Sunday, December 23, 2007
Educating for the future
If there is on1 think I am sure about, it is we need more creativity to solve the mess we have put this planet, and this society, in. There are many problems that need to be solved -and that can be solved, but only through creativity.
We should focus on developing our children, and helping them be the best they can be -without defining what the 'best' is (i.e. academically intelligent). Apparently Picasso said every child is born in artist, but only a few are allowed to keep the skill into adulthood. Why should sport, art, music, theatre and other non-academic subjects take up so little of our childhood (especially at school), and even at High School, University and beyond, our we still undertaking enough of these activities to develop ourselves -or are we too focused on developing the tiny per cent of our brain that deals with marketing, finance etc?
In fact, we need to not just nurture creativity in our children, we need to nurture it in everyone, and in the World of work, this means nurturing it in our employees. When I heard google allow all employees 10-20% of their time to do whatever they want to to, whilst at work, i became inspired (i hope this is still true, at google!). Of course nurturing creativity in employees will help them be better at their jobs, but it will also, more importantly, help them be better for the whole of society. This is something responsible leaders need to think about.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Overcoming differences is neccessary -and maybe even possible
The world has not worked together to really tackle a common enemy ever before, and this is a big test. However many regions or countries or groups of people have done just this before. By overcoming our differences we can understand that we are, fundamentally, all after the same, and when something threatens that, we can work together. It is not easy, and it is rare that a challenge is so great that it can bring us all together. For the moment, Climate Change is certainly not bringing us all together, in the way that, say World War 2 brought the entire UK (and many of its colonies) together to fight a common enemy.
Many in the World do not care about climate change, because they are not affected by it, or do not think they will be affected by it… and this is a huge issue. This is what must change; otherwise we are accepting that, until the whole World is affected by the issue, we will not tackle the issue. Of course, by that time, it will be SO much harder to deal with the issue. But I suppose this is normal, looking at how much easier it might have been to stop Hitler before 1939, when Chamberlain refused to deal with the issue head-on; instead Britain waited until the problem was so much bigger before actually trying to tackle it.
So, can we learn from these (and other) lessons and get together to fight the common enemy now, when the battle can still be won, and can be won with less disruption, loss of live, damage etc than if we continue to wait? We are evidently starting to find out.
Stability and responsive competition
Business needs certain things, and what seems to be mentioned most often is the need for stability, so business can research, plan, execute, invest and so on. But today’s society is becoming increasingly unstable affecting the stability of society, but also the stability of consumers –and, on the flip side providing immense opportunities to new market entrants who can take advantage of the instability.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Substituting the very bad for the bad
Another example, rather more interesting, is the issue of alcoholism which leads to health problems (such as harming the liver) and social problems (such as abusing others or not working). This article talks about a solution in Africa where local alcohol is highly alcoholic and dangerous, but extremely cheap. So if something less alcoholic (and thus less dangerous) can be provided for the same price, people might switch. It is an interesting solution; and what i like about it is that it still tries to create local economic benefit (which presumably, the local dangerous alcohol does) in order to keep costs down.
A parallel can be drawn with cigarettes and providing low-tar cigarettes (or 'light' cigarettes) instead of regulars. Though, is this the best solution compared to promoting nicotine patches or just by trying to stop smoking altogether? It depends on the problem, since now the problem is seen less as the health impacts on the smoker and more on the health impacts of others (and the nuisance factor). Presumably promoting such low-tar options, though helping reduce the harm on the smoker, does not really reduce the nuisance factor and still harms (though maybe somewhat less) other passive smokers.
I wonder what the side-effects of the above mentioned experiment is Africa are -would the local alcohol growers/sellers start campaigns against the cheap beer?, and whether there has been any studies on them. Well, if DfID get involved, I am sure there will be plenty of studies!