After a long break in the Caribbean I’m back with even more resolve and determination than what you witnessed last year. I intend to shake the foundations of our lovely sleepwalking Europe and help to lay new foundations for a society ready to ride over the troubles of the early 21st century. Christmas is a time for me to reflect and plan for the future. I can’t stand the festive frenzy so I normally migrate to non-Western countries to create an healthy distance from the familiar conventions and fall deep into my thoughts. Isn’t this the true meaning of Christmas?
This time around I took such a long break and found the time to read the 750 page by Ian Morris, Why the West Rules – for Now. The Patterns of History and What They Reveal about the Future. Away from being a pleasant reading the book takes you from the prehistory of humanity to the present the most inspiring idea I found in the book was ‘the paradox of development’. Civilizations develop through increasing their capacity to extract energy from the environment (ie production of resources) , manage growing complexity of social life, information and master military power.
However, such development always hits a ceiling and triggers decadence and eventually collapse when success overtakes the capacity to extract enough resources for a growing population, manage an ever more complex social structure, increasing flow of information, and fend off from greedy neighbours.
Morris argues that both the Roman and Chinese empires – the peaks of civilization in the West and East – collapsed because they reached the ceiling of their respective social development but where not able to develop means to pierce it. ‘Barbarians’ destroyed the empires but were just instruments in the hands of history. They sanctioned the limits of those civilizations and relaunched the course of evolution.
On the other hand the West eventually overcame the ceiling of social development with the Industrial Revolution and became the master of the world. However we have reached a new ceiling today and face the same challenge of our Roman and Chinese ancestors unless we develop new means to kick-start social development.
We need a new Genghis Khan to shake the forces in society which currently hold us back – the vested interests embedded in the political, economic and social system that don’t let us make the new quantum leap into the 21st century.
I don’t know who is going to be the new Genghis Khan but the necessity has come. Someone will need to fill these shoes. I intend on contributing to the plan. In 2013, I will focus on four key strands: research, policy, ideas and experiments.
1) I will develop my collaboration with researchers on using new technologies to mobilize people and build a dynamic and sustainable development. I already work with the Dept of the European Commission leading on the digital agenda, various university across Europe and the US, and have just been recruited onto a research project on Global Solutions Networks led by Don Tapscott, the author of the bestseller Wikinomics
2) I will further focus on the development of European policy that challenges the Brussels establishment – the bubble – to get back to earth and respond to the needs of people. Especially looking at those policies that combine economic and social goals such as social innovation, social enterprise and impact investing. What else would you do in the middle of a economic crisis when youth unemployment might turn in social unrest? I might also work more closely with both the British and Italian governments if I don’t have to waste too much time fighting against vested interests which fear my disruptive innovation.
3) Ideas are what excites me. I’ve always shared freely and promise to do even more, going well beyond Europe. Besides my advisory roles in Brussels and membership in the board of Mouves – French Association of Social Entrepreneurs – and I-SIN – Italian Social Innovation Network – I’m developing new collaborations in Germany, US, Pakistan, India, China and Arab countries. The collaboration with Nicolas Hazard (Groupe SOS and Comptoir de l’Innovation) and Indi Johar (Hub Westminster) in particular seem promising. We are all disruptive innovators, advocate of change… and size matters.
4) There is no more time for empty words. Action is needed. Tinkering with new solutions responds to my adventurous nature. Besides closing the experiment started in Naples I will explore new territories. The first one is mass collaboration through new technologies. My reference is Purpose, the world leading company in the field. My mentor Simon Willis hopefully. But I also want to learn more about practice in impact investing. I failed with the Gum Arabic Fund but new opportunities are opening-upd this year.
When I was in my 20s I found shocking that the Romans didn’t consider an individual being an adult until their 30s. Alexander the Great conquered the largest Empire in Antiquity in his late 20s. Today I think I understand what my ancestors meant.
You become an adult when it’s not about yourself anymore but your ‘community’. You might strive for success but the others will decide the suitable place for you in society. This conclusion has somehow given me peace. Now, I can go ahead with no hurry anymore.
Btw, what’s the best memory I brought back from my trip? Jamaicans don’t simply greet you with an ‘hello’ or ‘thanks’ but prefer ‘respect’ and extend a fist and you reciprocate. It’s a simple and nice why to reinforce the sentiment that we are all agents of empowerment and belong to the same community.
Cosa fa VITA?
Da 30 anni VITA è la testata di riferimento dell’innovazione sociale, dell’attivismo civico e del Terzo settore. Siamo un’impresa sociale senza scopo di lucro: raccontiamo storie, promuoviamo campagne, interpelliamo le imprese, la politica e le istituzioni per promuovere i valori dell’interesse generale e del bene comune. Se riusciamo a farlo è grazie a chi decide di sostenerci.