Archives: Technology

i disrupts the future of work

What does the future of work look like? Recent reports state that many jobs (42% in the USA) will disappear through machine to machine automation, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence. A terrible thing, or, a good thing? Continue reading

July 21, 2015

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What's next for banking?

I have enjoyed Mosaic Ventures blog on the unbundling of the banks. Their observation that it is not a new bank that we need but a new way of banking. There is in my view an inevitability to the arrival of a new ecosystem, as our world evolves that will serve us even better. But to do so we have to have fundamental redesign of what a businesses looks like. Mostly its design is distributed, networked and peer to peer. Continue reading

July 17, 2015

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NASA shows us our beautifully interconnected planet

Our nonlinear world understands everything is interconnected to everything else. This video is a wonderful demonstration of the interconnectedness of our oceans. We have much to learn from natures design models and understand our own limitations if we believe that organisations or economies work best when they are deconstructed to the point when we can no longer see nor comprehend the whole system. Watch and wonder. Continue reading

November 14, 2014

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Dickson Despommier innovating the vertical farm

This is how Dickson sees our future panning out. By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster? Continue reading

November 12, 2014

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The healthy society and preventative medicine

In recent years, scientific and technological developments have contributed to major progress in the health of individuals and for societies at large. What are the future roads to increased health in the world? How will science, technology and innovation contribute to this development? Where are the major challenges and possibilities? Continue reading

October 16, 2014

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Cradling the transformative economy

As we evolve for a linear model of economy. What we make and how we make it, what we do with our waste and how we waste that too. We start to see a new horizon where our obituary won’t be what we have sent to the landfill but something more elegaic and life affirming – as we become part of the circular economy. It has been described as cradle to cradle. Continue reading

July 9, 2014

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Myra Goodman on organic food systems as common sense

Myra Goodman runs the largest organic food production company in the USA. In this video she explains why organic farming makes sense. Makes sense, economically, for communities, and of course to help build a regenerative society. She makes the point that nature works at scale – so why cant farming? It is more of how we frame the question and what type of world we choose to live in. Continue reading

June 11, 2014

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Odense working on an innovative template for civic centric systems

Place and community as social and economic networks: Last week I was in Odense, a municipality of Denmark, working with a team of people who are knee, elbow, neck deep in system change. My task was to help this team of wonderful people explore how they could address that change as it presents significant challenges in how people embrace transformation, and work meaningfully with it. This team had healthcare as a key concern. So we went on a journey exploring how one can create powerful systems change inside an existing organisation and, at the same time explored innovative practices that can reduce the significant financial burden of healthcare and more importantly change its purpose to one that was more preventative inspired by reinvigorating the sources of health. Continue reading

May 21, 2014

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Kano: helping make creators of the future not consumers of the past

thought of Lewis Hyde who wrote in The Gift, “we’ve witnessed the steady conversion into private property of the art and ideas that earlier generations thought belonged to their cultural commons”. When reading Miranda Swayers piece on the computing company for kids – Kano. Essentially Kano is plug and play coding making computing and the creation of things via coding and computing accessible to all comers. Hydes observation also resonated, when Alex Klein one of the Kano founders tells a story from an experience from Zuccotti Park when as a journalist he was covering the Occupy Movement, he asked the Occupy-ers why, if they hated big business so much, they all used iPhones and Samsungs. Continue reading

January 5, 2014

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The restorative economy

Need to rewrite the foundations of economics: The need for a root and branch rewriting of economics produced a book last year called What’s the Use of Economics? Teaching the Dismal Science after the Crisis. Of course it is much much harder than anyone realises to bring into the world a truly viable alternative economy to an existing dominant model. There are many vested interests, and shifts of power that create vacuums’ generate the necessary conditions where waves of multiple dissonance; social, religious, economic combine to make people fearful of change and reactive to perceived threats real or otherwise. Opportunism trying to outflank those that seek a more ambitious goal. Continue reading

December 30, 2013

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Lego's new business model: Pleygo

LEGO has always fascinated me, because of its journey from small to great to almost has been to a company designed for meeting the demands and challenges of a non-linear world. LEGO is launching LEGO The Movie next year and they have also been exploring the idea of building a service / rental style model called Pleygo is like a Netlix-like rental service that allows families to swap Lego sets instead of purchasing new ones and creating more plastic waste in the process. The Lego swap service enables kids to try out and play with lots of different sets. Continue reading

December 12, 2013

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High performance organizations through respect for people

Openness is resilience, leadership with purpose: Whereas one can see what happens when people exist in an open culture, which is led by purpose rather than a kpi. Two very different stories spring to mind, [1] the organisational systems change that was delivered through a process of participatory leadership in Nova Scotia for public health, [2] in Japan with Toyota. If you start to think about designing for whole systems with real human beings operating in those systems – I believe we see a very different organisational design emerge. Continue reading

November 17, 2013

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Russ Ackoff, a system is a hole with a W

a talk by Russ Ackoff – which is both funny and profound. His quote that a system is a (w)hole, spelt with a W was fantastic – his insight that a system is not a sum of its parts but a sum if the interactions that take place – genius for its clarity. He made the point that to understand this concept write a note with your writing hand, then cut it off and see what happens. He is known as the father of systems thinking. Continue reading

October 31, 2013

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Lessons in craftsmanship: Tashi Mannox - Tibetan Calligrapher

Tashi Mannox Tibetan Calligrapher, says, it is commitment that gives you freedom, which reminds me of the truth that, the committed craftsman is the engaged craftsman. And that craftsman is always curious and happy to share the work and their knowledge. Continue reading

October 13, 2013

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To the people that 'build stuff'

What makes work meaningful? Why do we go to work? Why should we work? For whom do we work? Is work about meaning and identity more than money? Should our work be meaningful? What fulfills us and what gets us out of bed on a Monday morning? It does not matter whether you are a coder, or a metal fabricator like Nicholas DiChiara, work is something that in my mind has always been about purpose and passion. Continue reading

September 25, 2013

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Alice in wonga land, how payday loans make a profit

Payday loan company WONGA reported £1m profit per week for 2012. Charging 5500% APR on each of its 1m loans last year it’s now the biggest payday lender in the UK. It’s not alone with many other payday firms reporting increases in turnover and profits over the last 3 years. Errol Damelin the CEO of WONGA states that he hardly thinks a £200 loans get people into trouble. He’s right, cry the campaigners, it’s the thousands of per cent interest you charge on it, so lets cap it. Actually he’s right and the campaigners are wrong, on both counts. Continue reading

September 21, 2013

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Contract law for SME's in Plain English

For the last few months I have been working with, and, advising a company called Lawbite. My reason for engaging with the company is that they are offering a viable alternative to legal advice for SME’s and start ups which is sorely needed. It is disruptive to the existing legal profession, but that is no bad thing. Lawbite is well overdue. Britain is sustained by SME’s yet their need of the law and the service they get from the law is not always evenly matched. Continue reading

September 18, 2013

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The lean green business system

The authors argue that things that are good for the planet are also good for business. Studies from the the Economist Intelligence Unit, Harvard, MIT Sloan, and others indicate that organizations that commit to goals of zero waste, zero harmful emissions, and zero use of nonrenewable resources clearly outperform their competition. Continue reading

September 15, 2013

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Love your work

Below is a beautiful simple film about the craft of making sake. Why did I think it to be relevant? Because the ‘engaged’ craftsman brings the full power of humanity to bear upon his work. His hand is guided by his eye, informed by his creative mind; his productivity the act of unique creation. Indeed, the master craftsman is adept in using a values based philosophical framework, as well as tools and materials, to deliver useful things to the world. Continue reading

September 11, 2013

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Openness the new model for society

It has been said that privacy is dead. Not so. It’s secrecy that is dying. Openness will kill it. Writes Jeff Jarvis, he goes on, Openness is the more powerful weapon. Openness is the principle that guides, for example, Guardian journalism. Openness is all that can restore trust in government and technology companies. And openness – in standards, governance, and ethics – must be the basis of technologists’ efforts to take back the the net. That said its not just about the net, its about the future direction of our societies, what does an open society looks like? Continue reading

September 7, 2013

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Lone Frank asks big questions around data and genetics

Since genetic information does not determine you, it does not in itself tell you anything really important. It won’t be very important to not have your genetic information in the public domain. It won’t seem very important to people to keep it private. Our sense of privacy is evolving; our pictures, out personal data our views of what needs to be kept private change. So why would our genetic data be different? Continue reading

September 6, 2013

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If data is the new oil where are its wells?

John Naughton in his recent column for The Observer, wrote that in 2006 or thereabouts, a phrase that data was new the oil came into public consciousness. At the time I was sitting on the board of a company specialising in large scale social data analytics (in those days mobile networks were large scale social networks), And I liked to use the term raw data has no value but refined data is the black gold of the 21st Century. Continue reading

September 5, 2013

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The overview effect and a pioneering spirit

Our nonlinear world is about connectedness, our connectedness to each other and in fact to a wider universe. Something I explore in No Straight Lines. I am deeply interested in our humanity and the human spirit. I am interested in humanities capacity for a higher yearning, which inspires us to work towards a greater good. Our pioneering spirit today should be more about the quality of life, and better governance of this planet. When we see the world as a deeper system, we see the world differently as this moving film explains. Continue reading

August 30, 2013

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True knowledge exists in a network

Lee Smolin describes our universe at an atomic level as curved, open, diverse and highly networked, Manuel Castells describes our society as evolving into a networked one which as significant cultural and political implications, Janine Benyus talks about nature as a highly networked open, diverse eco-system from which we as humans have much to learn revolutionising how we invent, compute, heal ourselves, harness energy, repair the environment, and feed the world. Continue reading

August 26, 2013

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A handcrafted particle accelerator

Patrick Stevenson Keating created a handcrafted glass particle accelerator in what I would describe as an act of true craftsmanship. The piece consists of a series of organically-shaped hand-blown glass bulbs – each attached to a pump via a tube to create a vacuum. When the button is pushed, a voltage of 45,000V is applied across two electrodes. Continue reading

August 22, 2013

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Monitor me, data, health and technology

This Horizon documentary called ‘Monitor Me’, is an intriguing journey into what the future of medicine may look like, with blends of cutting edge medicine, technology and data that monitors all and everything, we can imagine entirely different ways in which we can manage our daily health like weight to high performance sport to discovering at its very earliest stages serious medical problems. Continue reading

August 17, 2013

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Humanness of network knowledge

when we see things really scale up on the net, as we do with Wikipedia or some of the large collaborative projects like Linux and Debian and the like, the decision making changes, and rather than thinking, oh, we’ll find one person who’s smart enough to make decisions, no, we have a network, let’s do this in a networked way. And what are networks good at? Well, if a decision can be kept local, the person who knows most about the thing is the person who is dealing with it every day, the local decision. Continue reading

August 11, 2013

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Rupert Sheldrake and the dogmas of scientific materialism

TED banned this talk, I wonder what was so controversial? Of particular interest to me was the idea of variations in light-speed and gravity the big G. Sheldrake goes onto talk about the big idea that the laws of nature at an atomic level are never set, are not constant as Newton proposed but are in a permanent state of evolution. Continue reading

August 5, 2013

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6 steps to transform the way we do business

Published in The Guardian Sustainable Business. Our institutions, organisations and economies were conceived, designed and built for a simpler more linear world. Overwhelmed by complexity, these have become disrupted and unsustainable. There is an urgent need to transform our societies, organisations and economies by better design to thrive in what I call a “non-linear world”. Continue reading

August 3, 2013

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Edward Snowden and the battle for internet freedom

Who would have thought even in 2005, that consumer politics and societal politics would revolve around data, who has it, who owns it and how it is used, combined with the legal frameworks that protect us as citizens. our destiny with data is complex. There are legitimate concerns about who actually owns this information, and when our identities can be pieced together via data flows, privacy becomes a key battleground. And there will be a pressing and increasing need to respect the sovereignty of the individual whether that be in a commercial or civil context. Continue reading

July 29, 2013

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Doug Englebart and what world he was trying to create

In No Straight Lines, technology plays an important role, it must do. Because to deny our umbilical relationship with technology is to deny ourselves. But it always seems a struggle to get people to reconcile the important philosophical, anthropological and societal relationships to technology that we indeed have – where it comes from, what drives our longing (on a large scale) which consequently affects what we imagine, create and make. Doug Englebart died recently, Continue reading

July 16, 2013

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Are we naked with or without data? Edward Snowden asks a big question

As the shape of our world evolves, we are also in political transformation, both in terms of the political relationship between the individual and commercial organisations and the large Politics of how we organise and run our societies. What should government look like in a non-linear world? Are we creating and running the right systems in the right way? How does data change/impact the process of democracy and civil organisation? Continue reading

July 10, 2013

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How big data can help better understand social risks and opportunities

‘Black Swans turn Grey’: The risk landscape is undoubtedly shifting. PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), invoking Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s recent book, posit that ‘Black Swans’ are increasingly ‘turning grey’. By this, they mean that previously catalytic and unforeseen events are becoming more regular; betraying an increased level of uncertainty faced by the global community in the face of growing connectivity and dependency. Continue reading

June 3, 2013

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Old World New World, connections, networks, pathways

Pilgrim paths, green roads, drove roads, corpse roads, trods, leys, dykes. drongs, sarns, snickets, holloways, bostles, shutes, driftways, lichways, ridings, halterpaths, cartways, carneys, causeways, herepaths. In Holland there are doodwegen and spookwegen – death roads and ghost roads. In Spain … Continue reading

May 30, 2013

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No Straight Lines keynote @PINC

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

May 19, 2013

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What does the imprisonment of Andrew Auernheimer tell us?

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

May 6, 2013

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Society, organisations, economies reshaped by mobile communications and big data

A few weeks ago I was in Miami, at the invitation of Blackberry giving the opening keynote based on the No Straight Lines project on how mobile technologies are reshaping and transforming our world. From the living breathing communications eco-system that is wrapping itself around the earth, to… Continue reading

May 5, 2013

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una breve introducción sin líneas rectas

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

April 22, 2013

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Complexity, simplexity, self-assembly

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

April 8, 2013

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Big data and the sentient world

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

April 7, 2013

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The UK's social and economic design challenge

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

April 6, 2013

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Arnold Heertje humanizing the economy

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

April 3, 2013

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People powered uprisings and participatory media

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

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Innovating in crisis management with p2p and technology

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

March 22, 2013

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Democratising legal documents for SME's

LawBit is an online legal service which provides “simple contracts for small companies”. Lawbit are operating a 10 day trial and are looking for SME’s to join in a small revolution. Continue reading

March 19, 2013

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Urban forests in the sky of Milan

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

March 14, 2013

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Crowd aid exchange, peer to peer crisis innovation

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

February 26, 2013

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Achuar community speaks truth to power in the Amazon

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

February 21, 2013

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The Gestalt Switch to the Human-OS

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

February 17, 2013

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Banking on the sun, a community investing in sustainable energy

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

February 8, 2013

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Competing to innovate in the open society

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

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Necessity hath no law

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

February 7, 2013

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The transformative power of mobile money

… 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

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Open science part of our non-linear world

Science like other industries faces significantly interlinked challenges; how is science going to be funded in the future, and how does one accelerate scientific breakthrough? Who has the right to access? Because many innovative ideas that have changed society have arisen from the combination of curiosity and academic freedom. Continue reading

February 4, 2013

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The promise of an open innovation platform

The promise of an open innovation platform is that it has the ability to create value writes Jack Hughes of TopCoder. Indeed Chapter Seven of No Straight Lines, devotes itself to exploring the open society which offers better ways of sharing knowledge, power and wealth. In fact it is my belief that Openness as a principle and practice is resilience and that there is indeed a more sustainable approach to the varied and many challenges we face. Continue reading

February 3, 2013

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Henry Jenkins interview No Straight Lines

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

January 30, 2013

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Hacking the success of the Obama campaign 2012

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

January 25, 2013

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Ushahidi: a story of non-linear innovation

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

January 21, 2013

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How to create an innovative and sustainable company

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

January 19, 2013

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The No Straight Lines Yearbook 2012

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

January 9, 2013

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Austerity will not get us to the future we deserve, but creative entrepreneurial expression will

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

January 2, 2013

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The Radical Re-Design of Business

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

November 2, 2012

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Waterstones Cambridge hosts No Straight Lines

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

October 9, 2012

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Diane Coyle reviews No Straight Lines

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

July 29, 2012

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Review of No Straight Lines, via Indie Reader

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

May 10, 2012

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Frugal Innovation working for the collective good

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

May 4, 2012

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Designing and co-creating the best possible future for the NHS

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

April 1, 2012

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Peter Day BBC interview on No Straight Lines

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

March 18, 2012

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Update on the No Straight Lines open access participatory book

Update on our experience of publishing No Straight Lines as an open access participatory book. Continue reading

March 13, 2012

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Who is reading No Straight Lines and what are people saying?

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

February 28, 2012

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Book Review of No Straight Lines

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

February 23, 2012

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Reschooling our selves for a non-linear world

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

February 15, 2012

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The No Straight Lines challenge: be realistic imagine the impossible

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

January 24, 2012

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The last of the Kodak moments

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

January 20, 2012

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Education, technology and the almost forgotten skill of craftsmanship

In John Naughton’s article about technology and education in I smiled a wry smile, as Naughton gave his perspective on how out-of-step current education is with the modern world, as we currently know it. Having just taken my dyslexic son out of state education, because the systemic way it wanted to school my child was too painful to watch from the sidelines any longer. I nodded along with his assessment, whilst reaching once again for my credit card, rather than reaching for the phone to the deputy head (the big head wont see me I am not important enough). What is happening is that the national curriculum’s worthy aspirations to educate pupils about ICT are transmuted at the chalkface into teaching kids to use Microsoft software. Our children are mostly getting ICT training rather than ICT education. And if you can’t see the difference, try this simple thought-experiment: replace “ICT” with “sex” and see which you’d prefer in that context: education or training? Continue reading

January 18, 2012

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Thanks to Jo Pine for the thumbs up on No Straight Lines

‘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

January 3, 2012

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The NEXT Silicon Valley is not a place it's a platform

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

December 17, 2011

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The £2 Chicken: the adaptive edge of food production and consumption

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

December 11, 2011

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