Idris at Innovation Playground has this morning what is among the best posts I’ve read all week. Purporting that the number of social, economic, technological and environmental crisis facing us are increasing more quickly than our ability to assemble creative, innovative solutions to them:
There are a lot of myths about innovation and many organizations still not seeing it’s central role in strategy making. Government money can only provide some relief but cannot get us out of this. Technological innovation is the only answer. We need an equivalent of another personal computer revolution to jump start the world’s economy and create new industries.
…Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that human society faces a growing shortfall between the rising number of difficult human issues and the supply of new ideas on how to deal with them—a phenomenon he refers to as the “ingenuity gap.”
Homer-Dixon’s book of the same name is a phenomenal read, by the way. It’s even available on Kindle1.
Idris goes on to outline five such difficult human issues:
- How can we make sure that inevitable cycles of economic transition and “creative destruction” of firms and industries do not force many less privileged people into deep poverty?
- How can we leverage the unused capacities and/or infrastructures of larger global corporations to create social value as part of their corporate social responsibilities?
- How can we benefit from the wisdom and knowledge of an aging Boomers workforce while still creating the room for bright and inexperience young people to fully apply their talents?
- How can we govern ourselves – our cities, towns and states and nations – when many of the major economic, environmental and political forces that affect us operate supra-nationally?
- How should we reform our financial systems to include microfinancing and allow it to be fully integrated in the much broader world of mainstream capital markets and financial systems?
A few I’d add to his list:
- How can we generate technologies (and even economies) that can make use or dispose of the overwhelming volume of waste that is created by a rapidly expanding global population?
- How can we develop strategies and pathways that will continue to bring to market goods from family farms and microplots?
I’d also suggest a corrolary to one of Idris issues:
- How can states and nations evolve and adapt to populations that are increasingly mobile and often more intertwined in social and professional engagements across borders than they are within national boundaries?
- which is, in and of itself, rather ingenious [↩]
Related posts:
- The Optimist Conspectus: Sam Ford
- links for 2009-01-10
- links for 2009-01-17
- links for 2009-01-12
- The Optimist Conspectus: Benjamin Schmidt