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.

Quote: “It’s time for all those focusing on sustainability to change gears and review strategy. With the ecological system groaning under the strain of an economy simply too big for the planet, we have to face the uncomfortable truth. The time to act just preventatively has past. It is time to brace for impact as we enter The Great Disruption.

The coming years won’t be pleasant, as our society and economy hits the wall and realigns around what was always an obvious reality: You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.  …”

Paul Gilding is an independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change and sustainability, and author of  ”The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

http://www.sustainability.com/blog/the-great-disruption-are-you-ready

What is important now?

The consequence of insight in the necessities ought to be action, informed action – in the private and corporate spheres of responsibility. And one should spread the word.

Other consequence: Take a new perspective, perceiving the “Social Wave”

Quite a while ago I realized that the standard distinction in the foresight area needs a new department with a special focus issue and research target. We have corporate foresight and public foresight – and in these times we need social foresight. If you google the term you will find the texts of the Australian futurist Richard A. Slaughter. His concept seems to be primary about the political direction. My own approach is a bit broader, thinking about a “social wave”, with a plethora of “Social X” terms, which have been spreading for some years now: Think e.g. of social business, social media, social innovation – the “social” here does mean something different than in the political coordinate system.

Social Wave – finding contours

It is a mode of thinking, of conceiving, or of designing software, or designing the corporation for instance to have the beneficial results of collective intelligence or socially induced motivation ressources. Finally I started a new blog for a better understanding of the different phenomena and how they interact. I started in German, but the next steps will realize some kind of social media strategy sensitive to the language issue. For now I invite you to the mind map, to get an idea about the “social wave” and the “social foresight network”.

http://www.mindmeister.com/96023893/social-wave

http://socialforesight.wordpress.com (actually in German)

The narrow “political” concept of “Social Foresight” in the writings of Richard A. Slaughter: Pathways and Impediments to Social Foresight (pdf)

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

Things are changing in front of our eyes. As I said we need an avalanche of innovations beyond the hardware and material innovation realm: Organisational, social innovation will be essential for the successful transformation to a more lasting civilisation (see Eco-Singularity is near. Solutions (III)).

The first adequate platform for the open enterprise

Just found something that might be a decisive catalyst to change the game: BetterMeans.com. They have just gone public these days. Watch the great intro video (around 4 min)!

If it works this will be a quantum leap as an innovative layout for organisations. Why? This is not just another project management platform with some cool features. BetterMeans is holding the option to reciprocally rate contributions of members. This is in the direction of more adaptive, scalable, faster and more fair economical structures – the “Fairconomy”* if you like the term.

Flatness, transparency and openness

They really apply their principles onto themselves and want to spread the good. On the pricing page you find the “zero charge” for all prjects, who keep things open and inclusive! So it is really worth a thought for social entreprises etc. to consider switching, even if they have a running platform …

The quote for the 21st century

More and more people are citing this famous quote of Einstein – you find it on the BetterMeans page too. I ask myself whether it will be the quote of our time!

The significant problems we have
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking
with which we created them

Albert Einstein

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* Actually I am not linked to other people using the term “fariconomy” in maybe a very special or narrow way e.g. the German e.V. at http://www.fairconomy.com/. They look more like a political movement with a normative core. I suppose they are having good intentions, but maybe with only a too simplistic solution portfolio – I am not quite sure what to think about their approach, that has to be checked some time.

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