Map of all Arab Spring and Occupy Movement nations 2011 - Source: blatantworld.com

A dynamic year 2011 is ending: Crisis. protests, movements, system skepticism

What is in your mind? What will I have I forgotten to mention? Arab spring, occupy movement, maybe a stolen Arab spring in Egypt, maybe an awakening civill society in Russia. And kind of “cold (civil) war” in US. And ever more extreme weather conditions around the globe. Durban climate conference at the end of the year is a new confirmation of cognitive mis-mapping of the political leaders. As cognitive psychology has shown often: A certain complexity of a system cannot be handled by most of human beings, they take refuge to heuristics and kind of superstitious solution approaches.

Oh, Fukushima not to forget – for some 10,000 years – radiation is a reminder future generations did not ask for … What else? A lot of rather helpless activities to handle the debt cirisis in Europe. Angry citizens. Credibility of systems solutions going down, down, down. Politicians’ growth paradigm seems 99% unchanged. Locked in the mindset, which is the problem, not the solution. And again confirmation of the uncontrollable “innovation avalanche” of the hightech super-innovative society. News: H5N1 avian flu created in the laboratory.

Occupy the economy – New models please! 

Oh, not only bad news!!! Some weeks ago I was really surprised and excited about the announcement of a “Funky Business Barcamp” in Berlin. Was this the “mycel of transformation” reaching the economy? Will there be emerging new models how to make business in a different cultural setting, with different values and goals – and in a intrinsically sustainable manner. It was an unconventional barcamp and time will tell, whether something substantial will spread from it. I will watch this carefully and will tell if it is …

Update – related posts (oops … Cassandra complex)

• 2009 vs. 1789 – Will the crisis end in a revolution? (March 30, 2009 – detecting weak signals)
• Titanic in full speed, me, you and the Trojan horse (II) (October 23, 2010 – the economic-political world system with extreme deficit of learning capacity)

There are different names out there: sharing economy, peer-to-peer value exchange – and “people-powered markets”.  The last title is from Vanessa Miemis, who has done a great job to collect and sort 60 (!) of that markets (emergentbydesign.com). There are some more facts from her research:

• There are over 2.8 million couchsurfers in 80,317 cities across 246 countries
  http://www.couchsurfing.org/ 
• Over 820 coworking places are active worldwide
  http://www.deskmag.com/en/820-coworking-spaces-worldwide-statistics 
• Car sharing will be a 6 billion annual business by 2016
  http://www.cleanfleetreport.com/clean-fleet-articles/zipcar-ipo-car-share/

Source: emergentbydesign.com

Beyond ideology 

You might ask: People Economy – is that communism reloaded? Definitly not! Just in the opposite direction. Yes, it has to do with re-wiring the value chains, but to give people more power. It is about empowerment. The leftist ideologies often did show that they have no real trust in people. When they have acquired power they have again and again build massive control structures – to keep themselves in power and keep people powerless. They even did hate freedom of speech, freedom of thought. The new “people economy” is quite the opposite: It accepts your economical empowerment, conceives you as an entrepreneur, encourages you to monetize on your ressources.

Airbnb story as an example

“Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world online or from an iPhone device.” (techcrunch.com) The company is funded with 108 million USD. The competitor wimdu.com has got 90 million USD. (techcrunch.com). And if you check the growing directory of Lisa Gansky you will find dozens of platforms in the travel category alone ( http://meshing.it/categories/29-Travel ). By the way the directory has 32 categories.

It is the unfolding socio-digital “matrix” again

Why is this happening now? In the US context there might be an influence of the ongoing economical crisis, but the primary driver is the maturity of the “socio-technological complex”, the matrix of highly inter-connected people – technologically supported with digital mechanisms of trust and reputation, with the habit to connect and interact. We will see this spread and gaining momentum in the coming years. While this trend is about sharing some posessions or skills there is another disruptive trend in close company: microwork crowdsourcing in the  real world. Curious? Check out Gigwalk, the “first ever distributed workforce”: “We turn the world’s iPhones into your instant mobile workforce.” In the moment available only in US .

What is Gigwalk? from GigwalkTV on Vimeo.

As I have said in the posts above there is a structural problem with our accelerated hightech civilization: We are witnessing two growing avalanches – the avalanche of technological solutions and the avalanche of secondary effects of these solutions. The manifold and shocking helplessness to deal with the nuclear accidents in Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami are a strong example about this fatal dynamics.

Damage after an Earthquake and Tsunami at the Dai Ichi Power Plant. (credit: DigitalGlobe) www.digitalglobe.com

In this week I have an exciting contrasting program to this anachronistic technology. I am attending the Ecosummit 2011, where the smart green economy is meeting. That feels good.

Image source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_Fukushima-Daiichi

Entrepreneurship Summit 2010, Nov 6 - Berlin - Go to site entrepreneurship-summit.de

Entrepreneurial design – and the design thinking context

The focus of the entrepreneurship summit 2010 has been entrepreneurial design and I think the concept is convincing. Concept? Maybe there are more than one concept around under this name. Just found it linked to design thinking in a certain manner, as you can see on this page and nice video from Stanford Graduate School of Business Extreme Affordability Journal. Affordability is a central term here – since the process seems to target the “bottom of the pyramid“.

Design Thinking at Stanford: Extreme Affordability Expo 2010

Since I was in touch with design thinking (DT) I am totally fascinated with the method. In this year I met the practitioners and “activists” at different places e.g. Potsdam HPI or the IA-Konferenz 2010, Köln (see post: “Are we Innovation Architects? Service.Design.Thinking, #IAK10“). Hey, I just realized my (subjective) “trend feeling” about DT and found evidence at Google trends:

Statistical evidence of the up-trend in design thinking (Google trends 2010-11-08)

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Prof. Faltin’s stance

I found the interpretation of the term “entrepreneurial design” in the context of market dynamics quite plausible. In his keynote Prof. Faltin talked about the difference of a (complete functional) automobile and the Otto engine (as an essential technical component of a car). In this perspective the automobile is the entrepreneurial design, which enables the Otto engine to be sold. One could say it this way: Only with the automobile structure build around the Otto engine the engine is “networked” with the needs of the people. Making the explosion engine beneficial for the need of mobility. This at the same time transforms people to (automobile) customers, i.e. a new market emerges.

Maybe, that there is a whole concept cloud around “entrepreneurial design”, or that this all is just one design thinking cloud – I for my part find the Otto engine example of Prof. Faltin graphic, maybe paradigmatic.

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Insight: The “Apple success” is based simply on … entrepreneurial design

Now think about the Apple success story. The competitors are shocked again and again to see that Apple wins the market with devices, that are build on components some not being state of the art. The success is based on entrepreneurial design, i.e. networking the companies ressources with the users needs, making the device a “node in the behavioral network” of the customer.

The Eco-Singularity is near. Preface (I) - … Definition (II) - … Solutions (III)

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Eco-Singularity – core concept, strengths and challenges

In part II a first approach has been accomplished to define the concept of “eco-singularity”:

Eco-Singularity definition (from Part II)

Eco-Singularity is the event, when our (growing) capacity to solve the totality of anthropogenic problems is superseded by the volume of the (growing) totality of anthropogenic problems. (Part II)

The definition’s strength is that it meets the intuition, that there is a race between the problem elements of the system (total biosphere) and the solution elements of the system (total biosphere). There are some challenges of the concept – find more about it in the appendix beneath.

The two avalanches: Can the "solution system" catch the expanding "problem system"?

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Scenarios and insights: Will we have the innovation avalanche we need to survive our own technology?

I will unfold the main scenarios in some future post. For the moment the most important insight is, that there is a high uncertainty concerning the “innovation race of mankind”. Some more insights in no special order:

1. Industrialization 1.0: With the global spreading of technology and industrial production the consumtion of natural ressources is growing and environmental pollution is increasing – as everyone knows.
2. Industrialization 2.0: We find the secondary technologies to avoid unwanted effects nearly everywhere on the globe: filter technologies to avoid emissions, sewage plants to keep the water clean, recycling infrastructure etc.
3. Only deeds count: The extent of neutralization clearly is dependent on the technology, innovation generation, effectiveness and especially the actual application of the technology.

The two avalanches: Problem system and solution system interacting

1. Dynamic picture: There is a race of the two avalanches – and this is a more complex picture than thinking about the “limits of growth”. “Limit thinking” is right to point to the fundamental fact, that the planet’s material ressources are … limited.
2. Do not underscore the innovation factor: We are part of a naturally limited system, right. But technological innovations of all kind can shift the limits dramatically. E.g. when re-cycling valuable ressources, what is done routinely, the same atoms can be used again and again. It is a different question, whether this is done to an adequate extent and whether it is possible in a energy- and cost-efficient way.
3. Disruptive innovations are needed: With China, India, Russia and Brazil (the socalled BRIC nations) increasing their metabolism with nature we find that the Industrialization 2.0 standard efforts are not capable to compensate for the “problem input” to the biosphere. The resistance to some (rather weak) CO2 treaty is a good indicator of the mismatch. Probably we need disruptive innovations to reach the goals. We then might come back to some sustainable metatboilism with our biosphere – if it is possible anyway.

The message: Think innovativeness beyond technological innovation!

If you realize the trouble we are in, you might be a bit discouraged. Everyday some 130 species are extinct for ever – this is 1.000 times more than the natural extinction rate, i.e. 100.000%. Every acre of land which is deforested, will cost us so much more to re-forest … and so on.

But there is reason for hope: The creativity of the human being and the human culture is incredibly huge! Today we see the investments of hundreds of billions in the technological sector of innovation. We have to seriously add other sectors of innovation:

Viable path: How to respond to the urgent global challenges? We have to combine technologocical ingeniousity with social, political and economical innovations.

• Social innovation: New ways of working, sustainable lifestyle, happiness driven “social layout”
• Political innovation: New ways of opinion-forming, decision making, politcal representation
• Economical innovation: New sustainable business models, new ways to create value chains

If you look around you will find a lot of signals and drivers of change.

• Social innovation examples: Crowdsourcing, Coworking places, “transition towns” …
• Political innovation examples: netbased debate, Liquid Democracy platform, civil society, (weak signal of “new civil dissent”: “Stuttgart21 protests” in Germany) …
• Economical innovation examples: (macro)wikinomics, microfinance and microwork platforms …

Together with convergent innovative technological solutions we might be witness of the birth of some new socio-economical “blueprint” leading to global sustainable society – before selfmade “eco-singularity” is winning against ourself.

Update! 2010-11-02 – Thank you very much Ralf!

There are more and more people, who  understand the core problem. Yesterday somehow marginalized by the “leaders”, today they are literaly entering the stage: E.g. Leaders listening to thoughtleader Otto Scharmer at World Economic Forum, China 2010

Update: Great, here is the embeddable version of the video (skip to the 8th minute for Scharmer):

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Update! 2010-11-04 – Wolff Horbach (Business Blog innovativ.in) has done an interwiew

Wolff Horbach (Business Blog innovativ.in) asked me about my analyses and theses, thanks a lot!

• Zukunftsforscher Schroll: Ohne Innovations-Lawine ist der Planet verloren

Wolff Horbach helps people and enterprises to understand the dynamics of … happiness, Everyone wants it, nobody really knows and understands it. Isn’t it a goal and a ressource at the same time? He has writen a book too (German), find more about it here: Faktor G - Glückliche Mitarbeiter. Glückliche Kunden. Glückliche Unternehmen.

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APPENDIX

Challenges of the eco-singularity concept (in the perspective of hard science)

The definition’s weakness partly lies in the “limits of measurement”: How to measure “problem volumes” and “solution capacity”? There is a overwhelming complexity in both parameters. We have intuitions that a problem A (having cancer) is “bigger” than a problem B (having cought a cold), and that a solution A (teaching safe driving) has more capacity than a solution B (teaching to avoid traffic controls). This means that some “soft” metrics should be possible. There is a first list of complexity issues:

• (a) the vast amount of options,
• (b) causal interdependency of choices (combining two optima sometimes leads to a suboptimal global solution),
• (c) value dependency (the moral value coordinates determine the rating and ranking of problems and solutions)
• (d) self-referentiality and non-linearities

There might be some more intricacies, but we can set all this aside for the moment since the concept at first is useful to understand the “big picture” of global technological history. It will be useful as a kind of world view or cognitive tool even if  the details of the defining features have to be worked out.

*

Minor updates

• 2010-11-01 Some minor changes in spelling, hyperlinking some words. adding second graphics
• 2010-11-04 linking the three posts

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Three posts about ecological singularity and the avalanche of change

The Eco-Singularity is near. Preface (I) - … Definition (II) - … Solutions (III)

New Class of Malware Will Steal Behavioral Patterns (Technology Review)

… Patterns of contact can also reveal how people are linked, whether they are in a relationship for example, whether they are students or executives, or whether they prefer celebrity gossip to tech news.

This information would allow a determined attacker to build a remarkably detailed picture of the lifestyle of any individual, a picture that would be far more useful than the basic demographic information that marketeers use today that consists of little more than sex, age and social grouping.

[...] Yaniv Altshuler at Ben Gurion University and a few pals argue that the value of this data makes it almost inevitable that malicious attackers will attempt to steal it. They point out that many companies already mine the pattern of links in their data for things like recommender systems.  … (Technology Review, Oct 8 2010)

• US, China, Europe have ambitious green tech and clean tech goals. But: Eyeing for the emerging green markets will not be enough

Green outlook of China, US, Europe (slide: Kux, Siemens)

• Speakers at econsense meeting made an appeal to bring the sustainability issue into the DNA of the company – I totally agree; as an analyst I know the difference of appeal, role, institutionalization and generalized corporate behavior; today we find a lot of big companies at awareness level 2 or 3 – that means they have established some “sustainability modules” as I would call it; there is a sustainability policy and a reporting routine, i.e. some new roles (= level 2) and institutionalization (= level 3)
• Probably we need to do a lot more! We need to rebuild the whole DNA of the company and the economy. Why? Humankind is riding spaceship earth totally over capacity – day by day. Did you know that the “ecological debt day” in 2010 was August 21? (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_Debt_Day)
• Other fact: There are about 10.000 business schools around the world (FT.com) producing the leaders of tomorrow
• I am really afraid that they somehow produce the  same type of manager, which brought us here
• FT.com: “Just 326 have signed up for the UN Principles of Responsible Management Education. Only 60 schools are members of the Academy for Business in Society and 40 are in the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative. Just 149 schools entered the last Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes biennial rankings.” (Business education _ Schools ignore sustainability revolution / FT.com – October 3, 2010)

From “Business Schools” to “Planet Schools”

• Is it a waste of time to target business schools for “deep change” i.e. strategic sustainability?
• Do you really think you can set the shareholder value at first place and at the same time make decisions beyond that “particular interest” of the shareholders? E.g. even respect generations in the distant future, living when you and your company will be forgotten … I am afraid there are some rules of logic you cannot discard.
• I have a radical step in mind to foster paradigmatic change: Let us close the “Business Schools” in the long run and have a new start with “Planet Schools”, a completely new framework from the roots. This new schools will not teach strange esoteric stuff or utopian economics, but have to be committed to the realism. Guidnig question: “How to have metabolism with a finite planet?”. The core belief of business schools of today have to be unmasked as utopian thinking (“Infinite growth is possible.”). This step might ensure transformation of the mindset – what do you think?

Part I: Titanic in full speed, me, you and the Trojan horse (I)

Are you on the bridge seeing, acting, taking responsibility?

Are you in the Marconi Room sending SOS? Or are you in the squach court? A call from the sidelines with an eco-singularity point of view (http://blog.futurefacts.net/2010/10/09/eco-singularity-is-near-definition-ii/).

econsense meeting, 10th anniversary – So what is the level of awareness in Germanys industry?

Just the new green markets in mind? Or is it more? I have been attending the meeting Oct 12th and will tell you a bit more soon.

econsense.de

The Eco-Singularity is near. Preface (I) - … Definition (II) - … Solutions (III)

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The planet issue

Part I was about getting there, the backstory of why and when I wanted to get deeper into the issue of “PSP” – planet saving politics : ) Before I start to explain that strange neologism “eco-singularity” let us have some reality check: Where are we today, about eleven months after the failed summit? A reality check is quite easy since there is a meeting in these days again.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow: Climate talks without adequate political will

In Tianjin, China, negotiators from 177 nations are meeting for U.N.-mandated climate talks . Guess we will see the same syndrome as in Kopenhagen. Even after this years extreme weather events (from Poland to Russia to Pakistan to bring some to mind – and: yes I know the difference of weather and climate!) we do not see “adequate response”. Diagnosis: The econo-techno-political system in it’s entirety just is not capable to process the (mostly unambigous) input of science into the output of necessary decisions.

We are over capacity! Will innovation stretch our limited ressources somehow? Image source: Wackernagel 2010

Connect the both time series. We are part of non-linear systems – surprising changes to the worse are probable. Image source: Munich re 2004

2020 outlook: Missing the target

Missing the target with 13.600.000.000 tons of CO2 – nearly a third:

WWF says the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a yearly output of 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2020 to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Instead, nations are on track to emit up to 53.6 billion tons of CO2 per year. (Little hope for climate protection – UPI.com)

My dear reader, you can see, that my skepticism is not exaggerated, but it is evidence-based. Here some observations:

• The aggregated solution potential of international politics, national governments, transnational institutions is weak (compared with what is necessary)
• The influence of NGOs is weak (compared with what is necessary)
• The insight of the public is weak (compared with what is necessary)
• The insight and will of economical leaders is weak (compared with what is necessary)
• The global media system as an attention market quickly is bored with repeating stories (mass media and social media do not function very different in this respect)

Worse: There is a systematic blockage feeded by the globally prevailing growth paradigm, which is assumed to be axiomatic – with no plausible and convincing alternative economical framework in sight. I confess that I do not have an alternative system in the pocket, but at least I know that we desperately need some. If you do not know, that you are missing something, you will not start searching. And what is your level of awareness?

Reminding the singularity issue

Ok, we have all heard about global crisis, growth limits, the need for urgent action for quite a while. But what has this eco-singularity thing top do with it – and what is it? First remind the concept of technological singularity:

A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so extremely rapid, due to positive feedback, that it makes the future after the Singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict. It has been suggested that a singularity will occur during the 21st century, … (Wikipedia)

Strange Wikipedia text since the standard topic of the singularity debate is missing here – the (i) emergence of a smarter-than-human Artificial Intelligence as (ii) a consequnece of accelerated technological progress and (iii) possible threat to mankind.

Eco-Singularity is the top issue of our time

The top issue of our time is not thinking about the day when man has created an Artificial Intelligence intellectually superior to homo sapiens sapiens – and what this imagined being will do to us, or what we should do today to stop this development.

The real question today is: Will we as a global community (and esp. the decision makers) do the right thing to secure that set of resources R*, which is necessery to solve the upcoming crisis before this set of ressources is destroyed. With R* I mean all kinds of resources, not only the natural resources and biodiversity. E.g. the knowledge and innovation system and even the moral resources are included here.

Eco-Singularity definition – first trial

Eco-Singularity is the event, when our (growing) capacity to solve the totality of anthropogenic problems is superseded by the volume of the (growing) totality of anthropogenic problems.

Sounds complicated but it is not. I am not talking about the “limits of growth” in a finite system or about the predictability of the future. For better understanding one example:

Nuclear waste: This is an anthropogenic problem since radiation cannot be neutralized. There is a set of solutions e.g. to bury the waste. This means we have a technology T1 (for energy generation) and a different technology T2 (for protecting the biosphere from the isotopes). If T2 really compensates the “anthropogenic problem” of T1 everything is alright, if it does not solve the problem you might have even increasing costs.

Mankind of today has a lot of problems which can be structured this way: There is a T1 technology with some (often huge) benefits – and there is a T2 technology to clean up or compensate for negative side-effects of T1.

Examples:

• Agriculture -> Deforestation – to reforest is very costly in comparison to protect against deforestation
• Agriculture, mining etc. -> Decreasing biodiversity – everyday specieses are lost forever
• Using pharmaceuticlas -> Polluting groundwater with hormones, antibiotics etc.
• …

What is in your mind now? There should be some innovations in the pipeline to reset the state of nature, aren’t they? Good point. You are on the track to understand eco-singularity!

Meta-problem of mankind: Losing the innovation race

If there is a general and widespread problem structure of T1-T2 type then one decisive factor is innovation, research and development, right! But there is definitely no guarantee, that the sum of all the unwanted T1 effects can be compensated in time by the development of the T2. Since we cannot measure, what is possible in the future if there is a disruptive innovation X, the eco-singularity can lie behind us (we will lose the game), and it may lie ahead – two weaks or two centuries. It has to be a hypothetical conceptual construction.

Usefulness of the Eco-Singularity concept

After all, what is this concept good for if it remains somehow hypothetical? It changes the perspective and the set of questions. And it will make us more realistic and careful about the release of ever new technologies, when we are not in control of even the old ones!

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Three posts about ecological singularity and the avalanche of change

The Eco-Singularity is near. Preface (I) - … Definition (II) - … Solutions (III)

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Image sources

Munich re 2004: http://maps.grida.no/library/files/global_costs_of_extreme_weather_events_thumbnail.jpg

Wackernagel 2010: Four Things to Know In Times of Resource Constraints, Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D. - CollediVal d’Elsa, 7 June 2010

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_forum_2010_power_point_presentations/

The Eco-Singularity is near. Preface (I) – … Definition (II) – … Solutions (III)

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Eco-Singularity? Never heard of it?

About “the Singularity” you find a lot on the web, due to the wellknown notions of Vernor Vinge, I. J. Good and of course Ray Kurzweil. But before I introduce the concept of eco-singularity I will tell you the personal backstory for better understanding.

Extended fires (n=600) in Russia after high temperature anomalie in 2010 (image is processed; source: Google earth, dutchintell.com http://bit.ly/cU3g57)

Hello, the world is burning, I am back blogging

You know the Social Web universe is still in dynamic change – and it will remain so. Did twitter kill the blogs – and my blogging drive? No. The 140 characters limit is really restrictive. It is absolutely impossible to unfold arguments, showing some new theory or an innovative point of view in this tiny space (see the post of Paul Carr, Techcrunch). And it is meant to be for status messages, aka it is the beat of the social pulse in your network somehow – at least for some. Even the (more than ambigious) ”power of Facebook”  was not the reason to retreat a bit from my narrowcasting habit, which never was very ambitious.

Backstory: Fail of global politics causes crisis on the individual level, sometimes

What was the reason to become hesitant with blogging? It was something beyond social media overkill and the inevitable social media fatigue I felt since end of 2009: It was a crisis in thinking and orientation. This phase actually started same time, when the Copenhagen Climate Summit failed in December 2009. No political realist thought of a “real success”, but the summit failed to an extent I did not expect. I was not prepared to this total fail of politics. Brave men have identified eight reasons for the disaster (news.bbc.co.uk), maybe I would find eight consequences resulting from it on a personal scale.

Consequences of Russian heat record 2010. First man tamed the fire, now it might tame him. (Source: dutchintell.com http://bit.ly/cU3g57)

For me the Kopenhagen fail meant rethinking the business of corporate foresight, being concerned with the future in general. Assume that the very framework for our global/local/personal future is about to be destroyed, why should you construct any narratives around that term, why construct scenarios the way you did the last ten years? Responsible foresight should stop the “business as usual” attitude here, it should take a  break and think about the big picture, reflect the own role and draw some consequences. Fore some months now I am trying to develop insight, strategy, find a viable path for the decade ahead, a decade which might be more troublesome than e.g. the financial crisis, which apparently is lying behind (second dip not excluded).

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Three posts about ecological singularity and the avalanche of change

The Eco-Singularity is near. Preface (I) - … Definition (II) - … Solutions (III)