Category: War
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WICKED7: Where do the US Presidential candidates stand on solving the world’s most urgent problems?
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR and PHILIP KOTLER Which candidate offers the best chance of actually working on the world’s most urgent problems? Which candidate would make things worse? Let’s give the US Presidential candidates the Wicked7 assessment – clarifying their positions on the seven most urgent problems facing us today. Wait, what is the Wicked7 assessment?…
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The Killer Robots are Here
BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR The Autonomous Killing Machine (AKM) is here. The Chinese government has just “released the hounds” at the joint China-Cambodia “Golden Dragon 2024” military exercise. But this development is not a shock. In the US, Boston Scientific has been playing with killer robots for some time now: What next? We can expect drone-delivery…
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Israel’s Chance to Turn Carnage into Peace
BY JEFFREY D. SACHS Israel is running out of time to save itself—not from Hamas, which lacks the means to defeat Israel militarily, but from itself. Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, verging on the crime of genocide according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, threaten to destroy Israel’s civil, political, economic, and cultural relations with the…
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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 the walls of hate and mistrust…
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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? Fear. A useful emotion. It…
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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. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, the Founder and Honorary…
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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 position than in 2019, due to…
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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 will help us with the discussion.…
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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 and guns – and look at…
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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 powerful idea we hear about is…
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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 as “all the animals, plants, rocks,…
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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:
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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, Health & Livelihood, and Population…
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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 as policing and regulating); a private…
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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 just come down to a “questioning…
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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 reads the headline in Bloomberg Green…
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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 meet on Twitter, a drop in…
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The Wicked 7: The APO Interview
Watch: The Asian Productivity Organization’s David Sehyeon Baek interviews Christian Sarkar >>
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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 understanding of reality: This makes our…
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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. The news is making our…
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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? How can we find common ground?…
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What is a Wicked Problem?
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. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. Solutions to…