Hello – we’ve got three videos and two articles this week.

Each of these represents a different facet of the principles and practices in Culture Shock. Each of them is handpicked just for you.

Bon appetit.

—

Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef on Barefoot Economics

If you find 20 minutes for a video this week, MAKE IT THIS ONE!

Mesmerising, charming, compelling interview with a very wise South American economist. You may end up in despair. But maybe that’s what you (we) need?

I love his principles, summarised here:

Max-Neef and his colleagues set forth five basic postulates and one basic value principle as a framework for a humane new economics:

• One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy.
• Two, development is about people and not about objects.
• Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.
• Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.
• Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible.
• And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.

Adds more momentum and urgency for me to the ideas of people like Umair Haque, John Robb, Vinay Gupta and those others who see a major collapse coming and a towering need for a new economic system.

Found this via Tom Nixon I think.

—

Employee ownership in Scotland  – video

Nice 15 min video showcasing different Scottish businesses who’ve transitioned to employee ownership. Good for selling in the ideas at an introductory leve, but what I really need more of in this area is details about the nitty-gritty of how. Please share if you find anything like that 🙂

—

Platform Economics – a Micro Massive Movement

This is Indy Johar’s talk from our Meaning 2012 conference, and I think some of the ideas that Indy floats and the examples he shares bring to life future possibilities for sustainable business.

As always with Indy, lots and lots of smart concepts and avenues to follow up.

—

Contribution of open source to Europe’s economy: 450 billion per year

That’s it for me, the headline. KAPOW. Brilliant credible stat for talks and writings for the ‘crowdsourcing is new fangled, unproven and risky’ naysayers. IN YOUR FACE, laggards. 450 big ones.

Not sure who to credit with this one so thank you Internet-at-large!

—

“The problem is no one is stealing the pepper pots” by David Hieatt

Just a brilliant story about quality and passion (again) from Hiut Denim and Do Lectures David Hieatt.

I won’t summarise it – there’s no point. Just read it!

(And if you like that quick read and want more, watch David’s talk ‘Purpose in Action’ from Meaning 2012).

—

Further reading: For a book that wraps these ideas up into 8 chapters, check out Culture Shock. It has a five star rating on Amazon, I wrote it and I believe in it.

Onwards! Will.

Here’s a round up of Culture Shock inspired bits and pieces:

New Models of Leadership? by John Wenger. About as good a piece on the challenge of progressive leadership as I’ve read. Absolutely in line with Culture Shock thinking. Lots to chew on. Probably needs a few reads.

Love the opening quote:

“Many people live in the hallucination that they can truly lead other people without being able to lead themselves and this is pure fantasy. It is much easier to try to change other people and not being willing to change ourselves. This exercise of authenticity is very much needed if we truly want to inspire, touch and move the brains and the souls of those around us.”

—

Digital Disruption Is A Bigger Deal Than You Think from Forrester. Worth bookmarking if only for these two comparative stats from Forrester’s presumably rigorous research:

89% of executives believe that digital will disrupt their industry

39% of executives we surveyed believe that their companies have the policies and practices necessary to adapt to digital

Doesn’t that just capture the challenge beautifully? The Cluetrain happened. The business world sees what is happening, finally, but hasn’t made the changes. I really believe that all successful businesses in the 21st century have to have Tech DNA. This is the day job we do at NixonMcInnes helping orgs make the shift to better thrive in a world of digital disruption, so I’m looking forward to using these stats!

Thanks to @neilperkin (I think) for the link to this piece.

—

LiquidFeedback – really interesting looking ‘interactive democracy’ platform

At our conference Meaning 2012 a few weeks back, Stowe Boyd talked about LiquidFeedback as a viable platform to unlock a micro-participation and a new age of democracy. I need to do more research, but as I understand it, this open source software project provides a viable approach for groups – be they political or corporate – to raise issues and vote on them digitally.

Could be a huge part of the future, and would love to see if we could use this at NM. Please share in the comments if you know more about this.

—

‘We’re In a Slow Motion Collapse, TAKE Advantage of the Time Available’ by John Robb. This guy has been about as big an influence on me as anyone in recent times. I found the OODA loop, which led me to think about and then eventually write the chapter on Change Velocity, through John’s writing.

This here isn’t a substantial or particularly informative blog post – but if you let it, if you properly pause and open up, it can make you stop and take stock about the time we’re in and what to do about it.

—

The state we’re in and the call for a new economy by Tom Nixon. Building on the above post on the need for systemic change, here’s an interesting and passionate plea by Tom about the role that co-operatives and employee-owned organisations can contribute to a better future.

Tom’s blog is essential reading, and this lovely datapoint stood out for me:

“Cooperatives world-wide have 1BN members and the largest three manage assets in excess of 1.6TN (and guess what, they have been extremely resilient through the recent economic turmoil because they did not engage in the insane activities like shareholder-owned banks.)”

—

Kickstarter launches in the UK. In Culture Shock there’s stuff, as you’d expect, about how crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are changing the nature of business and the relationships between service providers and ‘consumers’ as they’ve been traditionally thought of.  And in particular the fairly straightforward idea that increasingly customers are more like collaborators and investors, citizens are sensors etc. So it’s great to see the most mainstream and successful crowdfunding platform Kickstarter (itself, VC-funded – ah, the lovely irony) now available to list projects in the UK. Whoop!

—

Cor, that was a nice haul eh? 🙂 Bit of something for everyone in there.

Do share your links with me on Twitter, and keep spreading these ideas.

Hello,

This is in two parts. Indulgent wallowing in post-Meaning Conference-ness. And then some links as per usual.

The Meaning Conference indulgence

Quite a momentous week – our inaugural Meaning Conference went off with a massive bang. I don’t really have a great deal to say yet, but here’s a nice photo of Vinay Gupta at a pivotal moment in his brilliant talk, taken by Beth Granter . (All of the speakers did an incredible job, IMO, I just love how this photo captures a moment in time).

And here are a few favourite tweets:

Even more satisying have been the tweets where people having been spreading ideas to their teams, following up conversations with speakers, making change happen or just reflecting (sometimes frustratedly). That is the mission of Meaning: to really, properly change business.

Official Meaning 2012 photos

Here’s a bunch of nice photos of Meaning available for you to use under Creative Commons licence.

Well done to our Clive Andrews for taking these – he did a brilliant job.

Be part of Meaning in 2013

If you’d like to get a heads up about Meaning 2013, drop an email to sayhello@meaningconference.co.uk.

We’ve set the bar. Next year we gotta go further, bigger in impact, strive hard to go further. That won’t be easy. But it’s a task with meaning…

Your dose of CultureShocky links

The Twitter spin room: What happens when politics goes real-time? One of the big ideas in Culture Shock is about this notion of ‘Change Velocity’ – that the information coursing around the world at a new, accelerated ‘real time’ speed demands organisations to move much faster. And that an organisation’s ability to keep adapting at speed will to some extent influence its likelihood of thriving. With that in mind, this is a really interesting look at US politics and the realtime-ness of debates and so on.

Great short video of Gore CEO Terri Kelly challenging the age-old model of the all-knowing, all-powerful leader. Nice and succinct. Follows up on the content in Culture Shock about Gore and their model of ‘followership’ vs. leadership. She uses the word ‘courage’. LIKE. ‘True leaders will be judged on how much of that power they distributed through the organisation’. Yes!

Campaign against Anti-Social Businesses & Organisations (ASBOs) – wonderful, important, catchy idea from Mark Pinsent, who I think of us as a real Culture Shock ally and advocate. Just the idea alone has a kind of power, doesn’t it? 🙂

Help Save Exeter Street Hall, Prestonville, Brighton – here in Brighton a group of people are on a mission to retain a community space and save it from being sold by a church to property developers. It couldn’t be more in keeping with the messages of Meaning and Culture Shock – and it’s real. These guys are serious and need the support of others – please check it out.

Please review Culture Shock on Amazon

Lastly, if you’ve read Culture Shock, please review it on Amazon – as short or long as you like, as negative or positive, it’s all up to you. But whatever form it takes, every Amazon review helps, my author friends tell me, and I WANT THESE IDEAS TO SPREAD! This isn’t about money – it is about profile and impact. I wanna make this happen. Thank you for your help 🙂

That’s it for this week, changers-of-the-world. ONWARDS.