The other trifecta

Seth Godin blogged this today, and got it partially right:

The trifecta of competition:

Faster than the other guy. Faster to the market, faster to respond, faster to get the user up to speed.

Better than the other guy. Better productivity, better story, better impact.

and More. More for your money. More choices. More care. More guts.

You have more competition than you did yesterday. I expect that trend will continue.

There's an alternative

Fast enough to count. Faster to reduce carbon, faster waste to zero, faster to eliminate crap products & services.

and More. More positive impact. More insight. More thought. More of 'let's act as though the risk to our species was real'

You have more collaboration than you did yesterday. I expect the trend will continue.

Speeding up consumption

To consume or not to consume? IMHO, the wrong question.

The challenge that we need to get our heads around is not about whether to consume or not, but how we consume - good evidence of this is borne out by the assertion (though tricky to test) that there's a greater weight of ants on the planet than humans. They don't appear to have an over-population problem, fundamentally because they don't screw up the planet every time they go to work, build a house or have lunch.

Nature has, over 3.9bn years, got pretty good at consuming and growth. Consuming life into life; growth increases the planet's capacity to support life. Humans are a little at odds with nature, with a pattern of consumption that turns life into death, with a pattern of growth that reduces the planet's capacity to support life, little by little, day by day.

What to do is to remodel the way we live on the ground rules and principles proven to work by nature. That way, no conflict.

The challenge that we need to get our heads around is not about whether to consume or not, but how we consume - good evidence of this is borne out by the assertion (though tricky to test) that there's a greater weight of ants on the planet than humans. They don't appear to have an over-population problem, fundamentally because they don't screw up the planet every time they go to work, build a house or have lunch.
Nature has, over 3.9bn years, got pretty good at consuming and growth. Consuming life into life; growth increases the planet's capacity to support life. Humans are a little at odds with nature, with a pattern of consumption that turns life into death, with a pattern of growth that reduces the planet's capacity to support life, little by little, day by day.
What to do is to remodel the way we live on the ground rules and principles proven to work by nature. That way, no conflict.

Failing to succeed

Nature has a wonderful way of teaching, if we can manage to stay still and silent enough to engage with her ways. One of the areas that we've been finding most interesting to reflect on is the idea of failure, which doesn't really seem to exist in nature - the only 'failure' that we've been able to conceive so far would be the failure as 'not adapting to your changing environment - and going extinct' - but even this isn't a big deal in nature as the disappearance of dinosaurs makes space for lots more species, including eventually, us.

A recent Seth Godin blog about failure prompted me to think about the scales for failure that link to the work that we're doing on biomimicry

FAIL OFTEN: with ideas or projects that can challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors. By taking small steps frequently and sharing ideas widely, there's little risk of over-expending energy on something that doesn't work. A plant will send out root hairs to find the next nutrient - as they're only a cell or two thick, it's not too big a deal if they don't find food. If I haven't gestated on my magic idea for months before I share it, it's no big deal either.

FAIL RARELY: Avoid failing often on the things that you have to do for a living; in nature, it's bad news for a raptor to miss and his a tree instead, and it can be dangerous to eat the wrong food. For humans, it can screw up a presentation once, but to do it often will lose us customers or influence quickly.

FAIL NEVER: Bring home the food, raising young, keeping warm and staying healthy are the keystones for survival in nature in the same way that delivering for stakeholders and customers is key in business. Adaptation to a rapidly changing environment, such as the one that we're creating - peak oil, energy, water and food crises that we've created - is something that we've got to do. We can't afford to fail on this one, but look as though we're going to. "Too difficult", "not enough time" or "too complicated" may all be true, but if we fail to adapt, we're out of here.

Learn when to turn failure into food