drew up his Three Laws of Robotics. The First Law was: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The Second: “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” We would be much better off today if all corporations – which, like robots, are man-made automata – were constrained by these laws. Our legal systems instead put into these business automata a single urge – to seek profits. This one-track mind has made them take over commonly-held sources of abundance – from seeds, to land, to knowledge – and turn these... posted on Jun 15 2013 (21,586 reads)

Industries, helps rural women buy one of the $2,500 machines through NGOs, government loans, and rural self-help groups. "My vision is to make India a 100% napkin-using country," said Muruganantham at the INK conference in Jaipur. "We can create 1 million employment opportunities for rural women and expand the model to other developing nations." Today, there are about 600 machines deployed in 23 states across India and in a few countries abroad. The machine and business model help create a win-win situation. A rural woman can be taught to make napkins on it in three hours. Running one of the machines employs four women in total, which creates income for rura... posted on Jan 26 2012 (19,172 reads)

for Making a Fine Car When a product has served you well, it’s always nice to write an appreciative letter to the people who make it. This one allegedly comes from Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde notoriety: Dear Sir: - While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusivly when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever other car skinned and even if my business hasen’t been strickly legal it don’t hurt enything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8 - Yours truly Clyde Champion Barrow Legend has it Henry Ford rec... posted on Feb 16 2012 (90,889 reads)

have nothing against automobiles. I have a car, and I appreciate its utility. All I would say is, it is important to remember who is serving whom. If we were the masters of our machines—and our lives—we would have good, well-made cars and good roads on which to drive, but wouldn’t we also use them sparingly, so our children and our children’s children would have enough oil left to heat their homes?   Nor am I suggesting that there is anything wrong in a businessperson making enough profit to support his or her family in comfort—everyone should have this opportunity. But we have exaggerated the importance of profit out of all proportion to its n... posted on Feb 17 2012 (82,116 reads)

a story.   She threw out the linearity of history.  She made what was dry and ancient, charming, engaging, and at times, even humorous.   That was her imagination at work.  And it helped me develop a love for the social sciences.   Our imaginations can be quite contagious, I learned.   But can this love for the imaginative ever find a place in the real world?  Certainly.   More and more young people today want to work for start-ups where business meets creativity, where what may seem impossible today is reality tomorrow.  Who knew that you could pay for your Starbucks coffee without cash or credit card?  You can.  Just ... posted on Mar 29 2012 (85,414 reads)

Use pictures to answer some questions such as: What kinds of houses do these car buyers live in? What kind of watches do they buy? Where do they go on vacation? What kind of art do they hang on their walls? Mix your own idea sketches in among them. As the swarm of pictures grows, anunderstanding of who is going to buy this car and what might appeal to them begins to emerge. PLAYFULNESS. One of Walt Disney's greatest secrets was his ability to draw out the inner child in his business associates and combine it with their business acumen. Because he made the work playlike, his associates worked and played together with a missionary zeal. Disney was a true genius who needed ... posted on Jul 17 2012 (22,847 reads)

and singing and calling to me.” *** Daniel is in third grade, and I’m on the phone with his after-school day-care provider, who is throwing him out of her day-care center. “It’s not that I’m throwing him out,” she explains to me repeatedly, and then goes on about how if Daniel has a sudden breakdown, and she focuses her attention on him and not on the toddlers there, one of the toddlers might get hurt, and then she would lose her business, and then her house. So can’t I understand? This is the third after-school program he’s been tossed from in two years. My Baby Rides the Sh... posted on Oct 10 2012 (10,104 reads)

time." Our own research has compared the pace of life in different cities. In an early study we conducted field experiments in the largest or other major city in each of 31 countries. One experiment, for example, timed the average walking speed of randomly selected pedestrians over a distance of 60 feet. Another experiment sampled speed in the workplace -- specifically, how long it took postal clerks to fulfill a standard request for stamps. All measurements were taken during main business hours in main downtown areas under similar conditions. More recently, my colleague Stephen Reysen and I replicated these experiments in 24 cities across the United States. We've found... posted on Nov 9 2012 (24,437 reads)

living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you. The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the &l... posted on Nov 27 2012 (74,747 reads)

speech given at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California on May 20, 2012. Six months after leaving grad school, I found myself at a rocket launchpad for one of the very first private enterprise rocket companies. Our business manager was doing the countdown. 5-4-3-2-1, oh, BLEEP. The rocket blew up! That explosion, that failure, launched my career in a completely new direction as an entrepreneur. By being part of an incredibly bold venture, well a bold failure (that didn't kill me or anybody), I became open to becoming an entrepreneur myself. Returning to the Bay Area, I started my own rocket company. It failed. I ended up helping start seven high tech c... posted on Dec 12 2012 (15,197 reads)

of Shou Bao Zhuang. It contained many subdivisions, each hosting and recycling a different kind of trash—glass, metal, paper, tires, old clothes, plastics, and foam materials.   Families lived in the trash compounds for cheap housing and easy access to goods. Even though migrant workers in general are on their own, with no rights, no land, and no legal protection, a powerful hierarchy has firmly established itself in the trash-collecting business. Mr. Ku, the owner of Zheng Jun Hotel where I stay during my visits to Dandelion, began his career collecting trash. Due to his keen sense of business and shrewd maneuvering, he is now a ... posted on Jan 20 2013 (8,869 reads)

He had a warm smile and an open demeanor, and was wearing a hat that said he was a Vietnam vet. Like everyone else on the subway car I looked down, hiding in my iPhone. A monologue ran through my head about how his story couldn’t be true, and how the smartest, best thing I could do was nothing. This wasn’t an academic question for me. Just two years before I had left the private sector to work at Acumen Fund, a new nonprofit that fights global poverty by investing in businesses that serve the poor. Acumen’s investments had brought safe drinking water to millions in rural India; had helped hundreds of thousands of farmers in Kenya earn more money; had created... posted on Feb 14 2013 (19,571 reads)

process, and focusing on smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. What do you need to "unlearn and let go of" so that increased focus on what you have could make you very effective and successful? Pursue unlikely connections and look for odd juxtapositions. The eye surgeon Dr. Venkataswamy, also known as Dr. V, created a revolutionary approach to curing cataract blindness in India by studying McDonald's. He was able to develop a high-efficiency, standardized, replicable business model that organized patients in operating rooms and broke the procedure down into a series of discrete processes so that nurses and doctors could treat large patient volumes with high qualit... posted on Apr 2 2013 (40,572 reads)

whether they’re monetary resources, in-kind materials, our time, our energy, or our home. When we bring these into the flow of sharing as a community, it can serve and support all of us. Believe it or not, but I do: we have everything we need already. We also support people who want to look at possibilities for learning outside the monopoly of schools and colleges. All around our communities are an abundance of resources. They come in the form of artisans and artists, farmers and business people, home-makers and spiritual guides. Each brings wisdom, creativity, curiosity, imagination, skills, vision, and experience, which can be shared across generations. For example, Shi... posted on May 8 2013 (15,129 reads)

has been touted to be a cure for nearly everything in life, from depression, to memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and more. At the same time, similar to the topic of sleep, I found myself having very little specific and scientific knowledge about what exercise really does to our bodies and our brains. “Yes, yes, I know all about it, that’s the thing with the endorphins, that makes you feel good and why we should exercise and stuff, right?” is what I can hear myself say to someone bringing this up. I would pick up things here and there, yet really digging into the connection of exercise and how it effects us has never been something I... posted on Aug 27 2013 (59,273 reads)

from the inside out. This lack of knowledge constitutes a blind spot in our approach to leadership and management (Figure 1). Slowing Down to Understand At its core, leadership is about shaping and shifting how individuals and groups attend to and subsequently respond to a situation. But most leaders are unable to recognize, let alone change, the structural habits of attention used in their organizations. Learning to recognize the habits of attention in a business culture requires, among other things, a particular kind of listening. Over more than a decade of observing people’s interactions in organizations, I have noted four diffe... posted on Jul 9 2013 (95,412 reads)

the surfer ends up in the water. There's no other possible way to wrap up a ride. That got me thinking: What if we all lived life like a surfer on a wave? The answer that kept coming to me was that we would take more risks. That difficult conversation with your boss (or employee, or colleague, or partner, or spouse) that you've been avoiding? You'd initiate it. That proposal (or article, or book, or email) you've been putting off? You'd start it. That new business (or product, or sales strategy, or investment) you've been overanalyzing? You'd follow through. And when you fell — because if you take risks, you will fall — you'd... posted on Jun 13 2013 (37,106 reads)

including how the burning of garbage releases particulates linked to asthma and other respiratory problems. Rossano Ercolini. Photo by Goldman Prize. Over the course of the next 30 years, Ercolini led a David-versus-Goliath struggle, with education as his slingshot. In the 1990s, waste incineration was embraced by the Italian government as well as by big environmental organizations, all of whom bought into the premise that it was a safe and effective technology. Big business and the mafia also supported incineration because of the 20- to 30-year lucrative contracts and large government investments it involved. The conjunction of economic and political interest... posted on Jul 27 2013 (23,041 reads)

for ways to do my part for Gaia. I’ve also learned that when doors magically fly open, you’d better walk in with your pragmatic hat jammed firmly on your head, your practical feet encased in sturdy shoes, and your sleeves rolled up for the grind of making (and keeping) it real. You Don’t Need Money (Then Again, You Really, Really Do): Time, energy, vision, and love will go an astonishingly long way, but funding counts. “Your balance sheet is feedback,” a business adviser bluntly told me. “It shows whether you have a viable model." True, the only meaningful metric is the thriving of people and planet. And the financial system is fictive (the... posted on Apr 13 2014 (13,499 reads)

robots — which she says are on the cusp of reframing our sense of responsibility to other human beings. Again, that's all at onbeing.org. Coming up, more on how creating boundaries with technology can teach and nourish our children; also, strategies for growing up in our relationship with email. Ms. Turkle: I've known a lot of people who declare email bankruptcy. You basically say: There are 10,000 messages in my inbox; yours is one of them. If you have continuing business with me, please send me another email. Ms. Tippett: You do use this phrase "sacred spaces." One moment of insight that I had about technology was when I was talking to Jon K... posted on Jul 1 2013 (29,443 reads)