Category: Wicked Problems
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The Yezidi genocide devastated Iraq’s community 10 years ago − but the roots of the prejudice that fueled it were much deeper
BY GÜNEŞ MURAT TEZCÜR NOTE: The Assad family ruled Syria for more than 50 years with an iron fist. Now that has come to an end. The new regime is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al Qaeda affiliate in Syria that used to go by the name Al-Nusra Front. They are not known for…
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‘This Is Genocide,’ Amnesty International Says of Israel’s Death Machine in Gaza
BY JAKE JOHNSON “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community,” said Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary-general. “It must stop now.” The leading human rights group Amnesty International said late Wednesday what United Nations experts, national leaders, and historianshave been arguing for months: that Israel’s massive assault on Gaza amounts to the crime of genocide against…
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Frankenpolitics: An Interview with George Tsakraklides
George Tsakraklides has a diverse background in the sciences, having trained in molecular biology, chemistry, food science, and Earth sciences. He has also worked in data analytics and marketing sciences for some of the world’s largest corporations, giving him a front-row seat to some of the most profit-driven and exploitative aspects of human society. After…
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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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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 linked to and directly affected by…
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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 is a problem, not just for…
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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: 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 serves as an example for the…
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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” – a wholistic community-based approach to development.…
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WEBINAR: “Work & Tech”
Our webinar on the issues facing the future of work and tech >>
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The Death of Nature: Deforestation
The problem of deforestation mapped out by Laura Galdi and Chiara Falvo. Details here >>
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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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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 the star-crossed lovers – Romeo and…
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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 Folly because of the failure of…
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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 have experienced a feeling of helplessness,…
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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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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 basic human rights are stifled. How…
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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 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 his son. But it was much…
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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.
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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 on gender inequality. To understand gender…
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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 of the year. The Earth’s mean…
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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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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 >>
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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 >>
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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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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 is also called the “Peter Parker…
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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 way of life. He was talking…
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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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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 how to make sense of what…
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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, while the rich who own 80%…
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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 concerns brought on by the COVID-19…
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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. These problem environments are often characterized…
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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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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 fuel since natural resources like gas…
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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 force of the crisis and, as…
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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 marginalized by design, and uses collaborative,…
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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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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 what will happen going forward in…
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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? The economy was already failing,…