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
Here’s the replay of the webinar with Strategyn’s Tony Ulwick:
We’re kicking off the Wicked7 Project challenges on April Fool’s Day – an appropriate day to begin our wild goose chase. Please join Philip Kotler, Christian Sarkar and members of the Wicked7 Working Group at 4 pm Eastern / 10pm EU on the LIVEstream via YouTube: How to get started: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 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
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 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
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 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
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
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 “design justice.” Design justice rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalized byContinue 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 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
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 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
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