Being unreasonable

Mr Godin offers a useful list of unreasonable things. I'd add two:

It's unreasonable to build the solutions to what's needed for a healthy planet into every business decision you make.

It's unreasonable to only set goals that are good enough to get us where we're trying to go, rather than just nudge us forward from the present.

Here's Seth's list:

It's unreasonable to get out of bed on a snow day, when school has been cancelled, and turn the downtime into six hours of work on an extra credit physics lab.

It's unreasonable to launch a technology product that jumps the development curve by nine months, bringing the next generation out much earlier than more reasonable competitors.

It's unreasonable for a trucking company to answer the phone on the first ring.

It's unreasonable to start a new company without the reassurance venture money can bring.

It's unreasonable to expect a doctor's office to have a pleasant and helpful front desk staff.

It's unreasonable to walk away from a good gig in today's economy, even if you want to do something brave and original.

It's unreasonable for teachers to expect that we can enable disadvantaged inner city kids to do well in high school.

It's unreasonable to treat your colleagues and competitors with respect given the pressure you're under.

It's unreasonable to expect that anyone but a great woman, someone with both drive and advantages, could do anything important in a world where the deck is stacked against ordinary folks.

It's unreasonable to devote years of your life making a product that most people will never appreciate.

Fortunately, the world is filled with unreasonable people. Unfortunately, you need to compete with them.

Getting living done

The Guardian are part of an important campaign to raise awareness and action on our contiunued loss of, and threat to biodiversity. This is the letter that the Guardian's editor, Alan Rushbridger, sent to Caroline Spelman, the UK's Environment Minister:

UK 1

A natural take on cutbacks

The BBC posted an article today I wrote about the way that biomimicry can be used as an integrated design platform to create a completely different, improved set of outcomes than the one that we're currently headed towards.

You can find the article here

There were so many words from speakers at last weekend from people as diverse as Bill Drummond, Euan Semple, Gerd Leonhard, Jay Rogers, Paula Le Dieu and David Allen all talked of the way that we need to move from the Ego System to the Eco System (Gerd's words) in one way or another - taking wider perspectives, crowd sourcing, letting go rather than controlling.

The future starts here. First Do talks up on Monday

Global Early Warning System

With a current project on the go on Food Security, it's been interesting getting up to date with trends, data and action - or lack of it - on food security. Most forecasters reckon that long-term, the biggest issue for western consumers and governments will be one of price and ethics - food will be available and potentially much more expensive, which is why ethics become key, forcing the question of how much we're prepared to help those with less resources get the calories they need.

Short-term, the UK risk is of interuptions to supply due to oil price spikes / disasters, which in the form of the petrol strike a few years ago, brought Wales to within six meals of civil disturbance, according to Assembly Members in post at the time.

During my research, I re-read the Sustainable Development Commission's positioning paper on Food Security and came across this useful UN Food and Agriculture Organisation website that reports trends and prices on global food http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/en/

The link between national and international food security and the actions that we and our elected representatives can take are complex to say the least, and

Making the boring interesting

Liv Knight runs the wonderful Challenger Project at Eat Big Fish - their motto is 'do more with less' - a good start point for intelligent design.

In this week's post, Liv asked a handful of smart people to share their ' three things'; these from Akala Daley, founder of the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company, are clever for their simplicity.

Akala Daley from eatbigfish on Vimeo.