buck & change

The Status Quo Must Go

The economic policy that our nation adopted in the 1950s stated simply was: maximize production and consumption. This strategy has served us well and has made us the superpower that the rest of the world is trying to model itself after. But the economic system generated by this policy is now crumbling under its own weight. It is saturated and has surpassed its usefulness.

If there is any upside to this Great Recession it has made us look at our selves in the mirror to see that we are very quickly going nowhere. This system is not sustainable and is in fact failing. And with it all the other interconnected systems – government, political, financial, education, health, environmental – are under stress, have failed or are failing. This is not the fault of capitalism. It is the corruption of capitalism.

We need to rethink and reset the status quo. Now.

Government is not going to fix itself, nor does it have the capacity to fix any of the other systems because it is too deeply intertwined with the politics of self-interest.

The onus therefore now rests with business and business leaders. Business cannot remain the enabler of this failed system. It only hurts itself. And only business has the resources, infrastructure and scale to do it. All it lacks is the will.

Enterprises must now remodel themselves as the engines of social mobility and equity, not just be agents of material production and consumption. For, at the center of all these systems is a networked human society. And the better off society is as a whole, the healthier all the systems will be. It’s a virtuous circle. An investment in human potential is the catalyst for increased human capacity. And a better society means a better world.

Failure, To Learn

Striving to fail is a very common meme in contemporary innovation circles. But failure is easier said than done. No, I don’t mean failure is hard to do. It’s hard to deal with – both personally and in business. The potential and implications of failure keeps people up at night.

Yet, failure is a necessary and a regular part of everyday life. If you haven’t considered failure as a possible outcome in any endeavor, you are not risking enough. Not pushing the proverbial envelope.

In the design process, iteration or prototyping is a series of failures leading to learning that eventually leads to success. That’s how one improves by doing and failing, incrementally. With continuous prototyping you smooth out the dents as you encounter them.

When a product is launched in beta that is the intent. Setting something out there to see where, when and how it will fail. So one can learn and change and improve. And that is the key to being willing to fail – is the opportunity to learn and improve. Arguably, everything is in beta mode, including our lives.

Design Thinking, Hybrid Thinking, Integrative Thinking… It’s all good

There is gathering consensus among opinion leaders that a different approach to solving complex business, social or ecological problems is needed. The siloed thinking of technocrats just won’t do. IDEO coined the term Design Thinking, Rotman University’s Dr. Roger Martin refers to it as Integrative Thinking, and in a recent Fast Company article, strategist Dev Patnaik suggests we call this Hybrid Thinking. Whatever the term, the results are what matter most. There are many examples where integrating the best thinking of many minds from diverse disciples – analytical, technical and creative – can result in remarkable outcomes. Take the phenomenal transformation of P&G after adopting Design Thinking as a keystone of their growth strategy. Or, the runaway success of Apple after starting to ‘Think Different’. All this, by the way, should not be anything new to us human beings. In fact, this is an innate ability we humans seem to have lost over generations, numbed by industrial and technological advances.

Your Invitation is Not in the Mail

Sometimes great ideas are right under your nose and you ignore them or think – “nah, somebody’s already done it” or “nobody would care”. Here’s is one such instance: a well-designed online invitation service. E-vites have been around for some time and have been pretty well adopted. Most users have taken the design – both visual and experience – for granted. Digital is better than analog, so that’s good enough for me. But, no. This could be much better. So thought a New York couple who have launched Paperless Post – a service that allows members to design, deliver and manage beautiful invitations.

Nuggets of wisdom from Jeff Bezos

In a recent appearance on the Charlie Rose Show, Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos shared some of his insights on business. Here are some excerpts that are seemingly simple but are really worthy nuggets of wisdom: ”Me-too companies tend not to do very well” and ”If you want to be inventive you have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to experiment. It’s not an experiment if you know in advance it’s going to work.”