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‘How on Earth?’ – A Book for a New Economy
18 Tuesday Jun 2013
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10 Principles of Evolutionary Culture
08 Saturday Jun 2013
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This morning I was flipping through the book Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, and came across this great list of principles for how to transcend ego and bring a group to greatness via collaborative thinking. The following passage is from an excerpt titled Thinking together without ego: Collective intelligence as an evolutionary catalyst, by Craig Hamilton and Claire Zammit.
An Outsider’s Theory of Everything
31 Friday May 2013
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reposted with permission via Ronin Institute
[Update (5/29): Eric Weinstein will be giving a follow-up lecture this Friday (5/31) at 2pm at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute in lecture room L2 (which, I believe, is at location 22 on this map).
Physicists and mathematicians in the area! I hope some of you will be able to attend, and will post your thoughts / reactions online. Note: if you are friends with an Oxford Physicist, please invite them to attend this lecture — this is apparently a necessary step. Update update (5/30): see also the update at the end of section 2, below.]
3 Steps For Plotting Your Personal Future In An Uncertain World
21 Tuesday May 2013
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this article originally appeared in FastCoExist
In today’s accelerating world of work, it’s easy to get distracted by the million shiny objects vying for our attention. All too often, we spend our time responding to the latest urgent priority, and forget who we are and what really matters to us. A sense of personal or professional mission fades, and our passion and potential goes dormant.
However, forward-focused people and organizations realize that a happy, productive workplace exists only when everyone is aware of their gifts and how to best align their contribution with a larger shared purpose.
A happy, productive workplace exists only when everyone is aware of their gifts and how to best align their contribution with a larger shared purpose.
Below is a three-phase process to help get reconnected to your motivations, the unique value you offer the world, and a vision for your own long-term trajectory. Cultivating this foresight practice at both the personal and organizational levels can be a powerful way to develop our greatest assets: ourselves.
62 Top Startup Accelerators in the US, Canada & Beyond
28 Thursday Feb 2013
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I’ve been working on a fascinating research project exploring the models and emerging industry verticals of startup accelerators around the world. The standard formula for accelerators is as follows: you bring your entrepreneurial spirit and an idea, and in exchange for an equity stake in your nascent company, you receive some seed capital and a 3 month program providing mentorship, training, advice and resources to help you build your business. The program ends in an Investor Demo Day, where you get a chance to gain the interest of VC and angel investors.
I’ll post something with a synthesis of my thinking around these alternate avenues to value creation soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share the roundup of some of the top tech-focused accelerators, as well as a list of some emerging industry verticals.
Thanks to those in the Next Edge community & on Quora who helped compile this info!
Enjoy!
Carbon Zero: Imagining Cities that Can Save the Planet
18 Friday Jan 2013
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I just got done reading Carbon Zero: Imagining Cities that Can Save the Planet, the new book by futurist Alex Steffen. He says that climate change is here, and we have a choice to radically rethink the way we live in the built environment, or face catastrophic impacts. He proposes that we need to bring our global climate emissions to zero, asap, and the key to doing so is to reinvent our cities.
He discusses our challenges and opportunities through the lenses of clean energy, urbanism, shelter, consumption, and sustenance. While he did cover many ideas about green infrastructure, district systems, networked technologies, and restoration, I enjoyed looking at the models for future cities through the lens of cultural innovation and lifestyle design. Below are some of the principles and concepts I found particularly inspiring, supplemented by some additional links for further exploring.
The Kindle edition of Steffen’s book can be purchased here.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
29 Saturday Dec 2012
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I had tea with a lovely new friend a few weeks ago. We talked about what it takes to live a full life, what holds us back, and how to get out of our own way so we can become the person we want to be.
He told me he realized years ago that he was his own worst enemy, his own worst critic, and his own biggest obstacle to achieving his dreams. He told me a story about how he has intentionally assembled a ‘delta force’ around himself….. colleagues, mentors, lovers and friends with whom he has explicitly developed support relationships to help him be the best version of himself. He called them his personal Board of Directors.
Can We Design For Breakthrough Innovation?
24 Monday Dec 2012
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Can we design for breakthrough innovation?
I posed this question about a week ago on twitter and facebook, and you shared back some amazing gems!
The resounding response was “yes,” we can create conditions so that innovation is much more likely to occur. Themes included creating cultures of play and emotional safety, challenging assumptions, giving permission to try new things (and fail), and using storytelling to spark new thinking and locate yourself in an emergent narrative.
Below are the thoughts and references you shared – thanks to all contributors!
Continue reading
What Could the Future of Work Look Like?
01 Thursday Nov 2012
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What are the changing patterns of work? What are the shifts in perspective and attitude? What do the organization and worker of the future look like?
I’ve been mulling on these questions recently, and wanted to invite a dialogue about it. Below is a synthesis of ideas from a number of reports and articles (references at bottom of post) to get a sense of where we’re at in this narrative and where we might be headed.
Open Foresight: A New Model for Public Futurism
29 Monday Oct 2012
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Last year I was contacted by the Journal of Futures Studies with an invitation to contribute an essay in their special issue on the Communication of Foresight, a complication focused on the new communication and media strategies people are using to engage people in thinking and acting about the future.
emergent by design 