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This
afternoon I met up with Jeremy Heigh, a very successful young
entrepreneur whose Sift
Everything blog has been on hiatus for awhile. Jeremy has
moved from venture capital advisory to strategy advisory work, built on
foresight (using scenarios, market intelligence, environmental scans
etc. to help clients see what's coming next and how they should
respond) and innovation techniques.
He's able to do this because he's extraordinarily gifted. He's
extremely intelligent, imaginative and articulate. He is an exceptional
networker. He has extraordinary self-confidence and an ability to
listen and probe for deep understanding of problems. He asks brilliant
questions. And he value bills. I'm not sure what he does is replicable
or teachable, but I'd love to have him working on an assignment with me.
What endears him most to clients, I think, is his ability to meld
progressive values and knowledge with a very pragmatic assessment of
situations. Some of his recommendations and ideas might chagrin leftie
idealists like me, but they make sense, and they're very creative.
We met initially with Mark
Anielski, who has a new book The Economics of Happiness,
and then chatted about Intentional Communities and eco-villages,
innovation and knowledge management, sustainability, consulting, social
software, open space, improvisation and a bunch of other topics. We
spoke about an article
(not available for free download) in the recent Harvard Business Review
that recapped the qualities of 'Wicked Problems' (which I've written
about before) and then presented a case study on how PPG (the
paint conglomerate) addresses strategy using a combination of
environmental scanning, scenario analysis, strategic risk/options
assessment, experimentation, and non-linear collaborative
problem-solving involving all stakeholders, since they appreciate that
strategy issues are generally wicked (complex) problems where the
understanding of the problem, and possible approaches to it, co-evolve.
It began to dawn on me that I'd seen this model before. Then I
realized, I'd designed
this model before. It was called AHA! and I described its vision as follows:
Our
VisionImagine
if there was a place
where the world’s brightest and most creative minds from
widely diverse fields
– scientists, artists, businesspeople, engineers,
philosophers, social and
technological and political thought leaders -- got together physically
and
virtually to collaboratively help each other.
Imagine
if this place taught
the critical skills and techniques needed to envision and realize
better ways
to do things, quickly and effectively.
Imagine
if visitors to this
place were surrounded by artefacts of the world’s most
astonishing human
accomplishments: the eradication of smallpox, the moon landing, the
abolition
of slavery, the unravelling of the human genome – and
inspired and charged in
their tasks by the words from the greatest speeches and most moving
calls to
action in our history.
This
is the vision of AHA!
,
the means to get
things done, a catalyst for change, a vehicle for applying human
ingenuity and
collaboration and passion to bring about extraordinary
results: The
right people, the right skills and techniques, the right intensity, an
environment of creativity and learning, and a spirit of exuberant,
reciprocal
collaboration.
I had given up on this model because, in 2005, I couldn't see that
customers would see the value, or be willing and able to pay for,
informed, breakthrough thinking that addressed their 'wicked' complex
problems. Jeremy has persuaded me, by example, that there is a market for this, if it's approached correctly.
And
then we got to thinking about whether, instead of having this Natural
Enterprise have to draw its bright and creative minds from all over the
world, what if they all lived together in an Intentional Community, such that this Natural Enterprise was
the business of the Community? We could spend all our time honing our
skills and brainstorming together, instead of commuting or doing some
other work (farming comes to mind) that did not match our Gifts or our
Passions.
We could travel as a team to our clients, or perhaps get the clients to come to us
(if the venue for our IC was sufficiently attractive). Or maybe we
could use Virtual Reality technologies to bring our clients to where we
were, as if they were right here, immersed in our environment, and
immersed, with us, in other virtual environments, some projections of
real environments (based on our research), and some imagined scenarios,
so we could visually show the results of the recommendations we were,
collectively, making.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that if part
of the objective of the IC was sustainability and responsibility,
perhaps we would need a second, internally focused Natural Enterprise
in the IC, working to these ends, a model of sustainable and
responsible and joyful ways of living and of making a living, something
like what I wrote about as the Sustainable Living Collaborative.
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The
Collaborative could determine ways by which the members of our IC could
live simply and self-sufficiently, and not have to work too hard to do
so, so their energies could be focused on AHA! work, and on play. For
example, perhaps the community, instead of farming, could sustain
itself through replanting native food plants and plants that support
their ecosystems naturally -- forest gardens, permaculture, that needed
no tending or managing, only gathering. The collaborative could also
help us determine optimal geographic locations where this could be done
-- they could help us find our Home.
Each member of the IC would be a member of one or both Natural Enterprises, depending on their capacities, skills and interests.
In
some ways I've come full circle from my thinking of 2-3 years ago,
except this time, thanks to Jeremy and others I've been kicking this
around with, the ideas are more integrated, and have passed a
feasibility test. There is a need, a market for this. And what a place
to live, and make a living!
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MADE IN CANADA
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