published one year before his death. He says in the opening paragraph that while The Prince was written by Machiavelli for those that want to protect the status quo, his book is written for those who want to disrupt it.

“I think we all know about the economy crisis” explains a local monk who has been pushing the village to rely more on itself than on the government. These guys have come up with their own solution: buying and selling close to home, with an alternative local currency! Clearly it boosts the local economy, but at what cost? And are we going to see more of this?

I was down at NESTA recently to look at ‘Networks and Influence’. The session was led by Mark Earls, author of “Herd: The Hidden Truth About Who We Are”, and by James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore, authors of Co-Creation Rules, and mostly attended by social media, ad agents, and innovation consultants.

Really I was expecting an inspired download, some wisdom from the gurus, but they were very zen about it, and didn’t really say much. Instead we played some games - jumping around, viral body bopping, and silent messaging in circles.

From this my two take-aways:

1. Everything ends up being network-influenced. Influencing each other is easy, its human even. And as trust in corporates and government plummets, and uncertainty rockets, we’re increasingly relying on each other for cues on what to do.

2. Influence is not something others do to you, but something you choose to let in. And there’s a high chance that if you engage, you will add your own meaning to it, (re-design, re-contextualise) before you pass it on. So when working with networks, we should anticipate and accept change to the ‘original’. Losing control is part of the deal.

If you want to hear more about losing control, check out this podcast on Johnnie Moor’s blog which discusses  with what improv can teach us about not ‘controlling’ a narrative and yet having great influence over it. Its all about being in “flow state”!