Food Insecurity: Serious Challenges Ahead
By Christian Sarkar Food insecurity, which refers to the lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life, can result from a complex interplay of various factors. What are the causes of food insecurity? The main reasons include: Food insecurity is a multifaceted challenge that requires aContinue Reading
Death of Nature: Biodiversity Loss
By Laura Galdi The loss of global biodiversity has reached historic levels and it is continuing to accelerate — due to increased pressure by five direct drivers strongly interconnected to each other. With more than 1 million species at risk of extinction, we are witnessing a biodiversity crisis, inextricably linkedContinue Reading
F-minus: A new report card for Lobbyists
By Christian Sarkar Launched in July 2023, F Minus has built a revolutionary database of state-level lobbyists for upstream and midstream oil, gas, and coal interests to demonstrate the extent to which these lobbyists are also representing people, schools, communities, and businesses being harmed by the climate crisis. This isContinue Reading
Steel Pulse: “Only One World (Wicked Problems)”
On this, the last day of COP26, Grammy-winning legends Steel Pulse have a message for us: we must come together to tackle the world’s wickedest problems – because there is no Planet B. What can we do to bring people together in our communities? How can we unite across theContinue Reading
We have weaponized fear and built the fear economy
By Karthiga Ratnam “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.” ― Leo Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do?Continue Reading
Webinar: Population & Migration
With us for the webinar – a group of dynamic Palermitans: – Leoluca Orlando. As Mayor of Palermo, Orlando’s extraordinary vision and courage has changed our understanding of immigration, tolerance, and the fight against corruption. – Claudio Arestivo. A co-founder of Moltivolti – a unique regenerative business – which servesContinue Reading
WEBINAR: “Health & Livelihood”
Join us as we welcome: Stuart Hart – a leading authority on the implications of environment and poverty for business strategy. Hart is the Founder and President of Enterprise for a Sustainable World Bob Freling – Executive Director at Solar Electric Light Fund, Freling developed the “solar village development model” – aContinue Reading
Hate & Conflict – The Business of War
By Karthiga Ratnam There are people dying If you care enough for the living Make a better place for you and for me… Hate, Conflict, War, Genocide. Have you ever stopped think why they exist? Who profits from it? There is such callousness to war. People casually say things likeContinue Reading
The Death of Nature: Deforestation
The problem of deforestation mapped out by Laura Galdi and Chiara Falvo. Details here >>
WEBINAR: “Power & Corruption”
REPLAY >> Join our guests as we discuss – “Power & Corruption” with: Obiageli “Aunty Oby” Ezekwesili, a former vice president of the World Bank (African Region), co-founder and founding director of Transparency International, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement and has also served twice as Federal Minister in Nigeria. AvivahContinue Reading
How do we stop the cycle of intergenerational hate and conflict?
By Aryssa Yoon, David Sehyeon Baek and Karthiga Ratnam Two households, both alike in dignity (In fair Verona, where we lay our scene), From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean -Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare This prologue of Shakespeare’s infamous love story about theContinue Reading
Death of Nature – The Impact of Oil Spills on Our Oceans
By Aryssa Yoon and Karthiga Ratnam Drake’s Folly. That’s what started the race for oil. The year was 1859. Edwin Drake successfully drilled for and found crude oil. Until then, companies would collect oil only through oil seepage. This would happen naturally. The town called the oil well Drake’s FollyContinue Reading
The Lost Children of the Philippines
BY KARTHIGA RATNAM, EMERALD PASFIELD, AND ARYSSA YOON “She listened to the silence. Her first thought was relief. He’s gone. Her second thought was utter devastation. He didn’t kill me.” ― Catherine Brusk, What Love Washed Up Have you ever been stuck in an elevator for a few minutes? You must haveContinue Reading
G7 is more united but not effective enough to tackle the world’s biggest problems
BY Natasha Lindstaedt, University of Essex When the UK hosts the G7 summit in Cornwall between June 10 and 12, it will be the first intergovernmental meeting of the world’s seven wealthiest democracies since before COVID. Playing host for the seventh time, the UK is in a slightly stronger positionContinue Reading
The Roots of LGBTQIA+ Discrimination
BY KARTHIGA RATNAM AND ARYSSA YOON “It is absolutely imperative that every human being’s freedom and human rights are respected, all over the world.”– Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir The right to live. It is guaranteed in most constitutions and in the universal declaration of human rights. But today it seems that basicContinue Reading
WEBINAR: “Hate & Conflict”
Hate is taught. What can be done to unlearn hate and build a just society? Join Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar with special guests Siyabulela Mandela and David Hinds (of Steel Pulse) as they discuss the third Wicked Problem – Hate & Conflict. Members of the Wicked7 Working Group willContinue Reading
The Movement of Movements: A Last Chance to Save the Planet?
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR, KARTHIGA RATNAM, & PHILIP KOTLER On this, the 90th birthday of Philip Kotler, we ask the world to come together to save the future. One way to do this is to build a “movement of movements.“ It’s time to put aside our toys – our ideologies andContinue Reading
The Death of Nature: Coral Reef Destruction
By KARTHIGA RATNAM and ARYSSA YOON As children we were enamoured by coral reefs for their color, movement and tiny fish. Watching Finding Nemo all those years ago we learned of the Great Barrier Reef and clown fish. We thought it was a movie about a dad looking for hisContinue Reading
Today: Webinar on Inequality
Join Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar as they kickoff the second challenge: Inequality. The webinar includes a special presentation by Karthi Ratnam and Aryssa Yoon on Gender Inequality and Climate Change.
Plastics and The Death of Nature
BY SUSI WEISENEGGER Interested? Here’s how you can participate >>
The Impact of the Death of Nature on Gender Inequality
BY KARTHIGA RATNAM & ARYSSA YOON Climate Change. Environmental Degradation. Extinction Emergency. We have all heard the terms. The problem with climate change or the death of nature is that it’s usually tightly integrated with a host of other problems. We are focusing on the impact of climate change onContinue Reading
Climate Change: what would 4°C of global warming feel like?
BY ROBERT WILBY, Loughborough University Another year, another climate record broken. Globally, 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year ever recorded. This was all the more remarkable given that cool conditions in the Pacific Ocean – known as La Niña – began to emerge in the second half ofContinue Reading
The Powerlessness of the UN
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR The only power the United Nations has is the “power of persuasion” – and that doesn’t seem to be working too well. Here’s a profound interview with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about everything from climate change to vaccine nationalism (h/t Naveen Srivastava): Besides powerlessness, a second powerfulContinue Reading
The Death of Nature
BY JEF TEUGELS AND KARTHIGA RATNAM It is amazing how many definitions Merriam-Webster offers for the word ‘nature’, and how they vary from the inherent character or constitution of persons and things up to the external world in its entirety. The Cambridge dictionary presents fewer definitions and defines nature asContinue Reading
Food Waste and The Death of Nature
Our second “map” of the World’s Wicked Problems is about the impact of food (production, handling, storage, consumption) on Nature… Interested? Here’s how you can participate >>
The Insect Apocalypse
Our first entry in the Wicked7 Challenge is the “insect apocalypse”. At Wicked 7 we are mapping the world’s wicked problems so we can see the causes, how they are connected, and then work together to try and find solutions. >> Interested? Here’s how you can participate >>
Webinar: How Jobs-to-be-Done can help solve the unmet needs of society
Here’s the replay of the webinar ‘How Jobs-to-be-Done can help solve the unmet needs of society’ with Strategyn’s Tony Ulwick:
Mapping the World’s Wicked Problems. Kickoff – April 1, 2021
The Wicked 7 Project is mapping the World’s Wicked Problems to understand the causes and then see how we can work together to find solutions. We have divided the World’s Wicked Problems in to seven categories – Death of Nature, Inequality, Hate & Conflict, Power & Corruption, Work & Tech,Continue Reading
The Unmet Needs of Society: Introducing Multi-stakeholder Jobs to be Done
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR, ANTHONY ULWICK and PHILIP KOTLER In his e-pamphlet — Rebalancing Society — Henry Mintzberg points out that a balanced society can be thought of as “sitting on a stool with three sturdy legs: a public sector of respected governments, to provide many of our protections (such asContinue Reading
The Moral Intelligence of Ruby Bridges
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR The Moral Intelligence of Children by Robert Coles. Still relevant today. By refusing to face history, we are forced to live it again. How do children learn right from wrong? How do we teach values in a world that prizes profit over all else? It may justContinue Reading
The 4th element of category creation
BY KARTHIGA RATNAM With great power comes great responsibility — Stan Lee I love watching superhero movies. When I watched Spiderman 2002, the phrase that stuck with me was Uncle Ben’s quote — “with great power comes great responsibility.” Doing a bit of Googling I found out this quote isContinue Reading
Latin America: inequality and political instability have lessons for the rest of the world
BY DIEGO SÁNCHEZ-ANCOCHEA, University of Oxford In a landmark speech about social mobility in 2013, the then US president, Barack Obama, warned against the problem of growing inequality in the starkest possible terms: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to … our wayContinue Reading
It’s Time to Depoliticize Decision-Making
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER UPDATE: On the day we published this article, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott lifted Texas’ mask mandate – declaring the state 100% open for business. Health experts warned it was too soon. Texas Was Warned a Decade Ago Its Grid Was Unready for Cold readsContinue Reading
Learning/Unlearning
BY JOHN SEELY BROWN “Learning how to learn-in-action” can be thought of as: Learning how to find and put yourself into the action where you can learn fastest (how to step into the problem) Learning how to notice what is interesting and relevant (how to open your mind) Learning howContinue Reading
12 Tools to Reduce Income and Wealth Inequality
BY PHILIP KOTLER A major problem in American capitalism is the growing level of income and wealth inequality. America continues to have persons suffering from poverty, homelessness and hunger while eight billionaires own half of the nation’s wealth. Working class real wages remain where they were in the 1980s, whileContinue Reading
High-Tech Holistic Medicine: Closing The Gaps Between Sick-Care And Whole-Person Care
BY TRISHA SWIFT In America, sick-care is “doing business as” health care, which is precisely why our health care system is so costly, error prone and fragmented. To be healthy, we must begin to look at ourselves as a whole person and account for all the things that make usContinue Reading
What is Food Insecurity?
BY CAITLIN CASPI, University of Connecticut Among the many striking images from the pandemic is an aerial photo showing cars in seemingly endless rows lined up at a food bank in San Antonio, Texas. A jarring awareness of food insecurity in the U.S. has accompanied the health and financial concernsContinue Reading
The Wickedness of Wicked Problems
BY ANN PENDLETON-JULLIAN & JOHN SEELY BROWN The following is an excerpt from Design Unbound. Designing for Emergence in a White Water World. In an era of “precarious terrain,” we are increasingly confronted with complex, dynamic, problem environments. These are environments rather than isolated problems, and they are socio-technological in nature. TheseContinue Reading
The Alarming Decline in American Authentic Dialogue
BY CHRISTOPHER LOCHHEAD I fear the value of authentic dialogue is dying in America. Stanford research shows us that people are caring more about themselves and less for others. Clearly, social media plays a role. When you can swipe people away on Tinder or yell at people you will never meetContinue Reading
In 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish
BY JEF TEUGELS Introduction: Made in Belgium On November 17, 1909, the Belgium-born Dr. Leo H. Baekeland explained Bakelite at the Franklin Institute (Baekeland, 1910). PlasticsEurope, the Association of Plastics Manufacturers, describes Bakelite as the first real synthetic and mass-produced plastic (PlasticsEurope, 2020). However, plastic is a form of fossil fuelContinue Reading
From corona anxiety towards a new Enlightenment – Why a return to normal is not a meaningful option
BY GUIDO PALAZZO Why do societies collapse? Jared Diamond (2005) finds a rather simple, but frightening, explanation. When we are in a crisis and we do not know what to do, we tend to reinforce established routines. Sometimes, those routines make things worse. These might even be the driving forceContinue Reading
Designing for Justice
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR How do you design systems so that the outcomes of these systems are just? The Design Justice Network gives us a few pointers. Let’s begin by understanding what is meant by the term “designing for justice.” Design justice rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalizedContinue Reading
The Wicked 7: The APO Interview
Watch: The Asian Productivity Organization’s David Sehyeon Baek interviews Christian Sarkar >>
How to See: When Narratives Create Reality
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR AND PHILIP KOTLER In this video – more timely today than ever – James Baldwin explains that “reality” depends on our point of view: How you view the world is largely shaped by where you are in it. The cultural narrative we believe in dictates our understandingContinue Reading
Interlock USA: COVID, Racism, the Economy, and Climate Change
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER The USA is showing us how wicked problems are interlocked. How one feeds the other and the next and the next. In a society where power is corrupt, society loses its legitimacy. Not only is the social contract shredded, but so is our Constitution.Continue Reading
Mapping COVID-19 as a Wicked Problem
CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER One way to map a wicked problem is to begin with a process of discovery. Begin with the current, observable facts and ask “why?” – going backwards in time to create a chain of causality. Remember, each cause is also an effect. To predict whatContinue Reading
Towards a Virtuous Economy
CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER If anything, COVID-19 has opened our eyes to the startling weakness of our current economic system – both in the US and around the world. The “new normal” is simply another way of asking – what does a recovery, a return to business-as-usual look like?Continue Reading
From Threat to Opportunity: Wicked Problems have Virtuous Solutions
CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER One of the criticisms we see for this project is that we are accused of focusing on the negative – on wicked problems that can’t be solved. John Hagel tells us that change movements will have much more impact if they shift from threat-based narrativesContinue Reading
Selecting the Wicked 7
CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER The process of selecting seven wicked problems was not one we took lightly. In our book on Brand Activism, we asked: What are the most urgent issues facing society? How did we get here? What are the root causes? What must be done now? HowContinue Reading