BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR Jef Teugels invites us to explore the critical issues surrounding modern water management, focusing on the increasing commercialization of water and its implications for equity, sustainability, and indigenous rights. DOWNLOAD PDF >> Teugel’s essay – Water Under Siege: Corporate Control vs. Community Rights – examines how corporateContinue Reading
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
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
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
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 problem of deforestation mapped out by Laura Galdi and Chiara Falvo. Details here >>
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
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
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
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
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
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.
BY SUSI WEISENEGGER Interested? Here’s how you can participate >>
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
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
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
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 >>
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Watch: The Asian Productivity Organization’s David Sehyeon Baek interviews Christian Sarkar >>
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
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
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
CHRISTIAN SARKAR & PHILIP KOTLER To begin, here’s the article which introduced the world to the concept of “wicked problems” >> Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning by Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber. In it, we learn about the 10 properties of a wicked problem: There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem. WickedContinue Reading