over 33 yeras we have debated education (livelihoods everyone as lifelong tecaher and learner) is pivotal to himan sustaonability - see also why adma smith clarified that western university education was never designed with youth as the custmer abd likely to be disatrous in times when much of the mlost valuable elarnking was new every few years as is the case as oiur mobile age accelerayes
when it comes to the un - the main education forum seem to be taaken ofver by the educaation system as normal- unesco is responsible foir gopal 4 reports that dont do the boxless kind of thinking thhjat the new head of unhabitat does in her filed
when gordon brown un envvoyfor education formed 30 national leaders of education commision only two led by jack m were concerend with changing tghe shytsm taking it outside teh calssroorm- the main group are concerend with more finds and another group try to match poor systems with better systems across analgous nations
jack ma soon found unctad more relevany- he is retaring hundreds of coders scouted by unctad and becoming alumni of his global bsuiess school - see also www.worldrecordjobs.comhttp://worldrecordjobs.com for more initaives jack does with the un concerened with putting youth in meiddle of what is innovated
jack ma has also said that hios ecooerce platforks while fine fir sme deskign of finance and of thisgs bought and sold- are noi the main pkatfirm fir happiness socail scetirs includinh educaytion health, arts and other community participation celebrations- he will focus on tehese from 2020 on with his olympics platform
some of the un eminent committes afre most concerned with education - others with new development banking
the unai (hsts about) 8 special interst groups in education which it also calls hibs- qatar which hosts wise also hose the unai refugee elarning hub- amma in india is assigned nanotechnolkgy research for the poor by world elading nanotech experts interest in including poverty in their compass
with guterres the head of in since start of 2-016 (the sdg era) - coming from lifetime serving refugees - elearning revolutions offer hope to refugees that classical system cant- the 2015 varkey million dolar teacher prize summit in duba hosted lot of outside system people
the worlds only model of community livelihood education kis brac - the summit oct 1-5 2018 will be fjurst chnace for academkics associated with jack ma and vrac to explore each lothers futures- brac was the inaugiral education lajureate at wise but the 2nd through 6th laureates have been within system people -however these profiles show that wise delegates from china in partiocula see edutech as innovation outside the system
one way to open up education youth eed is to look for mssing curricula and then cklatifu how best yo provide them
4 languagres (chinese englist mother tongue coding) need to be 10 times cheaper and this will come mainly freom peer to peer blended on;ine not classroom appriaches
financial ebtreprebeurial and open spoace literacies come from expereintial spaces not examination classrooms as do so many community microfrancjsies neeeding repliocation if youth livelihhods and being tyhe sustainability generation are to be matcjed
seeing bri as a curriculium of is our nation equkitably linked into the world suoerports and continent wkide gruds is also an example of a local to global cutrriu=iculum which needs quizes and maps shared across natin classrooms
the arctic crircles 8 nations are fantastic space for changing education - eg many schools are in remore places across north rissuis, niry canada alaska greenland idcelan- studnets are demanding tools such as augmented reality gooles so tey can experience coming to school as if they were in each others communities- watch the agedas of how innovation of education is being celebrated by youth of the 8 artci circle countreis
1979 & Proyouth GAMES to Linkin from 1951: Ed's & A!20s most curious moments as V. Neumann's & The Economist's diarists include 1982...LLM2022 | STORY why we co-brand with AIgoodmedia.com.When The Economist sent dad Norman Macrae to pre-train with Von Neumann 1951 Princeton, they agreed The Economist should start up leadership Entrepreneurial Revolution surveys; what goods will humans unite wherever they first linkedin to 100 times more tech per decade? Johnny added a final twist in notes for his biography. "Unfortunately Economics is Not Mathematical. One day only AI maths can save our species |
Breaking: help prep AI rehearsal Fringe UNGA Sept 2023 NY- chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk July Guterres choosing top20 AIHLAB.. bard says Hassabis will chair this '''''with UN tech envoy ..members include Stanford's Fei-Fei Li , Allen's Etzioni, Sinovation's Kai Fu Lee,... Gemini,,Uni2 :FFL*JOBS*DH more G : 1 2 3 4 5 Guterres*JYK*JFK..worldclassllm & Royal Family's 150 year survey: can weekly newspaper help multiply trust around worldwide human development? | 0: Around WorldMaths #1 FFL in 80.. 79 Game AI : Architect Intelligence:: EconomistDiary invites you to co-create this game & apply bard.solar ; personalise your pack of 52 players cards. Whose intelligence over last 75 years most connects human advancement at every gps concerning you and yours on planet? we offer 3 types of tours sampling rockstars on intelligence for good and welcome guest tours :Alpha Chronological began 1951 through 4 decades at The Economist; Gamma: back from future of 2020s began 1984; Beta intergeneration connectors are more recent quests; try AI game out; we'd love to hear whose action networks inspires You and who chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk Alpha1 JFKennedy Neumann-Einstein-Turing Crowther; Youth visions for 1960s launched by Kennedy as great as any known to us- eg space race; peace corps, Atlantic-Pacific win-win trade; Kennedy had studied quite traditional economic gurus at Harvard (eg ); served in US Navy Pacific theatre word war 2; he discovered The Economist stories of exciting economic possibilities; these had emerged from editor Geoffrey Crowther ; his 20+ years of editing included 1943 centenary autobiography of Economist- had been a mistake to vision a newspaper helping 20 something Queen Victoria in 1843 transform to commonwealth trading from slavemaking empire; Crowther thought good news media was worth another go; he sent a rookie journalised who had survived being teen navigator allied bomber command Burma to pretrain with Neumann at Princeton year of 1951 as well as interview NY-UN year 6; Neumann explained after spending their lives mainly on the science allies needed to beat Hitler: Neumann-Einstein-Turing wanted a good legacy - digitalisation -see eg Neumann's last lecture notes delivered Yale "Computer and the Brain". There were 4 inter-generational crises the NET foresaw; sorting out energy; designing win-win economics; sorting out worldwide cooperations; everything else UN and multilaterals were being asked to resolve. Neumann trained Economist journalist in the leadership survey : "What goods will humans unite wherever they have early access to 100 times more tech per decade?" (breakingJy10) Gamma1 Hassabis , Fei-Fei Li,, Guterres, Oren Etzioni, JYKim, Ng, Yang, Chang, Chang- There are lots of alternative Gammas but we start with 2 engineers who transformed AI from 2010 when they furst met at Stanford and discussed FFL's NSF funding of imagenet since 2006; 2 public health servants who in 2016 weren't happy with just talking 17 new UN goals and have been asking AI genii to help digital roadmap UN2 since 2016 and a Taiwanese American in Silicon Valley, a Chinese American In Taiwan and Samsung's Korean who partnered Taiwan's chip making genii; these stories have lots of personal courage as well as brilliance; any reporting errors are mine alone chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk My family has made 100 trips to Asia from the west but still have no fluency in oriental languages so I am biassed : i believe NOW! that LLMs can connect the best cooperation intelligences ever and urgently map life critical knowhow through every global villahge Beta 1 celebrates massive web and inter-generational gifts of Steve Jobs Fazle Abed Mr Sudo JYKim and Mr Grant; you will probably know Jobs started 2 digital networking revolutions with 1984s Mackintosh Personal Computer and apple and 2007's iphone; at bottom of pyramid, you may not know Asia-66-percent-of%20Intelligence-for-good-part-1.docx fazle abed linked up to 1 billion tropical Asian real housewives & entrepreneurs towards empowering the end of poverty; and Steve hosted silicon valleys 65th birthday party for abed in 2001; they brainstormed transformative education which the pc hadn't delivered ..but could the mobile era be visioned to do so?; Mr Sudo had partnered Abed and Bangladesh villagers in "leapfrog" mobile experiments starting 1995. By 2001, as Jobs was introducing Abed to eg Stanford friends, Kim had discovered Abed's women were networking the most effective solution to rural Tuberculosis; he introduced Gates and Soros to Abed as all 4 wanted 2000s Global Fund to end TB & HIV & Malaria; at the same time Guterres had moved from Portuguese prime minister to red cross and then UN servant leader of refugees; meanwhile back in 1980 it was UNICEF's James Grant who had discovered Fazle Abed women's oral rehydration network which was saving lives of 1 in 3 infants who previously died of diarrhea in the tropics' humid villages ; Grant became worldwide marketer of how parents could mix water sugar and salts as the life saving cure of ORD; naturally James Grant College of Global Public Health has become cornerstone of all the new university cooperations Abed and Jobs started brainstorming in 2001 here we discuss why 73 years as biographers of V Neumann's future visions suggests its critical to map intelligences who got us to 2020s and today's giant co-leapers Gamma-tours; this also opens door to which intelligences at national or other place levels contribute what? - see our 60+ years of intelligences, and eg discussion of why to end extreme poverty we need one open global university of poverty Beta2 : NB how different scope of 2020s AI is from cross-selection of web2,1 engineers of last quarter century- NB valuetrue purpose of gamifying Architect Intel : borderless engineering can help humans vision 2020's co-creation of web3 and millennials development beyond extinction. Kai Fu Lee, Ng, Melinda Gates, Koike, Lela Ibrahim, Jobs, Satoshi ,Houlin Zhao, Allen, Musk, Brin ,Page , Bezos, Ma, Zhengfei, Torvaulds, Berners Lee, Masa Son, It would be a pity if short-term nationalism stopped us 8 billion humans learning from these tireless innovative beings. Do sub in your regional counterpart. Also note what no conventional strategist saw as Intelligence possible before 2017. To clarify: start with kai fu lee- his best seller on AI in 2017 doesn't explain the ai thats changing every possibiliity of the 2020s but does it good job of AI up to 2017. He also has unique view because he was sent by google to explore china, falling ill at same time as google exiting china, writing up ai that inspired reinventing himself as both venture capitalist in the midst of asia's most extraordinary student suburb (Zhong...) and as curious observer. I see Ng, Ms Gates. Koike, Ibrahim -as civil education heroines/heroes - who are yours ? Satoshi, Zhao, Allen, Musk - gamechangers taking on conflicts that journey us all through tipping points. One day the world may decide it was a blessing that a corporate like google and a revolutionary uni like Stanford co-habited the same 100 square miles- is there any other comparable 100 square miles of brainworkers for humanity. (I love Hong Kong but thats its own story). The other 5 kept digital movements alive -they merit being valued as engineering heroes before you decide how to translate systemic components to your regions' -and mother earth's - urgent needs. |
Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
why mit would be norman macraes' and ER's fav spot to linkin 2013
some notes on what we love about visiting mit and student competitions are here: 1
other notes on a tour of mit norman macrae would love
as you likely know mit includes
berners lee and the web is for everyone
media lab, which began with $100 laptop is for every chilld but which now also experiments with the mobile is for every child and poorest village to transform value chains
start of massive online open curriculum
most prolific student competition space on the planet
world's number 1 job creating alumni network
dubai's most exciting youth entrepreneur research hub - legatum ...
rest of this section carries posts mainly sent to mit student networks especuially those due to linkin worldwide crowdfund searches of 2013 or student competition entries
as student crowdfund team mentioned they may be including Myanmar in their search , I thought you might be interested in attached attendee list: usaid circulation on launch of educational programs to myanmar
other notes on a tour of mit norman macrae would love
as you likely know mit includes
berners lee and the web is for everyone
media lab, which began with $100 laptop is for every chilld but which now also experiments with the mobile is for every child and poorest village to transform value chains
start of massive online open curriculum
most prolific student competition space on the planet
world's number 1 job creating alumni network
dubai's most exciting youth entrepreneur research hub - legatum ...
rest of this section carries posts mainly sent to mit student networks especuially those due to linkin worldwide crowdfund searches of 2013 or student competition entries
as student crowdfund team mentioned they may be including Myanmar in their search , I thought you might be interested in attached attendee list: usaid circulation on launch of educational programs to myanmar
my family's life histories connect with myanmar and bangladesh as dads first job as a teenager was navigating raf planes in the region in world war 2 but while I have spent a lot of last 5 years understanding who's who in bangladesh - have never been to myanmar- sir fazle abed who won the first wise oscars of education -and my dad's friends at Japan Embassy in Dhaka - may call for a one day brainstorm on how to MOOC everything to do with bottom-up investment and youth collaboration models in march as phase 1 of calling for microeducationsummit (technology, education and credit) to converge post 2105 millennium goals summiting
back on myanmar- usaid appeared to say to 500 delegates Wash Dc Dec 2012 that they will mainly support a hybrid model of 4 partners - university and corporation both usa and in myanmar -this would seem to make it difficult to crowdfund myanmar unless a university in usa sets up a friendly space so that project by project the other 3: us corporate myanmar corporate, myanmar uni can be searched
another slight frustration of mine is that in dc region I am linking together several people and embassies studying how to turn orphanages into regional job creating hubs- i would have thought that myanmar might want to join in studying that model but usaid-process is making that quite hard for an individual like me to issue invitation
naila chowdhury and shafqat ullah are 2 people who guide me through what open technology can do out of bangladesh
-naila currently lives in dc region after serving grameenphone and ceo yunus technology for a long time-she and I are judges at next week's 4 yunus statewide student entrepreneur compettiion in alabama which also aims to startup the yunus university of ending poverty
shafqat links bangladeshi wizard technologists and is talking with brilliant/skoll on how ILABS can be extended across region given start made in Cambodia
apologies if too many choices mapped above - trying editorially to get both yunus and abed family members to open up all their knowledge in moocs in under one quarter is likely to mean that young people need to choose where they want to linkin and massively collaborate
there are also some fascinating green energy collaborations being written up for moocworld- i recall that when melissa launched social valuation student networking across region 4 years ago, a nobel laureate from uni of maryland declared inteerest in reconciling a green marshall plan- maryland also has some brilliant chinese students concerned with bottom up green energy networking as I found out at a recent brookings meeting on subject; the sainsbury supermarket philanthropy are a family friend back in london- with prince charles they run microenergy awards at http://ashden.org which needs to be turned into a mooc in my opinion - journalisticly, not too hard for them to do as their family are also major shareholders in The Economist; also interesting is that one of the 2 retiring student ceos of mit100k is passionate about green while the other is being headhunted by samsung out of south korea' and the theme of the yunus prize at mit this year is education
-as geo-serendipity would have it the other norman macrae in my family tree started life as a missionary in korea
Monday, November 5, 2012
bbc- why not world service of poverty museum reality games and info
back in 1984, norman solution for making sure enough family investors and youth chose heroic goals to-produce with being digitally connected was the bbc (the largest investment public have ever made in braidcasting) could run reality tv rograms -poverty museum apprentices before american pop singing idols- as well as prepare or truly celebrating millennnium goals
sources emerging on why not future of bbc -and indeed all major public media partners norman also expected to partner - back in 1984 india's dd having 2nd greatest reach
http://notimeleft.org http://africa24tv.com various end the disaster movie from skoll/brilliant begun by inconveneint truth ....
=================================================================
transparency note -while normans family were only ispired by genius like dr yunus and sir fazle abed to start up Noramn Macrae Family Foundation in his last 2 years (2008 on)- Norman helped found WorldClassBrands on his formal retiremnt from The Economist in 1988 -for particularly young media men and women who believe media can improve the human lot - these days WCB is just one of NMFOUND projects
references brandmooc - wcb.tv NMfound.net
===============================================================
To: Drum Beat and Soul Beat Africa Network participants
From: Warren Feek
Re: "Why Poverty?" Documentaries now available to view in full online
Greetings Chris
Poverty is perhaps the major development issue - one that certainly underpins most other development priorities.
Public debate is a key key element for effective change - and a major strategic principle of communication for social change.
The "Why Poverty?" documentary series - see http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/category/sites/global/why-poverty - seeks to expand critical public review, engagement and debate on poverty.
In December 2012 those documentaries were broadcast in over 70 countries.
The "Why Poverty" folks are now making these available online, free, in full for all to access.
Within the summaries below you will find links to be to these 4 documentaries on line.
Please look for this hyper-linked text within the summaries linked below "THE DOCUMENTARIES ARE NOW AVAILABLE TO ALL. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AND WATCH THE FULL…"
If you do view these documentaries please also complete the poll, share to your social networks and add your ratings and comments in the comments box at the bottom of the summary.
We will share the remaining four summaries soon.
DOCUMENTARIES
1. "Solar Mamas" - "a film about the heroic efforts of one woman as she overcomes significant difficulties to become a solar engineer".
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/solar-mamas-are-women-better-getting-out-poverty-men
2. Education! Education! - "In China, where an education was once valued and thought to be a way out of poverty, it is now questionable as a route to economic security."
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/education-education
3.Stealing Africa - How much profit is fair? - "Stealing Africa describes the tax system employed by multinational companies in Africa".
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/stealing-africa-how-much-profit-fair
4.Welcome to the World - "looks at the fact that every year 130 million babies are born, but their chances in life depend on the lottery of where, how and to whom they are born"
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/welcome-world-it-better-be-born-poor-or-die-poor
Chris - Thanks - please do review these important documentaries and share your critical review through the interactive processes available
Why Poverty?
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/
Warren
Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative
sources emerging on why not future of bbc -and indeed all major public media partners norman also expected to partner - back in 1984 india's dd having 2nd greatest reach
http://notimeleft.org http://africa24tv.com various end the disaster movie from skoll/brilliant begun by inconveneint truth ....
=================================================================
transparency note -while normans family were only ispired by genius like dr yunus and sir fazle abed to start up Noramn Macrae Family Foundation in his last 2 years (2008 on)- Norman helped found WorldClassBrands on his formal retiremnt from The Economist in 1988 -for particularly young media men and women who believe media can improve the human lot - these days WCB is just one of NMFOUND projects
references brandmooc - wcb.tv NMfound.net
===============================================================
To: Drum Beat and Soul Beat Africa Network participants
From: Warren Feek
Re: "Why Poverty?" Documentaries now available to view in full online
Greetings Chris
Poverty is perhaps the major development issue - one that certainly underpins most other development priorities.
Public debate is a key key element for effective change - and a major strategic principle of communication for social change.
The "Why Poverty?" documentary series - see http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/category/sites/global/why-poverty - seeks to expand critical public review, engagement and debate on poverty.
In December 2012 those documentaries were broadcast in over 70 countries.
The "Why Poverty" folks are now making these available online, free, in full for all to access.
Within the summaries below you will find links to be to these 4 documentaries on line.
Please look for this hyper-linked text within the summaries linked below "THE DOCUMENTARIES ARE NOW AVAILABLE TO ALL. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AND WATCH THE FULL…"
If you do view these documentaries please also complete the poll, share to your social networks and add your ratings and comments in the comments box at the bottom of the summary.
We will share the remaining four summaries soon.
DOCUMENTARIES
1. "Solar Mamas" - "a film about the heroic efforts of one woman as she overcomes significant difficulties to become a solar engineer".
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/solar-mamas-are-women-better-getting-out-poverty-men
2. Education! Education! - "In China, where an education was once valued and thought to be a way out of poverty, it is now questionable as a route to economic security."
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/education-education
3.Stealing Africa - How much profit is fair? - "Stealing Africa describes the tax system employed by multinational companies in Africa".
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/stealing-africa-how-much-profit-fair
4.Welcome to the World - "looks at the fact that every year 130 million babies are born, but their chances in life depend on the lottery of where, how and to whom they are born"
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/content/welcome-world-it-better-be-born-poor-or-die-poor
Chris - Thanks - please do review these important documentaries and share your critical review through the interactive processes available
Why Poverty?
http://www.comminit.com/whypoverty/
Warren
Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
.Examples of multi-win and exponential sustaining models.. patient capital - ie where investors win-win with organisational purpose and 10-year exponential growth not quarterly extraction 100% social busienss model 51& social business model conscious capitalism model half-generation industry sector transformation models a model for ensuring last gamechanger in industry is retained over time for radical win-win modeling even as there is either a luddite or speculator or fatally conceited academic's war to prevent the innovation that most people want for the futire | ..Quiz- What type of model to use ? M-goals developing world 1 to aid place with half-generation project in areas with no infrastructure and no spare organisation 2 to resolve poverty in place wher big internal corporates have history of extraction 3 where the development challenge is not lack of wealth or lack of local orgainisiational capacity but a demographic who have been traeteted as underclass In developed world where elders have destroyed budgets so there are no prospects for youth to grow where a whole industry chain needs replacing if country is to be sustainable for next generations where collaboration knowledge networking could be 10 times more productive than siloised owneship of pieces of knowledge |
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Borderless Youth Peacemakers
They will need to have cross-culturally correct access to curriculum vitae of history's greatest goodwill leaders and servants of humanity as well as 100 leaders of 2010s investing in youth co-productiions of what collaboration tech can make youth's most productive, sustainable and heroic time
Warning: if commentary below offends you - look at some of our other content as this piece is only important if you can feel comfy with it- the fact that reconciliation practices are not widely integrated into economics decision-makers recent behaviours scares me as a maths guy. To see what we mean from a socially grounded guy,- refer to harrison owen www.practiceofpeace.com or if need be I am chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk
What Keynes General Theory does : explains connections between peace and system design, and warns youth to be vigilant against academic economics gurus whose potentially fatal vanities combined with advising big decision-makers compounds the world's greatest risks. That's why our list of conscious system leaders includes 8 economists or maths guys whose ideas had pro-youth impacts wherever they were used. When you choose local leaders that needs much more cross-cultural future history sense than we claim to have so we have kept to four we believe did more than any peoples had the right to expect from a human being. We have added 2 practice leaders Mother Theresa in healthcare and Montessori in schools - we realise there are many more practitioners to praise but those two have lifetimes we believe all youth ought to know.
What Kaiser Wilhem did was be in the wrong place for carelessness that spun over half a century of wars out of Europe. He wasn't evil like a Hitler or a Stalin but he was situated at a time when many crises of the industrial age had been spinning and he was at the top of the whole house of cards. Ditto George Bush - everyone around in the 21st C today has peacemaking problems to solve that someone less careless than Bush might not have compounded. However if you side with George Bush and believe he had an impossible job then you are concluding that there are systems that are not too big to fail but too big to exist. And this is arguably our great post-industrial problem- today we are the first generation who can scale systems that rival nature's in planetary size. In doing that we run the risk that she will decide the human race is the next dodo. We need a majortiy of worldwide youth to be peacemakers - ie capable of cross-cultural celebration through every community. Interestingly the Lucknow City Montessori schooling system nurtures 50000 youth at any ine time being the only schooling system run by the Gandhi family www.cmseducation.org with major peace prizes. It is a curriculum worth every youth connecting with
Discussion questions
what is phony capitalism
what in social or political context are examples of forbidden questions
to take a relatively trivial case of bush's destruction of freedom of speech begin with the dixie chicks case, how do you contrast it with Putin Pussy Riot case
from the point of view of statistics, the end 2000 election race between bush and gore was a dead heat- do you think world would be in a whollt different place if Gore had led USA into 21st C -discuss with someone who holds an opposite view as a person not as a member of either party
footnote- more on Lucknow

The Rise of Asia
:More than thirty years ago, Norman Macrae (1975), who was then the deputy editor of the Economist, talked about the coming of the “Pacific Century.” According to him, the world had gone through the “British Century” (1775-1875), the “American Century” (1875-1975), and now was entering the “Pacific Century” (1975-2075?). Asia was seen as a newly rising leader in the international political and economic system. Its extraordinary vitality has forced development scholars and practitioners to “ReOrient” the history of capitalist development in the region.
:More than thirty years ago, Norman Macrae (1975), who was then the deputy editor of the Economist, talked about the coming of the “Pacific Century.” According to him, the world had gone through the “British Century” (1775-1875), the “American Century” (1875-1975), and now was entering the “Pacific Century” (1975-2075?). Asia was seen as a newly rising leader in the international political and economic system. Its extraordinary vitality has forced development scholars and practitioners to “ReOrient” the history of capitalist development in the region.
more at www.asiapacific.cc and http://planetmooc.com
x
Friday, August 31, 2012
economics of manufacturing is dead, long live makers jobs
Its quite dismal how few economists have engaged consistently and pro-actively in this debate first opened up for worldwide interaction by dad's article in The Economist of 1982 (Intrapreneurial Now- extract below)- the time at which the majority of developed economies had become service economies and were heading towards knowledge economies as the only sustainable future - help us discuss the opportunities of linking into this debate and the risks of not
x
.OPPORTUNITIES the number 1 job creating alumni network in the world hubs round MIT in Boston - where makers.are still celebrated more than any other kind of student (2012)innovations vol 7 issue 3 MIT press has a superb issue on Making in America | .RISKS because most mindsets of economists - let alone the data they churn on the nightly news is stuck in the industrial era they bury so much political discourse in history so failing to ever make a start on the journey to create the next 3 billion jobs (if you want some details on how the EU in Brussels has failed on starting this for over 20 years now - the first time I was asked to research the impact of Brussels' grants -on that occasion for whole of Portugal).. economists stuck in industrial and tv ad age era also fail to mediate - let alone value -million times more collaboration technology. Such economists are designing the exact opposite of what leaders of 2010s www.wholeplanet.tv = youths most productive decade need to mobilise inter-generational investment in |

Thursday, August 23, 2012
extract from 1982 norman macrae INTRAPRENEURIAL NOW -more here
INTRAPRENEURIAL NOW
By: Norman Macrae

In a survey called "The coming entrepreneurial revolution" in The Economist of December 25, 1976, Norman Macrae argued that "methods of operation in business are going to change radically in the next few decades, in a direction opposite to that which most businessmen and nearly all politicians expect". The survey aroused enthusiasm and infuriation in almost equal measure, with invitations to lecture in more than 20 countries. Today Macrae updates his views on management methods that can make even lousy businesses profitable, and those that are driving tighter organizations to the wall.
Big goes bust
The 1976 survey argued that the world was probably drawing to the end of the era of big business corporations, because it would soon be seen to be nonsense to have hierarchical managements sitting in skyscraping offices trying to arrange how brainworkers (who in future would be most workers) could best use their imaginations. The main increases in employment would henceforth come either in small firms or in those bigger firms that managed to split themselves into smaller and smaller profit centres which would need to become more and more entrepreneurial.
As so often with supposedly controversial journalism, this proved to be an exercise in tentatively forecasting something that had already begun to happen a decade before, although it honestly was the opposite of what was being most widely reported at the time. In 1976 the textbooks being most assiduously fed to business courses were still Ken Galbraith's. "The new industrial state" and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber's "Le definamericain", each of which was a bible to the advocates of industrial policies then subsidising British Steels, British Leylands and Projects Concorde into growing inefficiently larger and therefore irretrievably bust. These mergers were procreated on the thesis, explicitly stated by Ken Galbraith, that markets had been replaced by planning in favor of big technostructures so that large organizations like Chrysler or United States Steel did not lose money any more. "By all but the pathologically romantic", cried Ken Galbraith in 1967, "it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man". He believed that the most economic size for business corporations in the future could be "'very, very large".
Shortly before these two books were -written and, instantly reached the best-selling lists, precisely the opposite trends had remorselessly begun to occur.
By 1965 small workplaces were already outperforming big ones on almost every count. Even in idealistic occupations, British hospitals with under 100 beds had between one half and two thirds the sickness rates among nurses as hospitals with more than 100 beds. I got my saddest quote of the late 1970s from the manager of a huge factory in Manchuria (though he could find echoes at Detroit, London Airport, Kama River): "During the period of disruption by the gang of four many workers came only on pay-days, some carrying placards saying I was a fly on top of putrescent meat. With 10,(XX) comrades here, it was impossible to check the absenteeism, pilfering and work-dodging that went on".
The biggest world political event since the 1960s is that communist countries have proved less able than free-market ones to escape from inefficient giantism in state factories and farms, so they are all going bust. In free-market countries managers are eventually more willing to lose face than their shareholders are to lose money, but tough problems are arising as even capitalist giants slim.
Since the mid-1960s the thousand biggest firms in the United States have as a group been sensibly reducing their labour forces, and more than the whole of the 15m private-sector jobs created since then have come in smaller firms-the majority of the new extra jobs at any one time being in firms less than five years old, even though more than half of new small American firms disappear out of business in their first five years. Although survey dates are jumbled, the accompanying inadequate charts suggest the same trend is accelerating even in manufacturing across the capitalist world. The present capitalist conjuncture is therefore one where the bigger and more stable firms are running down their employment, while more than the whole of net new employment is provided by small firms which, however, frequently go bust. Ow! And some thought needs to be given to ways of combining the advantages of small firms within big ones.
Make departments minifirms
In my 1976 survey I suggested there would be two trends-in the most conventional of which, greater reliance on subcontracting, I now think I was jejune. Subcontracting works only when the big firm has very tight quality control (as have Marks and Spencer, big Japanese companies towards tiny component makers and the superbly entrepreneurial Italian textile industry, see later). Subcontracting does not work when the big firm cannot measure what quality is, so that many management consultants, public relations firms etc. are about to disappear because they are high-cost ramps.
The second system I suggested in 1976 was that dynamic corporations of the future should simultaneously be trying several alternative ways of doing things in competition within themselves, becoming what have later been called confederations of "intrapreneurs". Two key concepts for efficient businesses here. First, the right size for each profit centre or intrapreneurial group-by which I mean a group of friends working together in daily productivity hunt towards the same objective-is very small, probably not more than 10 or 11 people, however dynamic your top management. Jesus Christ tried 12, and that proved one too many. Second, firms should not pay people for attendance at the workplace but should pay competing groups for modules of work done.
Thus, if you need a typing pool, I have suggested it might be best to set up several competing groups of Typists Intrapreneurial. You would offer an index linked contract to the group for a set period, specifying the services you wanted in return for a lump-sum monthly payment. The typists would apportion the work among themselves, devise their own flexitime, choose their own lifestyles, decide whether to replace a leaver by a full-timer or part-timer or whether to do her work and keep more money per head. They could also decide whether to tender for extra paid work from outside. In offices with tomorrow's equipment, there could, see later, be a lot.
A trivial example? By comparison with the gains that can be made in other fields it is. Yet the EEC court of auditors has recently ruled that the proper output for a typist is around 24 pages a day, and was upset that in some EEC departments the average, was only 12. In The Economist on a print-day Wednesday, when we are feeling rather participatory, a top secretary will type around 60 pages. If some EEC departments went over to that pace through being Typists Intrapreneurial, the stenographers could choose to work only one day a week for the same weekly wage as now, or by slowing recruitment they could work for up to five times their existing wages for the same present attendance at the office, or they could become five times more efficient. In practice, competition would ensure a mixture of the three, and the scope in most other parts of the business and bureaucratic jungle is much vaster.
This survey will explore that wider jungle, starting from the intrapreneurial mechanisms needed to breed new projects and going on through to those needed eventually to kill outdated ones (and make it participatory fun to send them to South Korea).
About 85% of all the industrial R & D expenditure in the United States takes place in 300 large corporations. It is done very wastefully.
Towards inventors intrapreneurial
About 70,000 patents are issued in the United States each year. Of these, maybe 60,000 are never heard of again, because most are horse manure. There will be some hidden pearls among it, and more could be found if patent offices were more intrapreneurial instead of often being inefficient government filing offices, some not even properly computerized. Governments should establish competing intrapreneurial teams in patent offices, compiling competing databases.
Of the perhaps 10,000 new patents a year round the world that are used, only about 10-20 a year are for what the co-inventor of the ubiquitous integrated circuit, Mr. Jack Kilby, calls "major" inventions things that change our lives. A list of the world's major inventions over the past 50 years shows that big organizations claim to have discovered only around a third of them, and some of their claims are fibs. More than two thirds have been discovered by individuals or small businesses.
The individual inventors' list of the past 50 years turns alphabetically from air conditioning, automatic transmissions and ballpoint pens, through jet engines and penicillin, to xerography and the zipper. The big companies' list runs more predictably through crease-resistant fabrics, float glass, synthetic detergents. Note how these fit with corporate objectives; "We are a big textile or soap company, so go for something capital-intensive". "We are Pilkington's Glass, and if we can beat plate glass by developing float glass, then every motor car in the world will eventually pay us a royalty, so it is worth carrying on with research into solving the last three problems in the way of float glass even through 12 consecutive years of negative cash flow."
Nobody should underestimate the tangible and intrapreneurial excitement among a tiny group of researchers when such a big firm's opportunity presents itself. Sir Alastair Pilkington has described how his research group into float glass was kept small enough to maintain total secrecy, so that experiments had been in progress for seven years before competitors knew of them; how several of his team members, after working impossibly long hours, were carried away on stretchers suffering from heat exhaustion; how 100,000 tons of float glass were made and broken before the great day which produced the first bit they could sell. But, to quote Jack Kilby again, each invention presents a profile of opportunities and requirements, while each company has its own profile of what constitutes to it an acceptable product. The probability that these two profile, will coincide in any given case is not very high.
The result is that many big companies' brilliant researchers are, in conditions of great secrecy, in their seventh consecutive year of smashing unusable float glass.
The Pinchot proposals
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