To General Motors:

Continued reading High Volt-age Project from GM...

TrackBack (0) | Posted by Mike Neiss | Comments?

What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert: "In 2002, Jane Ebert and I discovered that people are generally happier with decisions when they can't undo them. When subjects in our experiments ... couldn't undo their decisions they tended to concentrate on the good features and ignore the bad. ... I had always believed that love causes marriage. But these experiments suggested to me that marriage could also cause love."

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: "Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature...and thought that, with the advent of genetic engineering, we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe ... the history of life on this planet has been one of merciless destruction and blind, lurching renewal ... Those that survive do so despite Her indifference ... There is nothing about natural selection that suggests our optimal design ... Mother Nature is not now, nor has she ever been, looking out for us."

Kevin Kelly, author of New Rules for the New Economy: "Much of what I believed about human nature, and the nature of knowledge, has been upended by the Wikipedia ... I knew from my own 20-year experience online that ... an aggregation of random contributions would be a total mess ... How wrong I was ... The reality of a working Wikipedia has made a type of communitarian socialism not only thinkable, but desirable ... When you grow up knowing rather than admitting that such a thing as the Wikipedia works; when it is obvious to you that open source software is better; when you are certain that sharing your photos and other data yields more than safeguarding them—then these assumptions will become a platform for a yet more radical embrace of the commonwealth ... Its mind-changing power is working subconsciously on the global millennial generation, providing them with an existence proof of a beneficial hive mind, and an appreciation for believing in the impossible."

Futurist Peter Schwartz: "In the last few years I have changed my mind about nuclear power. I used to believe that expanding nuclear power was too risky. Now I believe that the risks of climate change are much greater than the risks of nuclear power ... Furthermore, human skill and knowledge in managing a nuclear system are only likely to grow with time."

OK. Truth-telling time. What have YOU changed your mind about?

OLPC. Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program is a gem. At laptopgiving.org you can give a kid in a developing country a laptop for $200 or, for $399, do "Give One. Get One." You give a developing country child one, and get one for your child.

BoGo Light. About Two Billion people have no electric lights. Substitutes, such as kerosene, are dangerous and play havoc with the environment. Enter Mark Bent, inventor of a $25 solar-powered flashlight. BoGo is "Buy One, Get One." Go to BoGoLight.com, and for $25 plus shipping you get one—and he sends one to the relief group of your choice. You can choose pink or orange. Please choose pink!! Orange was the sole color, but men routinely stole them from women. Men are not so inclined to swipe the pink ones. In a tale reminiscent of the development of micro-lending, the guys use the lights to sit around and do nothing; women use the lights to teach each other to read, do family chores such as gather firewood, etc.

FYI, I am a participant in both programs, though I am not associated with either one other than in the role of Cheerleader.

Marvelous!
I guess you don't have to be Bill Gates, after all!
And you?

(The above story courtesy the San Francisco Chronicle, 10.15.07—I grabbed a copy last week on my way to Korea.)

If cleaning up and refurbishing one of London's biggest industrial wastelands and installing a world-class array of sports facilities with a supporting transport infrastructure isn't a Wow! Project, then I don't know what is. Then there is the challenge of the events themselves and the inspiration that having the Games here has already given to youngsters dreaming of their own future sporting prowess. It speaks to a level of ambition that seems to be sadly lacking in many of our public and private enterprises. I recall Tom Peters speaking in London about the Channel Tunnel being THE civil engineering project that he (as an ex civil engineer) would love to have directed. That project went a little over the original budget forecast, too, as I recall!

To transform our flagging businesses and run-down communities will take bold ambition, and a willingness to pitch, win, and deliver projects of vision and magnitude. At the end of the day, the only success criterion that really counts is "Was it Wow?"

The excuse for our family vacation was Max and Ben's participation in SSWC06, the Single Speed World Championship bike race—in Stockholm this year. Max took a brilliant 10th among 200+ participants, including some pros. Ben, in his first race of this sort, netted a top-half finish among the group who actually finished the grueling course. Above are the two stalwarts minutes before the start.

Didn't expect to write another book. 70 hyper-tailored presentations and the Blog are more or less enough. But our Erik Hansen who, along with Cathy Mosca, is co-major domo of the Blog, visited with my UK publisher, Dorling-Kindersley. Special Projects publisher Stephanie Jackson wants a book. So she and chief designer Peter Luff (design-are-us at DK) cooked up some ideas. Erik presented them to me last week, and I was 90 percent hooked—Blog stuff will be front and center with keen illustrations.

You know Erik from his posts and as architect of the Cool Friends interviews. But do you really know him? The picture of the hand, at his presentation, is Erik's. In a future Post I will reveal the rest of him!

In an "attempt to rally one of the largest professional groups in the world to donate blood," his company has proclaimed the last week of this month to be the first "Global Sales Blood Drive." It seems this is a time of year when need is up and supply is down.

If you're a salesperson who'd like to be part of this effort, go to www.salesblood.org for details. It's a Wow! Project, and you can help to make it more so.

I know it's only June, but my vote for the coolest example of what frontline empowerment can achieve is already cast. It goes to the New York City Fire Department, which has just approved a new rope system designed not by some outsourcer but by a group of firefighters, who were spurred to action by a fire in the Bronx in which two comrades died because of cumbersome and weak ropes.

The firefighters who designed the new system did so by drawing on off-duty skills such as rock climbing and metalworking. Working on their own, they formed a design team, studied materials, went to conferences to interview vendors and learn what was available and why, paying their own way to do so. Once they had figured out an alternative, one of the team members taught himself to sew so they could create a prototype. Their passion and hard work paid off: This week, the NYFD announced it would spend $11 million to acquire their system.

Continued reading Fighting Fire Within the Web...

Posted by Sally Helgesen | Comments?

We're happy to say that Tom is among them. He wrote a foreword that's posted here.

Clear Path International aids landmine victims in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, and there's a benefit CD, due out in May, written up in Rolling Stone. If you'd like to contribute to the cause, or pre-order the CD, there are links on the CPI website. So, there's opportunity for you, too.

BTW: James was posting reports on a recent trip to Southeast Asia on tp.com. His last post (my favorite!), links to the rest.

In the last two days I have visited with 3 young bomb survivors who are receiving help through our organization. Thanks to our terrific staff, two of them are now walking again. One though, a 13-year-old boy, is lying in a hospital bed after an artillery shell he was playing with blew off his lower legs and one of his arms last week.

Continued reading Why I Am Here...

Posted by James Hathaway | Comments?

While still in Cambodia, we visited with an old friend of mine that I met while attending a boarding school in Maine in the mid 1980s. When we met he had just recently escaped from the Khmer Rouge and had been rescued from a Thai refugee camp by a man who would later adopt him. I was fifteen years old and had no way of knowing that this boy, whose flute playing of Khmer Rouge propaganda songs saved him from a certain death, would impact my life in such a drastic way ... and 20 years later would be one of my closest friends.

Continued reading A Renaissance from the Ruins...

Posted by James Hathaway | Comments?

Continued reading Wow! Projects: The Panama Canal...

Posted by Halley Suitt | Comments?

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Tuesday opened up the bidding for the West Side stadium site sought by the Jets football team and rival Madison Square Garden, which owns its own sports teams. (more here)

Got any good ideas about how to pull off a very complicated, high visibility, many players, big money project like this?

Drop what you're doing!
Buy a discount ticket to Manhattan!
See Christo's Gates in Central Park!
Write it off: "Research on WOW Projects"!!

At an office donated by Westchester County Airport, approximately 50 part-time volunteers and a handful of paid staff work with patients and families, physicians and treatment facilities to coordinate thousands of flights a year. They also work with major corporations that donate money or, even better, seats on their corporate jets. Over 500 top corporations, including a number from the Fortune 500, take part in the program.

It's good to know that there is a story of good will and generosity from America's business community, along with all the stories of greed and corruption we read so often (Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, et al.). Let your heart soar. Visit their website and consider contributing to their efforts.

How in the hell does one respond to that?!

I have no immediate (hence glib) answer, but it did lead to my 2-part NYResolution2005:

TomResolution2005 (full year): Every project, small or large, this year will have to answer the question, "Does this change the world?" HP ran a banner ad, "HAVE YOU CHANGED CIVILIZATION TODAY?" I'll make that the first & last question I ask myself each day!

TomResolution2005 (within the next 10 minutes): I will be "hall monitor" for my attitude concerning each & every human contact I have this year, starting ... IMMEDIATELY. Do I exude Passion & Optimism & Connection of the sort that invariably engages others? (Hint: This applies as much to the 30-second exchange I have with a checkout clerk at Shaw's grocery in Manchester VT as it does in a speech to very senior execs in Zurich on January 11.)

Oh yeah, thanks Teri!

You'll know when your TeamMates/DreamMates say:

"Makes me proud to be part of this DreamTeam!"
"Works for me personally!"
"Worthy of my Emotional Commitment!"
"Cool!"
"Wow!"
"Who'd have thought we could ..."
"Makes me Giggle!"
"Can't wait to tell my best pal/spouse/significant other/the guy sitting next to me on the subway!"
"Can't wait to recruit my friend Jenny!"

Do you pass this test?