Review: Ecological Intelligence–Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature

3 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Environment (Solutions), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

3.0 out of 5 stars Badly documented and therefore suspect

October 23, 2009

Ian McCallum

Of the two reviews, the second more critical review is more helpful.

I am not buying this book, which has a very engaging title, for three reasons:

1. The second review provides clear warning of a light-weight schoolkid apporach to the material.

2. The publisher has failed to provide adequate documentation which combined with the page count leads me to suspect, as a very heavy reader and frequent reviewer, that this is a lite work.

3) The other books tend to confirm this book does not fall into serious non-fiction.

Instead, see Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything which is much closer to the “true cost” non-fiction meme that I have been pursuing.

Continue reading “Review: Ecological Intelligence–Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature”

Review: The Design of Business–Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Public Administration, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars In Its Niche Beyond a Six–In Larger Context a Four
October 11, 2009
Roger Martin
First off, what got me to buy this book does not appear in the book at all–the author on record as saying that Wall Street was not designed to make money for its investors, only for its mandarins–the same is true of how universities are designed, businesses, etc. but that one observation really got my attention. I bought the book before BusinessWeek featured it as one of four in the October 5th edition (Europe version), and after looking the others over, chose this one.
In the larger context of changes to the Earth that now take three years instead of ten thousand years, as an entire literature flourishes on The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, the book is a four for narrow-casting and lack of context, but you can use Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, to search and sort among my other 1,400 reviews, so no penalty is warranted, This book will be scored Beyond 6 Stars at PBI/PIB for the simple reason that it addresses the core need of all eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental organizations), to re-design away from the Industrial Era waste (where Six Sigma stops), and to instead envision how the world could and should be, and set out to achieve that–a prosperous world at peace.