Grow Your Own - the Landshare campaign – promoted by Channel 4 series River Cottage – aims to convert underused land in the UK back into productive use for growing fresh fruit and vegetables. Visitors can register as a Grower, Landowner, Land-spotter—someone who knows of some unused land—or Facilitator, helping elderly gardeners and others in need of assistance. (spotted by www.springwise.com)
I spent a couple of afternoons exploring MacWorld this past week, immersing myself in All Things Apple. Here are my impressions, and why I think it makes sense for Apple to pull out of MacWorld to participate in CES instead.
As the dust refuses to settle from the global financial crisis, the temptation is to batten down the hatches. Focusing on value creation – or just survival – by exploiting existing assets and equities intuitively makes sense.
It’s always satisfying when one’s work is acknowledged and spreads within a community. Since writing Making Meaning with Steve Diller and Nathan Shedroff, the ideas we put forward have been widely embraced.
Those of us trained in foresight (futures) are often asked to predict hot new trends at the beginning of each year. Good futurists never predict what “the” future will be, although we are often asked to do so. We instead consider alternative futures, using scenarios, visioning, and other foresight tools to examine alternative outcomes. Uncertainty interests us most, as we try to identify “critical uncertainties” which can act as levers that lead to particular scenarios. What are the most critical things to understand that create change?
As a “street futurist” I can’t wait to see how consumers react to the unprecedented uncertainty and change that we are facing now. My job will be fascinating this year. Here’s what I expect:
Given the unprecedented changes in the economy, is innovation still relevant in this environment? Fundamentally, innovation is about finding new and better ways to attract and delight customers. It’s about being more effective and more competitive in producing value. In an economic contraction such as we are experiencing, the environment is clearly even more competitive: businesses are chasing fewer and fewer dollars. So innovation is even MORE important in a recession. It is survival of the fittest.
In an expanding economy, growth masks a multitude of sins. You can be mediocre and still depend on size and inertia. But evolution doesn’t happen in a linear way. It putters along until there is a crisis event, …then bam, you get a big shift. The dinosaurs become extinct. That’s what we are seeing in the auto industry. Those big dinosaurs are being pushed over the edge by the financial crisis.
So the answer is yes, innovation is very relevant in this environment — even urgent now. But how are businesses reacting to the economic conditions? …
Where do we stand on the current topics of debate? What future trends will significantly affect cultures, shift market adoption and change consumer behaviour?
How will these trends affect the way consumers feel about your brand? And what effect will that have on your business strategy?
Here are some of the things we’re talking about at the moment. We’re constantly finding new subjects to discuss, so please come back for more.
