The Death of Nature: Deforestation
2021-08-01
The problem of deforestation mapped out by Laura Galdi and Chiara Falvo. Details here >>
WEBINAR: “Power & Corruption”
2021-07-02
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
G7 is more united but not effective enough to tackle the world’s biggest problems
2021-06-08
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
2021-06-07
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
The Movement of Movements: A Last Chance to Save the Planet?
2021-05-27
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
Today: Webinar on Inequality
2021-05-03
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.
The Powerlessness of the UN
2021-04-13
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
Webinar: How Jobs-to-be-Done can help solve the unmet needs of society
2021-04-02
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
2021-03-31
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
2021-03-11
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 4th element of category creation
2021-03-04
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
It’s Time to Depoliticize Decision-Making
2021-03-02
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
2021-02-20
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
2021-02-11
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
The Wickedness of Wicked Problems
2021-01-25
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
From corona anxiety towards a new Enlightenment – Why a return to normal is not a meaningful option
2021-01-15
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
2021-01-12
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
2020-08-05
Watch: The Asian Productivity Organization’s David Sehyeon Baek interviews Christian Sarkar >>
How to See: When Narratives Create Reality
2020-06-17
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
2020-06-06
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
2020-05-29
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
2020-05-28
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
2020-05-21
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
What is a Wicked Problem?
2020-04-25
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