COMMENT, Australia, USA, UK – This is a reminder that the world has changed.
Increasingly we live in a consumerist society, obsessed with consumption of the cheap, short term and disposable.
This will end eventually, because quite simply cheap consumption, especially plastic, is based on cheap oil. And cheap labor. And shifting pollution to some one else’s backyard.
So that cheap consumerism will end. Corporations that create polluting products will learn it can’t continue.
I mean what are we doing?
Irrespective of whether you, dear reader, believe in global warming, it has been scientifically, logically, …

COMMENT, Global – One of the trends I have noticed amplified whilst updating my book the Global Innovation Review 2007, is a return to the figurative in art and culture.
Why is this important? It shows direction in art. Away from post-modernist ‘I am a painter so why do I bother to paint?‘ thinking that typified the 90s. The 90s were however that kind of decade perhaps…!
Even moreso it shows a return to seeking meaning. It’s tiring looking at noir films, drinking black coffee and talk about meaninglessness.
Remember the artist …

ANALYSIS, Melbourne, Australia — We have to look at technology as something to utilize for a practical outcome.
Australia needs new ICT policies.
Why we don’t have an ICT Export industry!
According to the AIIA, domestic production of ICT is worth between 4 and 5% of GDP.
ICT exports were once around $7.8 billion per annum, in 2000, according to AIIA.
Now, under Howard, these have declined to $5.4 Billion according to Austrade.
There’s no reason we cannot more than double ICT exports in 5-10 years through government policy.
Canada is a country closes to Australia in …

COMMENT, Global – Which cities have the best espresso coffee in the world?
Well we may have some ideas about which have the worst… But the best?
Before we get to that let’s look at some interesting facts and insights about why coffee is important…

Just as it seems fast has come todominate our lives, the new trend of Slow … Slow Food, Slow Money, Tree-Changing is become more prominent…

COMMENT, Global — Become an Ideas Person Part II: [ratings]
Reading books is one of those few great things that no-one can take away. Ben Franklin used books to raise his intellect and become a great thought-leader and statesman of his day.
Ben Franklin was a lifelong avid reader, having being a tradesman-printer and never attended Harvard the university of the town of his birth.
Ben Franklin started the first lending library in the USA (or at least that is the popular wisdom). He also had a private scheme of a group …

COMMENT, Sydney and Global – Global is a word often thrown around like candy at Halloween.
Too often global operations have inbuilt assumptions that people are the same everywhere. We all do it.
The assumption of homogeneity effects Customers. Employees. Suppliers.
Assumptions of homogeneity are exacerbated when people speak the same language, often English.
These assumptions can cause big issues. Issues that surface when expanding into overseas markets or staffing a remote operation or even visiting foreign lands.
Why do we assume?
Too often we see similar western accoutrement’s like McDonalds, CDs, computers, internet, CNN, DVDs, …

COMMENT, Global – Often that is just too much information. Cell phone users in public often have little discretion.
Cell phones on trains.
Cell phones (or mobiles if you prefer) in restaurants.
Famously, I once heard a man chatting up a woman in a toilet cubicle with the door closed at a cinema. I first thought she was in there with him, then he came out holding a phone.
I wonder what she thought of the loud ‘flush’?
The Market Opportunity for Quiet
Expect a pendulum swing back to quiet and focus.
In the meantime expect a …

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 world’s future.
But the Oil War is not the way to spread freedom.
This war is deeply unpopular because the people ‘get’ it was not an honest war.
Another’s freedom …

ANALYSIS, Global – The answer is to ‘Stand on the Shoulders of Giants’.
This is the first part of a regular series on how to speak the language of ideas in coming weeks. How to be an Ideas Person.
Ideas and an intellectual education are important no matter how old we are. Both help us make better decisions in terms of positive change in our societies.
How do we personally understand what is positive change and what is not?
We talk incessantly about success, about wanting positive change.
We talk about love, relationships, children, families, …

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 – There has been much debate recently over the 7 Wonders of the World,.
However no-one has focused on the most inspiring wonders representing mankind’s achievements.
Such lists may seem unimportant, but they are symbolic. Symbolic of our achievements, our history, our foibles and humanity’s potent greatness.
But how to properly arrive at a list of the 7 New Wonders?
To arrive at an updated list of the 7 New Wonders of the World we could engage in a vote (an exercise done recently), but that tends towards nationalistic results.
So we started …

ANALYSIS, Melbourne – With the recent tense stand-off in British relations, intelligent people are underestimating Russian power, when Russia has traditionally (even under the Tsar) been a pole of power in Europe.
The Russian Bear has always viewed the concept of diminished power as rather misleading, hence the recent ‘strong-man’ photos of Putin fishing as well as renewed nuclear force deployment and military investment.
Russian & America: Mein Freund?
US discussions on a missile shield in Poland/Czech republic were ostensibly to protect Europe from ‘rogue’ states.
Of course, no one in the US really …

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 …