The Bread for the World Institute “Hunger 2010: A Just and Sustainable Recovery” Report has been released, and identifies the need to reduce poverty and hunger as a key to long-term recovery and leadership. The report identifies the current U.S. economic crisis as an opportunity for change…

If you’re new here at 2thinknow, and you’re interested in the latest ideas on trends, companies and innovation, subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for your visit!ANALYSIS, Sydney & Melbourne, Australia –
An open letter to visiting President Bush.
Mr Bush is in Sydney Australia at current for the APEC summit, this was written just after his joint speech with Mr Howard today.
Dear Mr President,
You spoke at the APEC Summit with our Prime Minister, Mr Howard.
I agreed with your remarks Sir, about freedom and human rights being critical to the …

ANALYSIS, Global –Sometimes the logic for oil usage sounds crazy.
Rather than reduce use of oil we go into a war using oil to fight for more oil supplies so we can have more plastic goods made from oil.
This itself increases global oil consumption further reducing oil supply.
Huh?
Does that Sound rational? Read it out aloud. No.
Economically it is not rational. Common sense tells you it is not rational.
Sounds like a panic because we might run out of oil to:
a) drive our big cars/SUVs/motor homes
b) manufacture more plastic cr*p we don’t …

COMMENT, Global — We’ve have been in a post-modernist age for some time now.
But someone forgot to tell those 1950s-loving industrialist neo-cons.
The innovation zeitgeist is with the Creative Age.
Let’s look at where that innovation is for a moment.

COMMENT, Global — The modern world seems complex.
That’s because we’re trying to understand it with modernist 1950s metaphors from the age of the soon-to-be-gone Oil Economy.
The Neo-Cons were really the last hurrah, and just look how well Iraq is working out for them.
That’s despite all the freedoms they managed to crush in Western countries by invoking a straw man of terrorism and turning a blind eye to some desert-dwelling nutcases.
But the fact is they don’t get it. The modern world. The internet. Or trends.

ANALYSIS, Global — Our town, our world, is drowning under a flood of cheap sub-standard products. Products that we can and did once live without.
This is because our modernist global economic system in English-speaking countries largely runs on the manufacture and mass consumption of cheap low-priced goods made from oil-based plastics.
Think about that for a second. What really happens?
The following chain of events was loosely based on media reports of the China pet food story, Fisher Price scandal, and recent other events.
Here is one average scenario:
A company in your city …

COMMENT, Melbourne – In Melbourne broadsheet paper The Age, today there was a neat reminiscence on ‘trains’ from staff writer, Peter Hanlon.
“WE’RE on our way home for Dad’s funeral, his grandson and I. It’s good that we’re going by train; Dad worked 35 years for the railways, back in the days when human beings sold tickets, and machines that accepted only correct change were a dream for the future.”
He goes onto say…
“Whoever wins the next tender to run the state’s public transport would do well to acknowledge that there …

ANALYSIS, Melbourne – Where you work is important to how you are inspired to create & then implement innovation.
Do some of these describe your workplace?
Concrete, gray, drab, cubicle, boxed-in, noisy, mobile phone ringtones from hell, low barriers, bombarded with email, ‘no door’ policy, jokes, noise, prison-like gulag?
Or is it more interesting?
Post-modernist refugee camp for cultural relativists?
Weekend-after recovery center?
Creative desert?
Angst-ridden pit of teenage romance?
So what works for innovation?
One of the perks of having worked at so  many corporations (more than 350) is you get to see what works and what doesn’t …

ANALYSIS, Sydney –The tendency to think cities are homogenous across a country is an untruth.
Melbourne CBD is vastly different to Sydney CBD. (Yes I’m in Sydney once again. City yesterday and Parramatta today.)
Sydney CBD is vastly different to Parramatta.
The culture in the northern & Eastern Suburbs of Sydney are different. Both are affluent eras generally, but the culture is different.
This goes further than cities. Any form of grouping, cities, generational, academic, social, demographic is by nature a generalization.
Grouping theories
To generalise is human nature.
And many times in writing or describing …

2THINKNOW COMMENT, Melbourne – “Left turn at Albuquerque.”
Unless you have watched Bugs Bunny you wouldn’t know that. But chances are you have. No matter where you live.
And you might know:
“Quoi de neuf, docteur ?” (Francais)

” Che succede, amico?” (Italiano)
“Hej šefe koji ti je vrag?” (Yugoslav)
“Eh, What’s Up Doc?” (English)
… or in any other language you care to name.
Bugs Bunny is a cartoon that has almost universal understanding across multiple languages all throughout the world.
Animation lends itself to universal communication.
Animation can be dubbed easily into any language. The lips moving don’t …

COMMENT, Melbourne, Australia — Social networks are the next big thing, depending on where you are located in the physical world, they can be at various stages of adoption.
I asked this to a few people at WordCamp 2007 in San Francisco, and in a case of preaching to the converted, many felt blogs were already ‘established’.
But blogs & social networks have not gone mainstream yet in most markets.
(If one applies a model called the Innovation Diffusion curve, that is.)
PS. If you are reading this and twittering, you are probably not …

OPINION, Melbourne — We all keep hearing how difficult Generation X & Y are to work with. (Mainly Gen Y).
Well I’d say it has something to do with those “oh so demanding baby boomers” who were their parents.
Truth is:
if you dose a bunch of kids up on sugar, …
chauffeur them around to every single hobby that might interest them, …
tell them that all viewpoints are culturally equivalent, …
teach them to question all authority figures, …
give them what they want with no discipline,…
smoke dope yourself but lecture them on it/tell them …

COMMENT, Melbourne, Australia — First of all let me say I am not partisan. I vote right, I vote left.
Personally, I think Giuliani, Gore, Clinton and McCain would all make good presidents at different times. Professionally I think Gore, Giuliani and Clinton may all lead to good outcomes for innovation.
The Left/Right divide is increasingly irrelevant, in any case. In a prior analysis from 2thinknowTM I made the case that the real contest is between Engaged and Not Engaged. See: Election innovation: why Left & Right don’t matter.
How Bush happened:
The people …

ANALYSIS, Melbourne –I loved rail as a kid. That trip from the small town I lived in to the ‘big smoke’ always took a 5 hour bus and a train trip.
And there was something inspiring about the rattle of that train.
Nostalgia aside, railways now are once again are on their way to leading the innovation zeitgeist in transport.
Railways – Back-to-the-Future Innovation
In cold hard fiscal terms railways have a bright future with some caveats.
Most importantly, trains have a very long-term future mainly due to the fact that trains carry more passengers …

ANALYSIS, Sydney, Australia – Too often too much of what we buy is too disposable.
The innovation zeitgeist is to be found in returning to an old paradigm.
Innovation is the old sensible paradigm
Buy goods that last and are reparable. That is the paradigm.
For environmental and quality of life reasons, this is now an emerging innovation trend in the infancy stages of innovation.
But I’m not saying that this is now easy.
Remember our grandparents repaired what they bought?
Our grandparents saved and purchased long-term value goods. We may think we are wealthier, but …

OPINION, Melbourne, Australia — The ‘do-nothing’ leader of Victoria Steve Bracks has resigned from State Parliament, in a surprise announcement.
The Premier of Australia’s second most populous state, and home to Melbourne and Australia’s leading agricultural regions, today resigned. Good riddance.
Remember it’s not personal, it’s outcomes. We don’t vote our best mates, we vote in the best leader. That’s the theory, more observed in the breach ….
True innovation vs. Do-nothing
Since his surprise win over the true innovator Jeff Kennett, Bracks has single-handedly done nothing for the future of the state.
In the …

COMMENT, Sydney, Australia — Network goods are an economic term. Basically they mean the more people on the network the greater the value of the network.
Myspace is an obvious one. Telephones an older example. The internet a modern-ish example. Airports.
Anything where building more users/locations/access points or effectively nodes, increases the value of the network.
Network goods: the concept that explains the value of your life

The web of interrelationships that is your or my life, is a web of intersecting networks. In our published research to be released soon, we will be …

COMMENT, San Francisco, USA — Coffee is important. To world trade, yes. But it’s not all money, coffee is also (more importantly) critical to culture.
How many good ideas have been conceived over a cup of coffee?
How many intellectual battles have been fought in a coffee house until the wee hours?
Voltaire, Franklin and Napoleon all frequented the same Parisian coffee house (at different times)… there must be something in that brew.
Napoleon once left his hat for security whilst he fetched money to pay for the check!
The whole of WordCamp over the …

NEWS AND ANALYSIS, San Francisco, USA – Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of leading blogging platform WordPress, spoke at WordCamp 2007 today, Sunday July 22, 2007.
For the Agenda of the Matt Mullenweg’s presentation: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/state-of-the-word/
NOTICE AND LICENSE: This story is copyright © 2007 2thinknow.This story is licensed for reprint in full or excerpt under copyright in any print or online media, under the terms that it includes the following byline within the reprint:Source: Christopher Hire, 2thinknowTM : http://www.2thinknow.com/innovation

Innovation: Past and Future of WordPress, according to Matt
Mullenweg …

ANALYSIS, San Francisco – WordCamp 2007 commenced today in San Francisco, at the Swedish American Hall on Market St. This is my second post.Presenter in the second session, was experienced journalist and IT veteran John Dvorak. He was joined by writer from the (sadly rumoured to be defunct) Business 2.0, OM Malik.
Dvorak had two interesting points regarding innovation:
“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”
“Citizen journalism”
Schedule: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/blogs-vs-journalism/
Both these allude to the innovation zeitgeist as 2thinknowTM define it.
The innovation zeitgesit in blogging is the upcoming professionalism and redesign of the presentation of user …