Strategy vs. Resilience

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Back in 2006 I was part of Lockheed Martin’s strategy department. I had been with the company for 6 years, and had successfully graduated their 3-year long Leadership Development Program that groomed young professionals into future executives.

I would be traveling regularly to Europe, California, Florida and New York, overseeing a number of advanced research projects and international business partnerships. I was a firm believer in strategy, and the strategic planning process that was so carefully coordinated by smart, battle hardened people with white hair.

That’s when an idea took hold: would all my strategy acumen give me an edge in an emerging economy? Could I be a successful entrepreneur there as opposed to an employee in the U.S.?

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The greatest risk to democracy is intrinsic

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If democracy should eventually fail, it will be by popular vote!

No totalitarian or fundamentalist regime has the means to challenge the military might that results from the wealth generated by free enterprise. What crazed ego-maniacal self-proclaimed leaders opposed to freedom and free enterprise might be unable to do, advanced societies might still achieve on their own.

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Do you still make mistakes?

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I’ve taken my aliens seriously ever since I was twelve. As a kid, after reading a good Von Daniken ancient alien piece, I would open the windows to the house wide open in the dead of winter – in case “they” came, I would always have an escape route. They fortunately never came.

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Organizational Transformation and Development

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One of the lasting memories I have from the Peter Drucker Global Forum event held in Vienna, Austria in November 2013 is of the great Charles Handy. His speech was great. But what amused me more was his playfulness. His willingness to still take chances. I caught him staring intently for what must have been a minute at an 100 year old “hop-on-hop-off” wooden elevator with no doors that still functions in the building of the Federation of Austrian Industries building in Vienna (see picture below). Eventually he hopped onto the moving elevator and everything turned out fine to my relief.

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Measuring our way into meaninglessness, stagnation and crisis

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I posit excessive measurement is the culprit behind the world’s biggest problems, as well as the likely initiator of its future crises. It is the largest hidden systemic risk to our future livelihood. Our obsession with quantity is the very incarnation of the materialistic credo, a worldview focusing on physical resources and antagonist to a knowledge economy.

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Don’t fix Capitalism; realize its opportunities!

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Despite what you may be led to think when listening to heated political debates and cable news wise men, things are not that complicated when it comes to humanity’s predicament.

In a time when common folk and elites alike decry Capitalism and seem intent on going after it with pitchforks, I say we have yet to achieve it.

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Introducing the World to Generative Management

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Like yin and yang, human enterprise has two facets: closed-loop activities and open-ended endeavors. In management we call these two operations and strategy.

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Facebook vs. Nicolay Kardashev: the sustainable economic growth argument

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I’ve often wondered whether social networking companies like Facebook qualify as innovations driving sustainable economic growth, i.e. fueling human prosperity.

As more of the world’s discretionary capital (equity, venture, etc.) is sunk into social technologies we should I think explore the link between virtual technologies facilitating human connectivity (i.e. social media) and vibrant economies conducent to democratic political systems, invention and human prosperity.

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