Category: Environment

Major New Fernando Flores Work Product

On By ChaunceyIn Design of Enterprise, Economy/economics, Education, Environment, Healthcare, Language, Modern life5 Comments

Fernando Flores has just delivered a major report to the nation of Chile on the subjects of innovation and preparing for the future. In English, SURFING TOWARDS THE FUTURE: CHILE ON THE 2025 HORIZON, explores “strategic orientations for innovation” for the nation over the coming decades. The document, and the work of preparing it, comes from the Chilean National Council on Innovation for Competitiveness, under Flores’ leadership.

In a blog posting reprinted in The Wall Street Journal CIO Journal, Irving Wladawsky-Berger praised the report for its creation of a new historical background for understanding and interacting with innovation. You can read his comment by clicking this title: Wall Street Journal_Innovation as a Journey Into the Future

For those with serious interest in how innovation occurs, this report is a treasure. It examines the phenomena of innovation, the background in which innovation occurs, the current historical state of the world in which innovation arrives, and proposes directions for investigation and action for Chile that can readily be seen as relevant and deeply related to the challenges faced by communities of all sizes and types around the world.  Further, the report re-frames, in important new ways, the questions of leadership and design for anyone who takes responsibility for guiding their community or enterprise into the future that is before us.

A full copy of the English translation of the report can be downloaded here.

I recommend it.

Charlie Rose – A conversation with author Joshua Cooper Ramo

On By ChaunceyIn Books, Capital Architecture, Design of Enterprise, Economy/economics, Education, Environment, Ethics, Language, Modern life1 Comment

I have the highest regard for Joshua Cooper Ramo’s book The Age of the Unthinkable, which Bob Franza introduced to me. For various reasons, I just reviewed the book, and come away from it even more impressed than I was a year ago. Searching for more about what the man is doing now, I came across this conversation that he had with Charlie Rose early last year.

Late, but better late than never.

Watch it, and tell me what you think. Read the book.

Charlie Rose – A conversation with author Joshua Cooper Ramo.

“…humanity’s immune response to resist and heal political disease, economic infection, and ecological corruption …”

On By ChaunceyIn Books, Design of Enterprise, Environment, Mismanagement1 Comment

Paul Hawken first came to my attention with the publication of The Ecology of Commerce in 1993. In the book, he said (my interpretations) that in The Silent Spring, Rachel Carson was right, but that the situation was worse than she had said. We did not just face imminent danger, but rather the endocrine systems of our planet’s living organisms had already been compromised by the way we were engaging in commerce and industry on the planet. Secondly, he said, we could give up the idea that the situation could be remedied by governments, agreements among governments, or regulation. There was, he said, only one force on the planet up to the challenge we faced: we had to transform the way that we understood and did commerce and business.

In his new book, Blessed Unrest, working from the same concerns, he reflects on something that “is going on in the background.” From the perspective of more than a decade of talking to people around the world about what is going on in the world of the environment, he discovered that there is a huge social movement underway that does not fit anyone’s picture of a movement. He calls it a vast network of organizations that are operating ‘without a white male vertebrate running the show,’ and addressing the questions of human rights, social justice, and environmental restoration in what he understands now as a unified phenomenon.

I recommend the book. In this video, you can hear him talking about the book for a little over 5 minutes. In this video, you can watch his presentation of the book at Google’s offices, and a wonderful conversation after the presentation with Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Brilliant (about an hour long).

I think Paul’s work is important for understanding many things about our modern world, possibilities for transforming cultures, designing businesses, and building new ethical enterprises. I am convinced that he is distinguishing something “new” in a very solid way. As Michael Salveson said to me when I told him about the book, “But of course, de Tocqueville told us that when he wrote Democracy in America: every major change in this country begins in the communities. The big changes are not generated by the institutions.”

What do you think?

DiCaprio’s 11th Hour

On By ChaunceyIn Environment, Mismanagement1 Comment

I went to one of the opening shows of Leonardo DiCaprio’s new “documentary movie.” It, and what he is doing with it, are fantastic. I highly recommend it. A discussion followed the movie, led by Brian Gerber, one of the film’s producers, and Gil Friend, a friend who consults on environmental and sustainability matters. How is a discussion after the movie for an anomaly? Really it was something more than a “documentary.”

Three things impressed me about the presentation, aside from the fact that it was well done and showed the disastrous situation clearly, with lots of grounding: First, it showed clearly that there is already at work a broad constituency of people actively at work to do something about the mess. Second, while it pointed a finger directly at businesses as major contributors and culprits in the situation, it did not blame businesses for the situation. Third, it laid the responsibility for the mess, and for cleaning it up, squarely in the hands of you and me.

Here’s the trailer.

Go see it!