At Norman Macrae Remembrance Parties- Youth Mentor Us on Life's Biggest Questions

[chris macrae]

have an idea for an NM party? discuss with [e-mail] washington dc 1 301 881 1655

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

MISSION: FREEDOM OF ECONOMICS!

MISSION Hi-TRUST MEDIA!

What is the most important piece of Innovation, which has launched in your lifetime?   Both my father's lifetime work at The Economist and my idea of a career as a twenty one year old were totally changed in 1972. This was when we first saw 500 youth sharing knowledge around an early digital network. Through our different peer networks we spent the next decade debating how the first internet generation could participate in the greatest changes in human history and futures ever staged. We branded leadership debates of this sort Entrepreneurial Revolution. Dad had been mentored by Keynes that economists are capable of designing or destroying the futures peoples need most. Through forty years of ER debates we have tried to invite worldwide searches through every community (what the Keynsian Alumn Schumacher had called 2 million global villages) so as to:   ·       ground innovation prioritised around life critical challenges   ·       openly bring down degrees of separation on those information flows first.     see http://normanmacrae.ning.com/forum/topics/freedom-of-economics  where research includes links to a compete archive of "bottom-up" as used in The Economist since 1843     The Norman Macrae Family Foundation welcomes exploration of the core hypothesis that: the coming of hyperconnectivity can spin either very good or very bad impacts. From our experience of systems -as well as Keynes General Theory of how the world is ruled - future generations are unlikely to inherit an in-between outcome. When we wrote a future history on the next 40 years published first in English in 1984 as "The 2024 Report" - and in other languages 2025 or 2026 Reports- we focused on the positive scenario by attempting to map 3 billion new jobs to invest in celebrating the net generation as 10 times more productive and communally sustainable than ever before. Synopsis of book is at http://erworld.tv/id133.html. Example of impact of this book on my father colleagues at The Economist is at http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/death-of-a-great-optimist.aspx  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbYo9daNiTY     An interesting way in to inquiries of job creating economics asks: what if we multiplied optimisation of productive lifetimes of all human beings. Two notable clues: 1) debate why ending poverty becomes the most valuable goal to invest in the net generation co-producing; 2) studies of the world's most innovative people conclude that they maximise what per cent of their lifetime they spend at the experiential edge of their own most unique competence. In the pre-networked world, the average person spent less than 0.1% of their life doing that - imagine a world we raised that freedom by simply an order of magnitude.         How do you define innovation?   My interests in innovation today are very different from 30 years ago. At that time I had become engrossed in part of a business originated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which used the first database software to summarise million hours of interviews -in over 40 countries and many hundreds of market sectors - on what societies most wanted from companies' biggest new product developments and the brand marketing of such.     Branding is the one professional area that I have published a whole innovation genre in (see Economist Intelligence Unit publication Brand Chartering Handbook - how brand organisations learn living scripts, or my contributions to the New Zealand hosted web www.allaboutbranding.com ) but for reasons to do with the economics of business models I no longer like to introduce myself through the B-word. I am interested in valuing whether an organisation has a unique purpose that no other company is capable of, and whether that is economic in spiraling positive win-win-wins between all who become most involved in the productivities and demands gravitated by the company.     Back in 1976 my father surveyed Entrepreneurial Revolution (The Economist, 25th December ) to raise questions that would need to be transparently debated ahead of time if the net generation was to sustain youth's most productive time out of every community. First question: none of the 20th century organisational systems is capable of sustaining net generation, how do we innovate wholly different systems of an open networking age?     Even earlier, my first job in 1973 had involved early experiments with elearning through which 500 students in 4 different university locations shared knowledge round a digital network. By 1976, I was confident in my the view that while the future of an inter-networked world would be the defining change of my generation, it wasn't something whose time would come in the 1970s. However, that is also why my dad at The Economist and i worked on the story of the innovation challenges of the net generation which we published ahead of 1984 as an alternative to Orwell's Big Brother scenario.     INNOVATING BEYOND PHONEY ECONOMICS   Throughout history, the two sources that have generated a quantum leap in human progress are new energy and new tech. Both have many times greater impacts all round  our planet and peoples in 2010s than any previous generation. Today, I am interested in how youth can be helped to make the biggest system changes in line with pro-youth economic models.     Countries, whether developed or developing, that are failing to fully employ youth in being 10 times more productive and sustainable than before are simply trapped in wrong system models. National debt isn't the issue for any true Keynsian economist to be most concerned with- what will first determine your nation's decline or fall is its credibility in investing in 10 times more productive youth apps.     The good news is that this is an abundancy game in which all nations can win-win-win. The bad news is: if we can't innovate beyond the scarcity economics of our pre-networked human race, it is not clear what nature will do with our species. Mathematicians as far back as Einstein were posing this problem, so remedying our tardiness in collaboratively celebrating man's final exam in innovation is now more urgent than any words I can write.     http://normanmacrae.ning.com/forum/topics/norman-macrae-books-surveys   If you look at a sample of my father's lifework as The Economist's Unacknowledged Giant you will verify why I find that very few academics understand the plot of entrepreneurial innovation. Peter Drucker's most memorable one-liners on the subject are valuable but seldom researched by any academic group perhaps because they are too inter-disciplinary for heavily siloised academics to begin to appreciate. I would recommend that Adam Smith was wholly right in saying that society can only grow if it ensures that no narrow section of people are ever given the monopoly right to certify which youth are the most educated. See Future of University Paper http://normanmacrae.ning.com/forum/topics/futures-of-education  To discuss what near future shocks other global sectors most need to fully serve human beings, join our questions and answers at http://charter.ning.com/     When it comes to innovation in facilitating massive numbers of brainworkers simultaneously, I would start with understanding the life time work of Harrison Owen www.openspaceworld.com and those in his 30-year peer-to-peer practice circles who have focused on grounding whatever practical conflict resolution area they are most passionate about. Another way to celebrate the kind of innovation that interests me is to unleash nationwide (better yet positively viralise worldwide) questioning on what is the most human purpose that particular global sectors could serve. Because of the way mass media destroyed the essence of real communal creativity, very few Western CEOs of global companies engage in such a debate. However, I would particularly recommend you search out at John Mackey's Conscious Capitalism leadership network, and until he died last year CEO Ray Anderson's challenge that almost all industries could profitably become carbon neutral if they worked continuously for half a generation to do so. Amongst Eastern heroes of "what is the purpose of" none are better at engaging youth in this question than Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus especially in cultures like Japan's where he is most respectfully celebrated. http://yunusjapan.com/        What Innovative project are you currently working on; and what effect do you hope it will have?     I want to prove that 2010s can be worldwide youth's most productive time by connecting a web of 10000 youth who can value million times more collaboration tech than when man raced to the moon. Jokingly but seriously : the impact of hi-trust mapping of 10000 youth can be to build communities faster than any 10000 big banking network can destroy them. (Use the video at www.collaborationcafe.tv to help facilitate this reasoning). As a subsidiary search, Norman Macrae Foundation and I look for 100 leaders who most value 2010s being youth's most productive decade athttp://www.wholeplanet.tv/     In spite of the open meta-collaboration goal of mapping 10000 youth who can innovate the world we want, my person-to-person innovation challenge is to find a process for doing this that multiplies trust and isn't noisy. I am aware there are many hugely resourced organisations ready to take over promoting youth networks. The last thing Entrepreneurial Revolution friends and I need is to compete with all their promotional noise as we seek to address the deep social and media conflicts that have decimated the mission of the web that Berners Lee originally intended.     Of course this youth-inspired project needs massive collaboration entrepreneurial help, and is not something where my role is important other than mathematically checking models and maps. There are processes like student entrepreneur competitions http://jobscompetitions.ning.com/  that I love to publicly engage with but my valuation of winners may well be the opposite of those who appear immediately profitable to investors. In fact, what I am most interested in out of Washington DC, where I live, is student projects that break down silos between 3 sides - the universities with massive resources, the student networks, and societies with the greatest innovation challenges to solve.       What three things would you like people to know about you that they don’t already know or understand?     A) I am aware how little I know about cultures. In the 30 countries that I have researched meaningful social projects, I never stayed only in client offices but celebrated going out in the field to observe most desperate cases of the problem that innovation was needed to address. I am shocked how few global consultants do this - and personally don't believe globalisation models exist without wholly integrating local diversity.     B Having a MA in statistics from CambridgeUniversity, I have spent my professional life on metrics and media -especially exponential impact models that these system spin. I don't accept that professions in charge of metrics or media cannot serve to improve the human lot but I have very little time or energy for those whose conventional power is achieved by monetising the opposite trend.     C While not holding a full-time educational position since 1976, I make time for educators who want to return education to youth being as curious as possible and removing the way we over-examine youth. If I could animate an Oxford Union debate my motion would be: the least likely way that anyone will lead a productive life in the 21st century is going through a series of exams and them expecting a job offer from an employer. In most countries the data is already in on this, but the debate on transforming the educational system has barely begun. One counter example comes from New Zealand http://www.thelearningweb.net/   - through the persistence of a guy called Gordon Dryden who traveled over to London to ask us questions on the future of net generation innovation of Death of Distance in 1984!