Bad news, good news…

Two stories here, one describing the problem, one addressing part of the solution. First, a new study by Nasa shows yet again that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades, just as many previous empires and civilisations have done. Echoing Jared Diamond (TED talk here, synopsis here) they find the key factors driving the risk of …

Leadership as “guided serendipity”

To thrive in a changing world we will have to find new ways of leading. Adam Cutler, design studio director of global giants IBM, calls one such way “guided serendipity.” It is working for him. Guided serendipity involves letting go of trying to control everything, and focusing instead on the key elements that create the conditions for success. …

The food challenge

An interesting interview here with Brussels-based agriculture expert, Patrick Worms. “Ensuring food security for the 10 or 11 billion people that will soon live on a planet buffeted by climate change,” he says, “is a challenge which no single technological breakthrough will be able to meet on its own. We’re going to need everything.” For …

The doughnut economy — A comprehensive innovation map for the next 40 years

Following yesterday’s post on the MD of Accenture’s statement of the urgent need to reduce carbon intensity and the need for systems thinking to achieve this, it seems appropriate to ask ourselves “What would it take to create a sustainable system, for business and the economy?” The first step to that is having a life-supporting …

Interview with Peter Lacey, Managing Director (Asia Pacific) at Accenture Consulting Services

A very interesting interview here with Peter Lacey, Managing Director (Asia Pacific) at Accenture Consulting Services. We particularly notice two things that he says: First, carbon reduction in every product and service in the world needs to be of the order of seven to eight times what it is today. That means that for in …

IKEA on track to be energy-independent by 2020

As an addendum to the earlier story about the need for all businesses to be carbon neutral (or better) in the next 20 or so years, Swedish retailer IKEA announced last week (14 Nov) the purchase of a 46 MW wind farm in Pincher Creek, Alberta. The 20 turbine wind farm is expected to generate 161 GWh of …

Increasing issuance of corporate green bonds

French utility giant EDF this week set a new high in the market for corporate ‘green bonds’, issuing £1.2 billion (euros 1.4 bn) worth of bonds tied to returns from its renewable assets. Although the bond is only a small fraction of the total market, the fact that the issue was two-times over-subscribed suggests there is …

Local currency — Berkshares

There are now hundreds of thousands of local currencies operating around the world. They serve their local economies, and all are small in scale (even in comparison with alternatives such as Bitcoin). But one of the largest and most successful examples of a local currency, ‘Berkshares‘, just got bigger — with a $500,000 grant to …

Everyone can (and should) be a leader

The future is going to be more complex, fast-changing, and unpredictable. There are two ways of handling this. The first is to centralise: to bring all the relevant information to one central leader, so that she can take decisions. The other is to decentralise: to make everyone a leader; give everyone in the organisation the same …

The ‘resource constrained world’

Switzerland is a country with a strong brand: renowned for its chocolate, its clocks, its banks, the wealth of its citizens, and the efficiency of its public transport system. But Switzerland, like the rest of us, is a country with limited resources, limited land, different populations, speaking different languages, in different cantons, and surrounded by …