Archives: Epic (designing for transformation)

Alan Moore keynote at PINC: Today’s and tomorrow’s executives and leaders face a complex design challenge, in transforming existing organisations and economies from a linear to a non-linear economy. Executives and leaders must be able to thrive in a world of constant change and be able to create and lead agile organisations that deliver higher performance with lower input costs. No Straight Lines has six framing principles that teach the philosophy and practice of how to design organisations and economic models for a non-linear world. Continue reading →

Sir Ken Robinson famously said: ‘We educate our children from the waist up, then we focus on their heads, and then we only educate one side of their brain. The whole purpose of education is to produce university professors who live in their heads, their bodies are only there to transport their heads to meetings. The current education system educates creativity out of us. We need to educate children holistically. Children have extraordinary capacities for innovation and creativity. And, just as Picasso argued that we are all born artists, social philosopher Richard Sennett says we are all born craftsmen and craftswomen. Martha Nussbaum in a short interview explores these themes. Continue reading →

I came across Amanda Palmer and was compelled by her story. In fact her entire life is non-linear, and through that life she has explored a different way of seeing, and through that a different type of wisdom. It resonated with me and with No Straight Lines. In her words, when we really see each other we help each other – and, Continue reading →

No matter what the outcome, I will not be broken. I am antifragile, tweeted Andrew Auernheimer before he was wrestled to the floor in a US courtroom and received 41 months for hacking into the the database of AT&T and redistributing that information into the public domain. Continue reading →

En una sociedad mediática, las unidades básicas son las grandes “masas” colectivas. La sociedad red, sin embargo, está formada por individuos que establecen conexiones voluntarias con otros individuos, sea cual sea su ubicación. En una sociedad red, la red se convierte en la unidad básica de organización a todos los niveles (individuos, grupos u organizaciones). Las redes sociales virtuales, las redes de medios de comunicación y las redes tecnológicas actúan como catalizadores de la sociedad red. Continue reading →

This is a beautiful short essay on non-linear innovation, people and place Continue reading →

Sir Merrick Cockell, chairman of the Local Government Association, said local authorities will have lost a third of their budget by 2015. And this is going to have serious implications for us all. so what does next look? Continue reading →

Paul Ricoeur argued that our ability to be reliable and accountable to ourselves and to others requires us to feel needed, understood and included. This implicit bonding of I and We is so fundamental to our existence that it simply cannot be ignored. It must be embraced, and embedded into a way of doing things that enables us all to exist as fully formed individuals, coherent as a collective entity. Continue reading →

The No Straight Lines challenge: be realistic imagine the impossible, then create it. The Self-Assembly Lab at MIT is a cross-disciplinary research lab Continue reading →

Chapter 5 of No Straight Lines addresses this emerging issue of data. The reason is that the fastest data set revolution is being created by you, every time we text search travel buy we add to the data mountain some 2.5 billion gigabytes a day we, that’s all of humanity are collectively writing a new consciousness into existence. In fact the architecture of our own brain suggests the future of sentience may reside in a different kind of BIG. The question is how do we make meaning out of this data? How can data help us meet the challenges in our daily lives, challenges for our cities, for our changing climate, the ever increasing demand to better manage the resources we have? Continue reading →

A design challenge of epic proportions: a number of conversations this week that has resulted in this post. One was related to four cities in the north of England and their urgent need to rethink and rebuild their local economies, with wellness as the heartbeat of a resilient economy. Then a conversation in my home town of Cambridge which explored the challenges that counties and regions around the UK now face as the UK divests itself of the structures that we call The State that provides services to society. It is a challenge because there will be a cumulative short fall in revenues over the next 5 years with nothing to replace it. Once we have divested these infrastructures there is no going back. Continue reading →

In No Straight Lines I investigate the idea of what makes life worth living at a fundamental level. Why do we work, what is work, and more importantly what makes us as complete human beings as it quite clearly is not the current model. What price are we going to pay when we strip ourselves of the qualities that make us what we are? As Arnold Heertje argues we have lived in a quantitative and dehumanizing economic paradigm which has alienated human beings from their labour and social being. Continue reading →

Michael Sandel argues there’s a role for governments, for companies, for civil society, for religious institutions, for educational institutions, for the media. He says all of these institutions can contribute toward forming values and strengthening civic virtue. But so many of these institutions, are in disarray or discredited, that they are not all in very strong health. And that’s part of our challenge. Continue reading →

Arnold Heertje is an economist, author and a provocative voice in the Dutch public debate. His analyses of the current situation regarding the economic crisis and the symptom it is according to him of a larger social paradigmatic shift. Heertje argues that we have lived in a quantitative and dehumanizing economic paradigm which has alienated human beings from their labour and social being. This crisis is the implosion of that model and should be used to initiate the shift towards the new paradigm, which has in his mind everything to do with sustainability and a return to human proportions. Continue reading →

How and why do we as species connect and fit into the world? How and why are we all interconnected, why is it that cooperation is better than conflict? And why does that connect with a more sustainable world? Elisabet Sahtouris explains why… Continue reading →

We are without a doubt moving into a non-linear world, a world that presents us with great challenges and of course great opportunities. Sir Crispin Tickells an early pioneer in the UK of foresight and change shares his views and thoughts on the need to think differently about the world we live in. How do we deal with climate change – he says we face a design challenge. Continue reading →

In the Kay report on equity markets he makes recommendations that there should be a much needed shift in the culture of the stock market. It includes restoring relationships built on long term trust and confidence, and realigning incentives across the investment eco-system. Continue reading →

Ethan Zuckerman exploring and unpacking how participatory media helped unfold the Arab Spring. His belief is that that media production changes agency for people on the ground to effect political and social change. Continue reading →

Why is it Zeynep Tufekci asks that when power does such terrible things to a people, a country directed from above that the collective find it so hard to challenge this authoritarian power. It is a story that is explored in No Straight Lines Continue reading →

Climate scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have reported that extreme weather will become the new normal. Few countries are prepared for multiple disasters. Does the world need a new humanitarian international project that matches the $150 billion international space station in scope and ambition? A key goal would be to ensure that everyone has access to a mobile phone or data signal during a disaster. Continue reading →

The Bosco Verticale ‘eco-skyscrapers’ in Milan are described as urban forests in the sky, and will house as many trees as people. 50%+ of the world s population now live in cities so HOW DO WE bring the urban environment and nature closer together? Stefano Boeri Architects have been exploring the HOW. Continue reading →

Kumar, a young farmer in Nalanda district of India’s poorest state Bihar, had – using only farmyard manure and without any herbicides – grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land Continue reading →

Last week I popped into the Humanitarian Centre in Cambridge part of the Cambridge University to meet Richard Dent who is working on what I think is an exciting and important project. Being part of the advisory board at Ushahidi, I was very interested in what Richard was up to. Ushahidi is a case study in No Straight Lines. Continue reading →

Gregor MacLennan works for an Amazonwatch an organisation that campaigns for the rights and lives of indigenous tribes living in the Amazon rainforest in Peru.

MacLennan explains that huge tracts of the Amazon have been sold to international companies for mineral extraction. Those companies come and extract the minerals but they leave a lot behind: pollution on an unprecedented scale, deforestation, the undoable disruption of the communities that live there. Continue reading →

In The Life and Death of Democracy, John Keane points out that when democracy takes hold of people’s lives, it gives them a glimpse of the contingency of things. They are, he says: ‘injected with the feeling that the world can be other than it is – that situations can be countered, outcomes altered, people’s lives changed through individual and collective action.’ Do people feel this today? Democracy, says Keane, ‘thrives on humility and a shared sense of equality among citizens needs to be visceral’. Continue reading →

As part of the work in No Straight Lines, and looking at our challenges from a systems perspective it is obvious that unless our financial systems evolve we are stuck in a bad place, as Hazel Henderson observes finance is a part of the global commons, to serve real economies not dominate them. Continue reading →

Banking on the Sun is perhaps one of the finest lines I have read recently, which I found tucked away in the Mercury News – which is not a planet. So ‘Oakland Solar financing startup Mosaic crowd sources installations’ is the headline – for $25 one can become part of a ‘community’ Continue reading →

An aspect of open collaboration literacy which may seem counter intuitive is that of competition. Competitions can attract people passionate about solving real world problems; these need to be open access attracting a true divergence of knowledge, and have a fine pedigree. The Longitude Prize was an act of Parliament (the Longitude Act) of the United Kingdom passed in July 1714 during the reign of Queen Anne. It established the Board of Longitude and offered a monetary reward for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude. Continue reading →

When people feel powerless, their style of reaction takes us back to a different age and a different time. Visceral protest. These reactions are representative of, I would argue, a desire for a moral economy, something that Amartya Sen describes in his work The Idea of Justice. Or social justice, as Sen asks, is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives? Which also connects to Manual Castells work on Communication Power, Continue reading →

… in the western world, we have credit cards, debit cards and bank accounts, and, for us, mobile payments offer some improved convenience. It won’t really change our lives. But most people on the planet do not have access to a bank account. Banking is very poorly developed in all African countries compared to the industrialised world. There are significant challenges to getting banking services working in Africa, ranging from the high costs of opening an account to very limited bank branches and services and remarkably bureaucratic requirements to verify identity… Continue reading →

Henry Jenkins interviews author Alan Moore: Through the years, we have remained in touch. Moore remains one of the most thoughtful people I have met — someone who reads broadly, who asks challenging questions, who is willing to explore alternative perspectives, and who is trying to construct his own theoretical model for the changes that are impacting our contemporary society. Continue reading →

A compelling story of how a group of very extraordinary people worked together to create transformational change to run a complex campaign to help get Obama re-elected as President. The lessons that present themselves are useful lessons for other organisations. There is a saying that purpose is the hidden leader, it seems clear without common purpose, a higher goal that all had signed up for – the radical re-design of the campaign tech platforms and their enhanced capability would never have happened. Continue reading →

As described in No Straight Lines – what we face in a complex challenging world is a design challenge. Here is a story of how without spending any money a group of highly motivated people came together from around the world with multiple-design skills and capability, to create what has become the cutting edge in crisis management, and a new radical design of NGO. This organisation is called Ushahidi. Continue reading →

How do we approach and create an holistic and systemic design of a business? Here is a story from the book that explores a different way of creating greater value – not only in the the product but in fact through the entire organisation, being more lightweight, sustainable, and innovative. Continue reading →

2012 was the year No Straight Lines was launched. It felt like a very hard year after hardly taking a breath between the research, writing and production and then onto bringing an idea into the world. But the sum of the parts adds up to quite an interesting year. Continue reading →

Britain socially and culturally has been shaped by our responses to successive technologies, harnessing their potential to enable us to play a significant role on the worlds stage. This moment in time really does feel like a turning point in our collective approach to the organisation of the economy and society. If we want our towns and cities to hum along, if we want to educate our young to be truly part of the 21st Century, if we want to create jobs and meaningful work, create breakthrough science and pharma projects, a healthcare system that really works, if we want factories of the future that can create value globally then is time for us to be as great as our finest engineers, industrialists, innovators who sought ways of getting things done that were transformational for our society and our economy. A mindset of austerity will not get us to that place. It is time for us to use one of our greatest assets creative entrepreneurial expression and design for transformation. Continue reading →

An interview with HSM in Brazil about No Straight Lines. It is in Portuguese and you can download it here Continue reading →

Speaking at a number of events recently I have been asked, repeatedly whether large existing organisations can truly evolve and adapt sufficiently in volatile business conditions, and whether an organisation needs to be in deep crisis before they take the necessary radical steps. Continue reading →

This week I was invited to Shanghai to speak about the transformational design of businesses at Radical Design Week – Shanghai.

In the Heavy Metal Seminar (heavy industry rather than a debate about Metallica), my topic was car manufacturing and how with state of the art 3D fabrication tools, combined with networked participatory cultures and tools, insights into rapid innovation and build practices, a car company Local Motors can build cars five times faster at one hundred times less the capital cost and sell its first production vehicle The Rally Fighter at $79,000. This is radical transformational business design. Continue reading →

On the 7th November 2012 starting at 5.30pm I shall be giving an introductory talk about No Straight Lines at Waterstones in Cambridge.

Humanity shifts gear when it demands fundamental change to its real world circumstances and this moment in time really does feel like a turning point in our collective approach to the organisation of the economy and society as a whole. So what does humanity want, and, how is this aspiration driving systemic change? Continue reading →

Many organizations faced with the significant challenges of improving organizational capability, creating better services, and becoming more agile—often with less money—forget that the key to the best possible future lies in the minds of the many that use, create, and deliver these services everyday. If an organization can harness that deep knowledge, powerful change for the better can unfold naturally. Continue reading →

Insanely ambitious – or as Tony Judt asked why do we experience such difficulty even imaging a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Continue reading →

I met Alan earlier in the week to talk about the book, which is about redesigning business models taking into account both the dramatic effects of digital technologies and the multiple crises – financial, environmental, social – crashing over western economies at present. It seemed quite an apt choice of reading material, having seen Danny Boyle’s brilliant vision of a Britain socially and culturally shaped by our responses to successive technologies. This moment in time really does feel like a turning point in our collective approach to the organisation of the economy and society. Continue reading →

Es difícil encontrar visionarios de esta calibre que sean capaces de plasmar con tal sencillez el cambio de paradigma actual que estamos viviendo. Continue reading →

This is a short story about a long journey, which explores the need to upgrade business to a human OS (human operating system), and maps out a navigation guide to a better business future. Continue reading →

I saw Pam Warhust speak at Thinking Digital in Newcastle a few weeks ago. Inspirational was an understatement – her story of how a group of people created a movement to get their community to think about a more resilient, sustainable community is one we can and should all learn from. This video tells the peoples story. Continue reading →

“Human nature is not like a machine that is built like a model and set to the do the work exactly proscribed for it, but, should be see as a tree that uniquely grows depending on the diverse and inward forces that make it a living thing”.

Sitting in a packed room in the House of Commons yesterday evening I thought of John Stuart Mill listening to Pasi Sahlberg Director General of the Finnish Education Ministry talk about how and why Finland consistently has topped the OECD tables for continued excellence in education. And mourned the dogma, and industrial top down management approach that still besets the UK education system, from both left and right and fails another generation. Continue reading →

Raising Resistance explores Latin American farmers’ struggle against the expanding production of genetically modified soy in South America. Biotechnology, mechanisation, and herbicides have radically changed the lives of small farmers in Latin America. For farmers in Paraguay this means displacement from their land, loss of basic food supplies Continue reading →

No Straight Lines offers a plethora of examples of how societies and companies around the world are using technology in a collaborative and innovative way, bringing success to their economy and a meaningful connection between the members of the community. Moore successfully demonstrates how many businesses and institutions are locked in all levels of bureaucracy in an outdated and inflexible world vision and makes a strong case about why we should and how to use the tools we have to “effect change and challenge an ideology that’s proven to now be inappropriate for its time.” Continue reading →

Last night I settled in to listen In Business with BBC journalist Peter Day. What Innovation and transformation of people’s lives, economies, etc., is very much part of the No Straight Lines project as so I was thrilled to hear Professor Jaideep Prabhu from the Cambridge University Judge Business school and Professor Anil Gupta from the Indian Institute of Management talk about Jugaad Innovation. Jugaad is a Hindi word meaning an innovation; an improvised solution born from ingenuity and resourcefulness when faced with scarce resources. Continue reading →

Recently the Prime Minister’s Office let it be known that Prime Minister David Cameron sees Letchworth as a model community wanting to apply the principles of Garden Cities throughout the UK. So how do you exactly go about creating resilient, and sustainable communities for today’s world? Continue reading →

I am honoured that Tim Smit the man behind The Eden Project in Cornwall, got hold of a copy of my book, and sent me his take and personal perspective on why he thought it is valuable. Continue reading →

Letchworth the model community in David Cameron’s big society? Cameron says he wants to apply the principles of Garden Cities throughout the UK. There are indeed beautiful aspects to Letchworth, but I think its legacy has been squandered by those that claimed to be its protectors. Whilst at the same time architectural students and planners come from the world over to admire the vision of sustainable town planning and the worlds first ever roundabout. The question is how do we design and create sustainable communities in the 21st Century Continue reading →

The bitter public battle now being fought over the future of the NHS looks set to continue. Its future shape uncertain, and the mounting resistance that is so visceral is based upon fear, uncertainty and crucially a genuine lack of trust in those that claim to be guiding us to the best possible future the NHS. The Lancet in January 2011 agreed that the current system stifles innovation and that although vast sums have been invested in the NHS we have not seen the benefit delivered as valuable frontline services. So we need transformation. But the question is how do we get to that best possible future? How do we create a more sustainable NHS? Here are a couple of thoughts. Continue reading →

Peter Day hears from Alan Moore author of No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world and asks him ‘what next’ for the industrialised world. In his book he argues that the industrialised world is facing the combined problems of social, organisational and economic complexity. In this edition of Global Business he tells Peter Day how No Straight Lines interprets the disruptive trends shaping our world and how companies can address the challenges and move onwards and upwards. Continue reading →

We are getting some great feedback for No Straight Lines. So here is a small collection of what people have said about the book and project. Continue reading →

What Alan Moore does really effectively is create a bridge from this thinking to the observations and thoughts of people like Seth Godin, Stephen Pressfield, Derek Sivers and John Hagel to paint a picture of how to add the “What” and “How” to the very large “Why” he describes. The book is well written, thoroughly researched and is a great base refence source for those of us interested in and committed to helping enable the change he foresees Continue reading →

A short video introducing some of the core themes of the book No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear worldf Continue reading →

using agile software development, modular design, and rapid prototyping, the WikiSpeed car development team, developing a 100 MGP car for the Automotive X-Prize, has achieved an extraordinary compression of development time Continue reading →

A short story about an amazing experience that I would recommend to anyone with an inquiring mind Continue reading →

What do these have in common?

A car company built around a global community as an organisation, enabled by combining flex manufacturing techniques, open source platforms, open legal frameworks and social communication technologies premised upon cooperation, fuelled by the desire to be a great company and green; that can build cars 5 times faster at 100 times less the capital costs. A crisis management platform and organisation born out of the Kenyan post-election crisis of 2008 that can record critical information of events unfolding on the ground via a blend of location-based data, eyewitness accounts and mobile telephony, from often hard to reach places which visualises those unfolding events so that others can act and direct action at internet speeds. And now utilised for free in many parts of the world. Or, the largest organic diary farm in Britain, that has evolved a methodology that allows it to remain autonomous, profitable and sustainable in a market that is acutely volatile, because large-scale agricultural farming is mostly run on an oil-based economy, plus diary farmers are at the calculating mercy of the marketing needs and whimsies of large chain supermarkets. Continue reading →

Nice to see NO Straight Lines making it to discerning readers bookshelves. Continue reading →

When faced with an ambiguous world some move into that world, and embrace it to understand it, listen deeply and think very hard about transformation – how to transform, how to design for transformation. This is a very hard thing to do and few do it well. I am sure we are all a little sad of the passing of Kodak. Continue reading →

There are 6 challenges I believe that organisations have to navigate to thrive in a non-linear world. These are: [1] How do organisations of all creeds deal with a more complex and increasingly ambiguous world? [2] How do those organisations … Continue reading →

Dear Steve Hoffman, Thank you Founders Space for kindly hosting my post [The NEXT Silicon Valley is not a place it’s a platform] on the possibilities of crowdfunding for entrepreneurs.

‘Anyone worried about where business is going in today’s chaotic world – and everyone concerned with where it should be going – must read No Straight Lines Continue reading →

The whole spectrum of sciences, including vitally important areas such as cleantech, life sciences and biotech, and engineering, is facing extreme upheaval, particularly related to the funding of scientific research. In an overall difficult economic situation, cuts by governments in the area of blue-skies research and less funding available from corporates have created an environment in which the funding of science that is not immediately of commercial value is seen as unnecessary, imprudent, and wasteful. OK – so how do we solve that? Continue reading →

It wont be the banks, and it wont be the VC’s – so WHAT’s NEXT for the funding of innovative and entrepreneurial companies – that small spark which fires nascent, embryonic companies into life? How do we fast track those companies to maturity? As right now faced with the increasing speed it seems of the decay of an old industrial system all countries need more startups. Continue reading →

What does the future of work look like, and why is that so deeply connected to well-being, and also HOW we create better organisational working models that better suit humanity? Continue reading →

You are suddenly faced with commercial extinction – almost overnight – you are hemorrhaging cash, and you have no idea what is going on. How does a company and organisation transition from one successful operational and commercial model which is now failing, to another which currently is ambiguous and emergent? Continue reading →

On BBC Radio 4 today the food programme explored how we are at the adaptive edge of how we farm and retail food. With growing economies like China we are beginning to be squeezed by the needs and demands of other countries. In the BBC 4 programme Dan Saladino explores how higher food prices are changing what we buy and how we eat. From increases in food related crime to shortages of ingredients, he asks, what else is in store? Continue reading →

It is interesting that Africa is innovating in mobile and tech in extraordinary ways – simply because of, the hunger to make for a better life, and, to use what is available to hand, even though constrained. Constraint fires the imagination. Continue reading →

How does mobile communications enhance, and enable enterprise, communities, organisations, even governments, to become more effective, to become more lightweight, agile and connected? And what are the 7 questions organisations should be asking themselves? Continue reading →

Our current banking systems locks people into poverty, 6 million people in the UK do not have access to a bank account. But there is another way. This is that story. In NSL we write about another extraordinary person, Faisal Rahman, who belongs to the “don’t just stand there Do something brigade”, so he set up Fair Finance for Business. A bank for the very poor. Faisal says we need to design money systems around people, all people. Not around the needs of a few Continue reading →

Is it the case that NHS  / Patient Data is for sale? Could we make for a better NHS if we learn’t how to use and design with data properly? What could be the multiple benefits for that? Andy Burnham, … Continue reading →

PKB is a case history in No Straight Lines. What Mohammad has created is a service and platform that empowers people with chronic healthcare problems to better manage their own healthcare in participation with clinicians. Its benefits are indeed multifaceted. Continue reading →

No Straight Lines and the rise of the Human Operating System (OS). Faced with organisational and institutional failure we are connecting up to and across each other to create a new human operating system that will challenge existing sources of power and control.
Continue reading →

In November 2011 retailer Mothercare reported devastating financial losses dipping some £80m into the red. There is no doubt we are in hard economic times – but there is more to this story. As Executive chairman Alan Parker, made the … Continue reading →