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Davos Debrief: In Resilience We Trust

“What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power,” novelist Michael Ondaatje writes in The Cat’s Table, and it was a strange coincidence that I came across this enigmatic line on the descent down from Davos, the Swiss ski resort that had just convened some of the world’s most powerful men and women for the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Power circles

The paradox of Davos is that it is both highly public and highly secretive. Relationships and business transactions are on show, as much as they are taking place in back room meetings and private encounters on the peripheries, far away from the glitz and glamour and where the buzzing doesn’t need buzzwords. Davos is the great equalizer and the great divider at the same time. The hierarchies are both formal and explicit (manifest by the color of your badge), as well as situational and subtle, with small smart mobs forming around the most sought-after, both on- and offsite (“one minute you’re in, the next you’re out”), in emotional roller coaster, funicular, and shuttle rides between recognition and rejection, belonging and alienation.

I came for the second year, and for the second year I was badge-less, attending as a member of my boss’s, Doreen Lorenzo, entourage (full disclosure: I also serve on the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Values). I observed the program from the sidelines, with the humble but notable privilege of being able to partake in many of the social functions. The only way to bridge the inevitable gulf that opened at the beginning of each encounter, each conversation, was with a condensed version of “my story,” because, unlike that of regular attendees, it wasn’t printed in large letters on a white badge that would have instantly legitimized my identity and affiliation. But I suspect I wasn’t the only one feeling vulnerable. Everyone does in a setting like this, and only those who feel at ease with high levels of social discomfort and fully open up to the sway of serendipity will experience the most meaningful “Davos moments.”

Of which there were many, both fleeting and lasting – from private dinners on the Schatzalp, a mountain top that allegedly inspired Thomas Mann’s famed ‘bildungsroman’ The Magic Mountain; to adventurous bus rides with militant skiers and mildly tolerant locals; and silent periods of total exhaustion, shared with dozens of strangers, leaning over laptops in collaborative pop-up office spaces along the ‘Promenade’ (the village’s main street that serves as a catwalk for all of the Davos cast and colorful characters).

Davos is full of stories, of course; it is a multi-layered conversation desperately trying to keep pace with the constantly evolving memes and shapes of our economies and societies, relying on a lingua franca that is dominated by technology and management jargon, as well as a stubborn belief in rationality and in balanced multi-stakeholder solutions. Only recently has it broadened its vernacular and vocabulary to include the language of art (heart), and to juxtapose our biggest societal challenges with a more personal quest for meaning, understanding that the two are as interwoven as the circles of power in Davos.

Magic mountains

While the session titles of the Annual Meeting program hinted at these greater philosophical questions, they were only the tips of the icebergs. Yet in the best case, when the fault lines from business, technology, science, politics, religion, and culture converged, they revealed another sort of “magic mountain,” simultaneously elusive and concrete, rich with ambiguity and friction. The best sessions created spaces where avant-garde thinking was rooted in popular demand, elevation balanced with grassroots concerns, and profound knowledge was paired with an unshaken and perhaps naïve belief in “betterness” (Umair Haque) and in positive transformation.

Major themes that emerged during the week were those of the “circular economy” and “resilience,” the latter of which had inspired this year’s Annual Meeting’s theme of “Resilient Dynamism”. The ‘circular economy’ seeks to decouple growth from resource constraints by introducing reverse logistics and heightened consumer awareness. It is not a new concept, but due to the mysterious moods of the Zeitgeist and the vocal presence of evangelists such as Ellen McArthur of the Ellen McArthur Foundation, it garnered significant traction in Davos as a new economic innovation for the business mainstream.

Somewhat related, the rise of “resilience” (propelled by widespread acclaim for Andrew Zolli’s and Ann Marie Healey’s book of the same title, whose release uncannily coincided with Hurricane Sandy and therefore immediately received a lot of media play), describes a set of alternative, systemic ways of rebounding to the whim of forces beyond our control. It signifies a new school of economic thinking that favors nimble, highly adaptive systems over more robust, ‘sustainable’ ones, in a response to irrationalities and externalities that elude traditional categories of strategic planning and management. These systems, according to the economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amount to a situation of “anti-fragility,” tolerating just enough inherent fragility to quickly recover from “black swans”, or highly improbable external disruptions. In a similar vein, Said business school professor Rafael Ramirez advocated a more “pluralistic” notion of strategy (reminiscent of Stuart Evans’ model of “super-flexibility” that views strategy as a portfolio of ever-changing planes and gears).

Moreover, among many other topics, there were panels on China’s soft power, on meditation, decision-making, “mindfulness,” “transformative art,” “beliefs that bond,” the “culture of economics,” smart cities, “digital norms”, the “art of leadership,” the “happiness factor,” the “moral economy,” and “objects of culture.” There was also a wonderfully optimistic session on the future of online education that impressed on the audience that we are indeed witnessing a revolution – the impetus is radical, the outcome is unclear. The three big “revolutionaries” in this space – Coursera, Udacity, and edX – were represented, but the true star of the panel was 12-year old Pakistani girl Khadija Niazi, who was interviewed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and shared how online classes on Udacity had changed her life.

Civil society and "beautiful organizations"

The broad variety of issues illustrates the Forum’s holistic view of our global economies, understanding them not only as financial markets but as arenas for sympathetic interactions that foster the very social fabric of our societies. This mindset was further bolstered by the ostentatious inclusion of additional and often marginalized constituents: While there were still only 17% female participants (the same quota as in 2011), women leaders such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde counted as the most distinctive voices in the program. The Forum’s Young Global Leaders (leaders under 40) and Global Shapers (leaders under 30) communities were strongly involved in the program (encouragingly, 50% of them are women). And the civil society communities all played a prominent role – for good reason. PR firm Edelman’s 2013 edition of its influential Trust Barometer that surveyed more than 31,000 respondents in 26 markets around the world, released during Davos, indicated that civil society actors enjoy higher trust levels than business and politics when it comes to tackling some of society’s most pressing challenges. NGOs, labor organizations, faith groups, and a range of other emerging actors discussed a comprehensive report on “The Future Role of Civil Society” that the Forum presented in Davos; and the Arts communities, represented by such diverse figures as John Maeda (Rhode Island School of Design), Paulo Coelho, and Eric Whitacre, among others, countered economic logic with creativity and intuition.

With business leaders such as GE’S Beth Comstock they explored how companies can incorporate the arts in their leadership and decision-making frameworks, and whether our economies should expand their definitions of value-creation not just by categories of prosperity, happiness, and well-being (all of which legitimate concerns and arguably viable indicators of economic progress, and as such popular topics in Davos), but also those of aesthetics and transcendence. In this vein, Rafael Ramirez suggested we build “attractive organizations” that create beauty, and proposed an “aesthetical view of management” that is based on Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, which is often translated as “practical wisdom.” He asked civil society organizations, in particular, to create positive visions rather than merely providing efficient solutions to problems, and he called upon them to serve as arbiters of meaning.

Meaning 

Apropos meaning. Emerging as a major theme at Davos, it was mentioned by CEOs, NGO and religious leaders, and academia throughout the five-day program – in sessions on values, civil society, and faith. Elif Şafak, the Turkish bestseller author, made a passionate case for ambiguity and doubt to avoid “living in a polarized world.” She heralded the power of the “grey zone” and suggested we add more commas to our identities (“I am a mother, I am a Christian, I love traveling, etc.”) instead of exclamation marks (“I am a Christian!”). Microfinance pioneer and Nobel prize laureate Muhammad Yunus reminded the audience that education must always include an education of the heart, an education sentimentale, and that rather than just acquiring new skills in pursuit of a career, we ought to learn to grow our capacities as human beings in pursuit of a common purpose, or “the meaning of life.”

It is perhaps no surprise that meaning and spirituality enjoyed such prominence this year in Davos, against the backdrop of a fragmented connected age so volatile that it seems to even lack the one historic watershed moment, the one crisis to agree on (as was the case in previous Davos meetings). In uncertain times, all we have is faith. Both religion and the “faith of the faithless,” the non-institutional spirituality, can serve as major individual and societal transformative forces with the capacity to combine private and public lives. Several panels viewed spirituality as part of our human dignity and demanded we reconcile our predominantly rational systems of politics, science, and business with a “sense of wonder” and a new appreciation of “the divine” in order to improve the state of our world. If spirituality imbues respect for “the other,” empathy, and mutual understanding, then it can indeed help foster our economies’ greatest resource in the connected age – collaboration.

Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organizational behavior at business school INSEAD and chair of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership, consequently spoke in religious terms when he recommended we embrace “devotion” over the much gushed-about “passion.” Devotion stands for a lasting commitment to a conviction, cause, or belief that is less transient in nature and more grounded in a sense of identity and belonging.

And indeed: “What kind of a person do I want to be?” asked theologian Fr. Christopher Jamison in an Open Forum session on “Is Religion Outdated in the 21st Century?” – it will remain the main question for each of the over 2,500 official attendees, the assembled young and seasoned global leaders, far beyond Davos. Constantly reflecting on it may warrant that we follow these leaders, the so-called “Davos Men and Women,” not only to the next management paradigm or the ups and downs of (ir)rational exuberance, but to the creation of a global economy that is resiliently human and engages our complete selves, with head, hand, and heart.

It makes sense then that an artist, the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, was the most retweeted attendee, and in one of his tweets he truly nailed the overall sentiment with practical wisdom: “Davos: either too hot (indoor) or too cold (outside). Like love.”

Image credit: Forumblog

Business, Ethics, Barcelona: Doing Good When You’re Not Doing So Well

I just returned from Barcelona (where every tourist now seems to be tracking the path of Woody Allen's Vicky and Christina…), attending a few sessions of the Doing Good and Doing Well Conference organized by IESE Business School and Net Impact, an organization that connects MBA students interested in social responsibility.

That a leading business school is dedicating an entire student-run conference to the topic of responsible business is remarkable (HEC Paris will do the same soon in May, also in collaboration with Net Impact) but not an isolated phenomenon. In the past few years, several top business schools, such as Yale, Duke, Harvard, and Stanford, as well as pioneers such as the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington State have begun to offer tailored programs to MBAs who want to marry traditional business skills with innovative approaches to solving social problems. Different from nonprofit curricula, which typically provide the fundamentals of fundraising and grant writing, these specific business school programs combine the finance and management training of a traditional MBA with electives that cover everything from how to get venture capital and invest in emerging markets to building sustainable energy sources. But conferences like IESE's indicate that social entrepreneurship is not yet fully integrated into all business school curricula and that it still needs the extra limelight. As long as not all business is social business, business that is not social will still find a safe harbor.

Business and ethics have of course been intertwined since the days of the Greek polis. Adam Smith, the spiritual father of the homo oeconomicus, wrote a "Theory of Moral Sentiments" before he wrote "The Wealth of Nations." And yet, business that is good for society has always been in need of being extrapolated through catchy labels (business ethics, CSR, corporate citizenship, social innovation, social entrepreneurship, etc.), invariably heralded as the Next Big Thing and slowly moving up the food chain from a window-dressing PR tool to a truly integral strategy driver. Recently, Fast Company coined the new, chic term "Ethonomics" and even made it one of the key pillars of its relaunched web site:

"We live in a world that's resource-constrained but ingenuity-rich. So an upstart generation of entrepreneurs – and innovators within the world's biggest companies – are founding businesses that are good for the world as well as the bottom line. They are practicing social change through urban revitalization, sustainable agriculture, green IT, alternative energy and online community-powered investing. Any business that claims to be truly sustainable and innovative should be increasingly efficient with energy and natural resources, transparent and accountable, and good on balance for people and other living things. Ethonomics is a hybrid of technology, design, and social responsibility, and at Fast Company we believe it is the future of business."

In Barcelona, this young upstart generation of entrepreneurs and innovators shared its ideas, seeking advice from those who had been in the field for some years. For example from Kyle Zimmer, the president and co-founder of First Book:

"Whenever you hit a point at which you feel you have no idea what you're doing (and if you don't reach that point quickly, you’re not moving fast enough), make a list with the ten most acclaimed experts able to answer your questions. And then call them one by one even if you have never met them or your list includes Bill Gates. It doesn't matter. Tell them your story and ask them for help. Some won’t call you back. In fact, I can pride myself with not having been called back by some of the most accomplished people in the world. But you’d be surprised how many will."

Jessica Jackley Flannery, co-founder and chief marketing officer of micro-lending marketplace Kiva, was another one of the veterans present, and her talk made most of the MBA students in the audience beam. Social entrepreneurs are simpaticos, of course, and you'd be hard pressed to find a MBA student these days who would not want to be a social innovator. Wall Street fame is so yesterday. Flannery epitomized the case for a new 'meaning' and emphasized the power of storytelling: "If we all understood each other's stories, the world would be a better place." Stories create empathy, and empathy breeds the solidarity needed for taking action. In light of the dire economic situation in developed countries, Flannery half-jokingly said she wouldn't be surprised if a young entrepreneur in Uganda were soon to lend money to a job-less banker in Manhattan. Globalization in reverse. In any case, innovative banking such as Kiva's is no longer only focused on helping developing economies. New web-enabled finance 2.0 models and infrastructures attempt to overcome the financial crisis in the US.

Entrepreneurs and innovators may be much needed these days, but "how can you be doing good when we are not doing so well?" the conference asked. With almost 14% unemployment in Spain, it was brutally aware of the need to discuss the creation of "Sustainable Value in a Downturn." Aside from the assumption that recessions can hold tremendous opportunity for any entrepreneur (as Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek point out), social entrepreneurs in particular seem to weather the current investment pullback rather well. The Skoll Foundation is currently conducting a survey, to be presented at the Skoll World Forum in March. Preliminary results indicate that most of the social entrepreneurs have been affected by the economic downturn in some way or other, but only 10% of the respondents say that they have been severely affected.

"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste," Paul Romer (now famously) said, and hopefully the current recession will not lead to a Great Depression but a "Great Disruption" (Paul Gilding) that requires us to build the foundation of our economy from the ground up. In his brilliant post on "How To Be a 21st Century Capitalist," Umar Haique writes that "Capital deepening is the foundation of next-generation value creation." By that he means "assets with intrinsic, durable, human value – not the lemons Wall Street was in the business of hawking. It is only by capitalizing the things we really value that the spark of value creation can be lit again." He predicts that "next-generation businesses will be built on next-generation assets:" "Yesterday's businesses were built on cash, factories, and IP - financial, physical, and intellectual capital. Next-generation businesses are built, instead, on human, social, natural, and cultural capital – to name just a few."

Kindle? Here Comes the Talking Book!

Everyone's talking about the new Kindle, but here's a product that may present an even more radical innovation in the e-book sector: The Talking Book, created and distributed by the non-profit Literacy Bridge, is a low cost audio player/recorder with special features for Knowledge Sharing and Literacy Learning. It was developed entirely by volunteers and costs less than $10. The device involves an ecosystem to produce and share locally relevant audio content, allowing users to record their own messages and distribute them within local networks through a device-to-device copying capability. Other features include slow play for reading practice and some interactive features (for educational lessons and games).

The man behind Literacy Bridge is former Microsoft program manager Cliff Schmidt, who studied artificial intelligence and spent much of his time thinking about how literacy can play a role in moving people out of poverty. Schmidt believes that in a country like Ghana having spoken information at hand will help people avoid lengthy trips to visit clinics or other offices. As a next step, he envisions using the Talking Books to reach women in Afghanistan (90% of whom are illiterate), but ideally the device could of course be used anywhere in the world.

While it may not have the media hype of the One Laptop per Child project (yet), the Talking Book may indeed yield greater impact. The thinking behind the device is compelling, and the opportunities that come with using commodity components to create a rich service are fascinating.

"A Better World by Design" Summons Change Agents from Various Sectors

"A Better World by Design" is a first-of-its-kind conference on "globally conscious design," as the organizers call it. Held at Brown University/RISD from November 7-9, it aims to generate innovative solutions to issues facing today's world, including extreme poverty, access to basic resources, and environmental degradation.

The conference wants to attract academics and professionals interested in learning and discussing ways in which user-centric and affordable technology can improve the world around us. It will bring together such far-ranging fields as social entrepreneurship, engineering, design, economics, development, and environmental studies in search of new opportunities for the private and voluntary sectors.

The organizers expect 300 attendees. Confirmed speakers include Bernard Amadei (Engineers Without Borders), Ken Banks (Kiwanja), Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture Network), Denise DeLuca (Biomimicry Institute), Steve Glenn (LivingHomes), Erik Hersman (Afrigadget, White African, and Ushahidi), Paul Polak (International Development Enterprises and D-Rev), and others.

RenGen – A Generation of Cultural Consumers?

Isn't it interesting how trends are made? "One of the things I like about trends is that they seem so easy -- Blue is the color of 2008! GenY likes health food!" observes Stacey Gillar. Coupling the disparate ("Chic Trash"), pushing an already extreme concept to the extreme ("Radical Transparency"), or simply announcing the advent of something "new" ("Nouvelle Vague," "Nouveau Niche," etc.) are some of the flourishing categories. Or you simply repackage an old concept.

"RenGen," short for Renaissance Generation and the title of Patricia Martin's, well, trend-setting new book, falls under the latter. It is the latest in a long series of attempts to aggregate individuals into a cohesive stratum that is bigger than the sum of its members -- initially, based on socio-economic characteristics (Baby Boomers), and then increasingly also on attitudinal and behavioral traits (Generation X, Generation Y, Generation C).

The idea of the original historic renaissance, from which Martin derives her RenGen, has survived many trends. Reviving the philosophical impetus from ancient Greek philosophy, it believed that, per Wikipedia's definition, "it was possible to acquire a universal learning in order to develop one's potential, covering both the arts and the sciences." When someone is called a Renaissance Man today, it is meant that "he does not just have broad interests or a superficial knowledge of several fields, but better that his knowledge is rather profound, and often that he also has proficiency or accomplishments in (at least some of) these fields, and in some cases even at a level comparable to the proficiency or the accomplishments of an expert."

The RenGen, according to Martin's definition, is "a cultural movement created by the confluence of art, education, entertainment, and business." While the language is different, this still sounds strikingly similar to Da Vinci's generation. But wait, one thing is different with the new RenGen: "A powerful new player is at its center: the cultural consumer." Aha! That reminds one of Richard Florida's Creative Class or Tyler Brule's Monocle Magazine, both of which are built on the assumption that the human need for culture, defying all swan songs of cultural pessimism, ranks high in Maslow's pyramid, and that today's Renaissance Man is a multi-disciplinary multi-tasker who embraces several disciplines, ideas, and ideologies -- and can afford it. Confluence follows affluence. Culture, in a renaissance kind of way, is the opposite of Stephen Colbert's "truthiness;" it is the insight that any possible human expression will find its form, and that the values of religion, technology, commerce, and politics can be moderated by a truth-seeking collective identity. Cultural consumerism, in contrast, means that any possible human expression can become a product, and that the values of religion, technology, commerce, and politics can be consumed by a fun-seeking collective identity. The renaissance was a movement of like-minded individuals with shared values; the RenGen is a cohort of consumers with an affinity for similar purchases.

The trick with books like "RenGen" is that they create a vessel for a desired collective identity rather than examining it. They do so by addressing the aspirational ego of the reader: Who doesn't want to be a Renaissance Man or Woman? You enjoy reading the book because it articulates an unarticulated desire and provides a convenient frame for the irreconcilable contradictions of modern life. On the surface, the charm of the homo universalis lies in its very universal character: You're not really good at anything? No problem, then be a cultural consumer, ahem, sorry, Renaissance Man. Or, if that doesn’t work, just be a member of the RenGen!

From CONNECTING'07: Why We Fail

"We don't fail because we aim too high and fail. We fail because we aim too low and succeed."

The quote is from Sir Ken Robinson's moving plenary presentation this morning at the World Design Congress in San Francisco. To me, this was the secret keynote of the conference. More about the other sessions tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy Sir Ken Robinsons's 2006 TED talk on creativity and education:

College 2.0: UC Berkeley Goes YouTube

Several colleges have already been experimenting with online video for some years, albeit mostly as a sporadic effort. UC Berkeley is the first school now to be more serious about it: The university announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on YouTube.

The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at youtube.com/ucberkeley. Berkeley said it will continue to expand the offering. The topics of study found on YouTube include chemistry, physics, biology, and even a lecture on search-engine technology given in 2005 by Google co-founder Sergey Brin (see above).

Don't you want to go back to school?

Asking the Right Questions?

It was Henry Kissinger who said that “if I give interviews, I expect the reporters to have the questions for my answers.” And I’m sure Cicero had something wise to say about the philosophical importance of questions, as well. John Hagel, who runs the wonderful Edge Perspectives blog and has just joined Deloitte & Touche with a mandate to establish a major new research center in Silicon Valley, puts it this way:

“It's appropriate to step back occasionally and reflect on what we don't know, rather than simply sharing what we know. In times of rapid change, asking the right questions is often as important as the answers – at least they help us figure out where we might start looking for answers. There is no shortage of questions – the key is to focus on questions that are not just intellectually interesting, but also where significant economic impact is at stake.”

Hence Hagel presents his preliminary research agenda as a set of questions including “What if there is no equilibrium?” “Are all ecosystems created equal?” “If the world is so flat, why are spikes becoming more prominent?” and “As L curves replace Bell curves, what are the most promising routes to the head?” Hagel also wonders how we can “measure success when so many of the rules are changing,” proposing new indicators such as return on attention (ROA), return on information (ROI) and return on skills (ROS). Anyway, read the full post. GREAT stuff.

From Edge Perspectives to Edge. Edge is an online forum for the world’s leading thinkers. In the spirit of the above, every year the Edge World Question Center sends out the so-called Edge question to its members. In 2006, the question was “What’s your most dangerous idea?”

“The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?”

The responses, varying from 50 words to multiple pages in length and now compiled into a book, are literally mind-boggling. Among the myriad provocative ideas are many neuro-scientific and bio-genetic assumptions (“We have no souls,” “Marionettes on Genetic String,” “The genetic basis of human behavior,” “Brains can become minds without bodies”) as well as meta-physical shockers (“We are entirely alone,” and “This is all there is”). My favorite idea, however, is the following: “The idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas.”

Fair Vanity

I had the pleasure of visiting Vanity Fair’s offices in Berlin last week, a fancy loft that resembles an Apple store and is full of devils wearing Prada. Conde Nast is obviously putting a lot of money behind its latest national franchise (a weekly in Germany) but both the journalistic quality and the sales numbers of the German issue, which appears to be a mixed bag of tabloid, news magazine, and fashion guide, are disappointing so far.

I realized once again on my flight back to the US why Vanity Fair is still a household name in magazine journalism. I bought this month’s special Africa issue, which was co-edited by Bono and is essentially the (Magazine) Red. Although the magazine’s editor, Graydon Carter, eventually shied away from giving in to Bono’s pledge to rename it “Fair Vanity,” the special edition – despite its serious cause -- is fun to read. From Bono’s “Message 2U” editorial (in which he calls U2 an “Irish post-punk combo”) to Chris Rock’s blasphemous “My trip to South Africa” travelogue, the contributions radiate a pleasant sense of self-irony and depict the world’s “forgotten continent” in bright colors and with an optimistic tone.

Naturally, this approach is controversial and has caused some harsh criticism. Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society writes: “The message of the cover is that Africa is important and sexy because important and sexy people care about it and are willing to lend their ‘talent’ and celebrity appeal to the ‘cause.’ This tends to piss off my friends who are begging the world to think of Africa less as a cause and more as a continent, particularly as a continent open for business. How hard would it have been for Vanity Fair to pair some of these well-meaning celebrities with actual Africans working to build businesses, repair hospitals and save forests?.... It’s possible - and quite likely - that some of these stories are excellent and worth reading. But the overall picture is the one that so many Africans find themselves fighting - Africa as basket case.”

To me, these accusations seem unfair. At the end of the day, it’s Vanity Fair, and with its African issue the magazine does what it does best: Celebrity-studded people journalism. It’s a diverse, riveting view on Africa that takes full advantage of what Bono calls “judo strategy” – winning a cause by leveraging the power of the enemy (that is, in this case, the blunt hedonism and consumerism of the Western World).” He says that they were trying to “bring some sex appeal to wanting to change the world. Well done.

Trash Talk: Two Weeks Without Garbage

A colleague of mine at frog design, Ashley Menger, is keeping a blog ("Trash Talk") about her experience of trying to live two weeks without garbage (or to produce as little garbage as possible). The main rule: Any trash she does create must be within five feet of her at all times. “The purpose of this project is to challenge our behavioral patterns and natural instincts to throw things away, developing a greater awareness of our individual contributions to the world’s landfills,” she says.

The blog tracks Ashley’s daily life and purchasing patterns with this new mindset, recording her progress, predicaments, substitutions, and solutions. Once Ashley has finished her two weeks (she's on day five now), the experience will be undertaken by another person at frog, in another studio - highlighting the differences in environmental consciousness across cities, environments, governments, and economies.

Core 77 loves” the hands-on effort with this project,” and I just like the fact that Ashley works in our Austin office and not in Palo Alto where I’m based....;)