Change & Innovation – Page 19 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/07/182009/10/24

Review: The Challenge for Africa

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Education (General), Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Humanitarian Assistance, Information Operations, Information Society, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Amazon Page

A Gift–Properly Priced, Presented, and MOST Rewarding,

July 18, 2009

Wangari Maathai

Of the three of four books I have consumed so far for an introduction to Africa's current condition, this one is by far the best, and if you buy only one, this is the one. The other two, each valuable in its own way, are:
The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Tomorrow I will plow through Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future and post a review.

The author, a Nobel Peace laureate for the Green Belt Movement, delivers a very straight-forward, practical “woman's voice” account of both the past troubles, present tribulations, and future potential of Africa. This book is replete with “street-level” common sense as well as a real sense of nobility.

Early on the author addresses the reality that uninformed subsistence farming, what 65% of all Africans do, is destroying the commons. I find that ignorance–and the need to educate and inform in their own local language (no easy task when speaking of thousands of local languages)–is a recurring theme in this book. I see *enormous* potential for the application of what the Swedish military calls M4IS2 (multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making).

The author provides an ample tour of the horizon of aid, trade, and debt imbalances, of the dangers of culture and confidence of decline, of the need to restore cultural and environmental diversity, and of the need to reprioritize agricultural, education, and environmental services instead of bleeding each country to pay for the military and internal security (and of course corruption).

CORE POINT: The *individual* African is the center of gravity, and only Africans can save Africa–blaming colonialism is *over*. The author's vision for a revolution in leadership calls for integrity at the top, and activism at the bottom, along with a resurgence of civil society and a demand that governments embrace civil society as a full partner.

CORE POINT: The environment must be central to all development decisions, both for foster preservation and permit exploitation without degradation. Later in the book the author returns to this theme in speaking of the Congo forests, pointing out that only equity for all those who are local will allow all those who are foreign to exploit AND preserve.

I am fascinated by the author's expected discussion of the ills of colonialism including the Berlin division, the elevation of elites, arbitrary confiscations of lands, and proxy wars, what I was NOT expecting was a profound yet practical discussion of how the church in combination with colonialism was a double-whammy on the collective community culture of Africa.

The author observes that any move away from aid, which has been an enabler of massive corruption at the top, and toward capitalization and bonds [as the author of Dead Aid proposes in part] will be just as likely to lead to corruption absent a regional awakening of integrity.

The author discusses China, observing that China has used its Security Council veto to protect African interests, and the author observes that the West continues to destroy Africa with arms sales, France and Russia especially, followed by China, with the US a low fourth.

I learn that patronage and the need for protection are the other side of corruption as a deep-seated rationalization for keeping power, and I learn that pensions in Africa are so fragile that retirement is fraught with risk, another reason to seek long-term power holding. I am inspired to think of a regional pension fund guaranteed by Brotherly Leader Muuamar Al-Gathafi.

On a hopeful note the author praises the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as leader of Liberia, and sees real promise in the AU leadership summits that she attends.

CORE IDEA: Leadership training at all levels must keep pace with the changes in technology and the complexity of Africa's engagements. Civil Society in particular must be understood and embraced by government leaders at all levels.

The author spends time around page 134 discussing her pilot project to create local empowerment, devolving decision-making to create a multi-layered structure that establishes priorities while also providing accountability and transparency, minimizing corruption. Using a trained facilitator, the author brought together around 40 fifteen-person committees to create a strategic plan, and that is now useful as a map regardless of turn-over.

On page 158 the author briefly discusses ECOSOC (Economic, Social, and Cultural Council of the African Union) founded in 2005 to bring the voices of the people into the AU deliberations; to educate the peoples of Africa on all aspects of African affairs; and to encourage civil society throughout Africa.

My reaction: ECOSOCC is a center of gravity and could be the lever needed to create a regional M4IS2 network that substitutes information for violence, capital, time, and space. A harmonization of investments to address regional cell phone access (Nokia ambient energy devices), regional radio stations using solar power; and a regional public information program on the basics of mosquito control and other key public health topics, all call out for action in partnership with ECOSOCC.

Later in the book the author equates misinformation with alcohol and drugs. Ignorance is a recurring theme.

The conclusion of the book is full of deep wisdom on re-imagining community, restoring family by returning the men, stopping the brain drain, and making it easier for remittances to return; of the need to create micro-nation forums within each macro-nation; of the need to create local radio stations in each of the local languages and dialects; of the need to address energy shortfalls while stopping the march of the desert; and finally, of the need to address the pressing twin issues of land ownership and tourism management so as to restore the primacy of African interests.

The book ends on a hugely positive note calling for Africans to reclaim their land; reclaim their culture; and reclaim themselves.

Other books I consider relevant to respecting Africa:
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era

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2009/07/042010/12/20

Review: Evolutionary Dynamics–Exploring the Equations of Life

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Cosmos & Destiny, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Environment (Solutions), Geography & Mapping, Information Operations, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, True Cost & Toxicity

cover evolutionary dynamics — Amazon Page

Exquisite in Every Respect, Two-Fifths Equations & Charts, April 3, 2008

Martin A. Nowak

I don't do math, so I must disclose right away that the math was lost on me, except in the context of this equisitely presented book, I am compelled to recognize that mathematics as well as computation science is going to be a major player is the EarthGame, in modeling alternative outcomes for social and cultural complexity, and in cross-fertilizing disciplines by creating a common language.

I tend to be hard on publishers, so in this instance I want to say right away that the Belknap Press of Harvard University has done an absolutely phenomenal job with this book. The paper, the use of color and white space, every aspect of this book is exquisitly presented, and at an affordable price. I therefore recommend this book for content as well as for its artistic context, for both those who love mathematics, and those who do not, but want to understand the promise of mathematics for the future of life.

The text across the book is elegant, clear, easy to understand, and coherent. The summaries at the end of each chapter are in English, and for me at least, obviate the fact that I am mathematically-challenged.

I have a number of notes that merit sharing as encouragement to buy and read this book, one of just two that I found in the right context and price range as I venture into the intersection of modeling social complexity and doing real-time science in the context of an EarthGame where everyone plays themselves. The other book I bought and will read shortly is Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton Studies in Complexity). Too many otherwise worthwhile books are grotesquely over-priced, and the authors should release free PDFs online in protest and to have effect on this exciting emergent inter-disciplinary endeavor.

The author stresses early on that Information is what evolves–errors are mutations, mutation plus selection in a noisy (i.e. natural) environment is evolution. I like that idea, and point the reader to Hans Swegen's “The Global Mind: The Ultimate Information Process” (Minerva UK, 1995)which first made the connection for be from DNA to World Brain.

The author inspires with his view that the field of evolutionary dynamics is “on brink of unprecedented theoretical expansion.” I must say, as one who is focused on connecting all people to all information in all languages all the time, I have been slow to understand that while that is a wonderful baseline, only models can project alternative scenarios into the future, and hence, the modeling of the past is but a prelude to the shaping of the future by displaying compelling alternative paths.

The author sees mathematics as a common language that can help disciplines interact, and when they do so, progress occurs. He speaks specifically of disciplinary “cultures” that must understand each other.

Early on he delimits the book, and in the process notes that mathematical biology includes:

+ Theoretical ecology
+ Poulation genetics
+ Epidemiology
+ Theoretical immunology
+ Protein folding
+ Generic regulatory networks
+ Neural networks
+ Genomic analysis
+ Pattern formulation

The main ingredients of evolutionary dynamics are

+ Reproduction
+ Mutation
+ Selection
+ Random Drift
+ Spatial Movement

Terms of interest (all explained in English not just mathematics):

+ Sequential space
+ Fitness landscape
+ Error threshold
+ Neutral versus random drift

Thoughts that grabbed me across the book (all from the author):

+ Evolutionary game theory is the most comprehensive way to look at the world.

+ Natural selection favors the defectors over the cooperators BUT if there are repeated interactions, cooperation is not assured, but is made possible.

+ Models show alternative scenarios–inclulding coexistence of all.

+ Evolutionary graph theory yields a remarkably simple rule for the evolution of cooperation.

+ Under natural selection the average fitness of the population continuously declines [we're there!]

+ Direct reciprocity is a mechanism for the evolution of cooperation (the collective intelligence world has been calling for reciprocal altruism and a shift to a gift economy with open money and an end to scarcity–I see all this converging).

+ War and peace strategies CAN be modeled (as my own books suggest, the problem is the information asymmetry that Charles Perrow speaks of. Elites make decisions that have consequences for all of us, but they lie to us (935 lies leading to the war on Iraq) and they also externalize costs into the future.)

+ A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL can move an entire population from war to peace.

+ 10 cooperators in a string comprise a sustainable “walker,” and is two such cooperative walkers meet, they can induce a “big bang” in which cooperatives sweep the game away from defectors.

+ Cooperators and defectors can co-exist for near-eternity.

+ Evolutionary graph theory can plot relationships (I think to myself, not only of people to people, but costs to things, time, and space).

+ Language makes infinite use of finite media–bulk of progress in last six hundred million years has been cultural, using language, not genetic.

+ The author credits Noam Chomsky with the Chomsky hierarchy relating language to mathematics. I read most of what Chomsky publishes, and had no idea he had done original work in mathematics back in the day.

+ Learning differs from memorization in that the learner is enabled to acquire generalizations that can then be applied in novel circumstances. I strongly believe that we must radically redirect education toward team learning, project learning, learning to learn, and learning in vivo, one reason I want to map every person, every dollar, every thing, every language, every idea, in Fairfax County.

+ Mathematical analysis of language must combine three fields (at least):
– Formal language theory
– Learning theory
– Evolutionary theory

The author concludes that mathematics is a way to think clearly. I cannot disagree, but as I put the book down, VERY PLEASED with the complete package of such very high quality, I was not convinced that mathematics can do intangible value and cultural nuance is multi-cultural context under stress and with time limitations.

The author provides both a bibliographic essay and a superb extensive bibliography, but if I could change one thing and one thing only in this book, it is that I would integrate the two. I have neither the time nor the inclination to look up each cryptic (Bloom, 1997) in the longer list. I would have preferred to see the actual bibliography organized by chapter, with all books on, for example, “Evolution of Virulence” listed there after the explicatory section. This is a nit.

I learned enough from this book to budget for and demand the full inclusion of evolutionary dynamics in all that the Earth Intelligence Network will strive to accomplish in the next twenty years.

Kudos again to the publisher. Nothing gives me more pleasure, apart from intelligent content, than very high-quality materials, thoughtful editing and lay-out, and honorable pricing. This book is a gem in all respects. BRAVO.

I did not appreciate Stephen Wolfam's A New Kind of Science but treasure the book (another enormous gift to mankind at an affordable price) and urge the mathematically-gifted to take a close look at that work.

Other books that have caught my attention as I circle this area of interest:
Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems
Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World
The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Green Chemistry and the Ten Commandments of Sustainability, 2nd ed
The Future of Life
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them

I would also point the reader toward Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language (IEML) as one approach to creating a universal dictionary of concepts, easily found on the Internet, and also Doug Englebart's Open Hypertextdocument System (OHS), easily found at the Bootstrap Institute.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2009/07/042014/03/28

Review: Disrupting Class–How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

4 Star, Change & Innovation, Education (General)

Almost a Three, Solid Four for Americans Only, June 7, 2008

Clayton Christensen

The earlier books on innovation, and especially The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials), are better. I strongly recommend that you buy both the above book and this book to have a larger understanding.

The book reads like a Harvard case study fleshed out from 40 pages to 230.

The book has exactly one bottom line: that self-paced instruction using online learning and (this is the cool part) interaction with other languages and cultures (e.g. connect an Arab learning English with an American learning Arabic), is the only way to introduce flexibility. It is this human dimension that carried the book to a four for the US audience only.

Everywhere else in the world they substitute discipline for technology and do quite well. I was troubled by the book/s very narrow focus. There is no consideration in this book, for example, of any of the following (just one example per literature category):

Don't Bother Me Mom–I'm Learning!
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Idea Of A University: Philosophy (Notre Dame Series in the Great Books)
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Flyleaf notes:

+ Need to migrate from monolithic “one size fits all” methods (meaning teacher talks, all listen, or “didactic instruction” to student-centric technologies (my note: rather than human scale and practice)

+ Ages 0-4 are where the child actually learns all the self-confidence and other characteristics needed to succeed down the road (but no real discussion of this and how computers could help, that I saw)

+ Schools are too standardized, need modularity and flexibility (of course this is what the last two generations, and especially Generation 2.0, have been telling us–schools beat the creativity out of kids by the fourth grade, and today the best student drop out of high school rather than sit still for another two years).

+ They give Gardner full credit for discovering multiple intelligences, but they lost me a second time when they focus only on technology as the innovative solution, and fail to properly develop the theme for art, music, theater, social work, apprenticeships, and etcetera. This is a book with one simple message and focus on computers in the US classroom.

+ Schools have four jobs (none of them actively discussed in dollar and cents or program planning terms):
– Preserve democracy, inculcate values
– Provide something for every student
– Keep America competitive (ha. China graduates more HONOR students than we graduate students across the board)
– Eliminate poverty (this is a bit lame, reflecting no appreciation for structured inequalities outside the classroom, as well as political disenfranchisement and banking fraud including red-lining for future development profit).

The authors repeat one of the pearls of wisdom from The Innovators Dilemma (link in first line above), and suggest that those who wish to innovate should go after those not served, citing Apple's genius in offering its early computers as toys for children.

+ Four factors are in favor of innovation (in US schools):
– Computer-based learning keeps improving (see Don't Both Me Mom, link above, that book ends with recommendations for learning programs across the board that are online now)
– All can select pathways (this assumes they have been taught discipline and curiosity someplace along the line)
– Looming teacher shortage (I agree–advanced child care and factory worker angle are history–we need to learn to learn in all places)
– Costs fall significantly as market scales

They spend too much time on three business models, my first hint this might be a Harvard Case Study in book form:
– Solution shops
– Value chains
– Facilitated user networks

I write down from the book “best to combine disruptive business model with disruptive commercial system.” I have no idea what this means. From the poverty literature (see my lists), I received the idea of hybrid organizations, non-profits that catalyzed profits sufficient to attract foreign investment, e.g. low cost nutritious yogurt for children in India). Perhaps that is what they mean, I concluded after reading this twice that maybe they meant go after those not served *and* make it free at first (upgrades can cost).

Harnessing user-generated content is a key idea that may not be noticed. It is in fact the foundation for Web 2.0 and I expect the human factor will continue to scale in importance and the cost of technology declines.

The book ends weakly, with disappointing coverage of the 0-4 age or on educational research needed. They conclude with short messages for various stakeholder groups.

I went back through the book a second time, and would note that there are some very clever useful visualizations in the book, especially Figure 8.2 on page 187, and these alone are worth the price of the book.

In the end for me, the book was worthwhile but could have so much better if they had started with innovation ideas for each of the stake-holder groups they address in ending. The five billion poor are never going to be educated in a classroom, but we *can* give out free cell phones and create two call centers, one in China and one in India, that combine Internet access, Skype free telephone access, and access to a global network of 100 million or more volunteers able to answer any question in any language, free, at the time of it value to the poor person asking the question. THAT is world-class innovation because it creates infinite wealth, and does not limit itself to justifying charter schools because they can buy more computers.

2009/07/042009/10/24

Review: The Back of the Napkin–Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Decision-Making & Decision-Support

Refreshing, June 17, 2008

Dan Roam

I found this book refreshing, even relaxing, and recommend it as a gift item for any student or adult. Had I been the publisher I would have made the book larger and the visuals (by definition, handwriting and sketches) consequently larger and fresher, but what is offered suffices.

I have been immersed for the past several weeks in some of the most advanced technical automated multi-media, multi-dimensional, geospatially-grounded visualizations with time lines and cross-cutting cultural dimesions, and after all of that, this book not only stands the test of holding my attention, but proves itself equal to the task of challenging what is supposed to be “state of the art.”

A few other books that come to mind that complement this one:
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business
Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics
Information Design
Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

2009/07/042009/12/04

Review: The Gridlock Economy–How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation

Have Ordered Book to Do It Justice, Initial Reaction is Pooh, July 12, 2008

Michael Heller

EDIT of 11 August 2008: Not going back to the book. Glad I gave it four stars to begin with, brilliant on one idea in narrow context, but disappointing in relation to immoral capitalism, breaches of political trust, true costs, cradle to cradle, the power of we, and so many other bigger ideas, just not going to do this a third time.

EDIT of 19 July 2008: After a second pass, I see one idea that I did not recognize at first: that unlike MEGA-ownership (e.g. destruction of all family farms), it is MICRO-ownership that the author addresses. HOWEVER, this is largely a specious distinction for two reasons: first, all the patents tend to be owned by MEGA organizations (including one recently created to do just that–buy patents as a basis for litigation); and second, micro-ownership by micro-people is easily resolved with money. I continue to see a lack of strategic perspective on how to restore the Commonwealth of the Republic by firing Congress, having a second Constitutional Convention, creating an amendment that restricts personality protection to individuals born in the USA of at least one citizen-parent, and so on. In the middle of a Hackers on Planet Earth conference, so the detailed dissection will have to wait a week.

EDIT of 15 July 2008: I have spent an hour with this book. It is a strange mix of interesting detail, facile assumption, grotesque naivete (or disingeneousness), along with some robust ignorance, topped off with extraordinarily detailed property law discussions to the exclusion of all else. The INDEX does not list the words Corruption, Crime, Culture, Ethics, Politics, Public Interest, or White House. Congress has five (I am *not* making this up) references. There is no bibliography, something I find especially annoying. The author is oblivious to key references (for example, in his discussion of spectrum, he makes no mention of the single most important reference in recent time, David Weinberger on “Open Spectrum.”)

Case in point: the author goes on about how 25 more runways would solve all our air traffic congestion problems. He evidently has no clue, or does not wish to dilute his point, about the alternatives to “hub” airline travel, among which NASA and (now DayJet) include point to point aviation; and of course high-speed trains,as well as a restoration of home rule, eat local, and so on.

At first serious glance (one hour), this book fails to factor in white collar crime, organized crime, political crime, or public ignorance. To his credit the author states, in a rather low-key fashion, that the extension of copyright may not be in the best interests, but the reader must struggle to find harsh detailed references about how Disney and the music and film industries have orchestrated billion dollar corruption and mass deception campaigns to steal from the public.

Bottom line: when I finish reading this and dissecting it, I am sure it will be a weak four. My original pre-evaluation remains valid. Should it be weakened by a full reading of this book, I will be the first to say so.

SIDE NOTE: The rapid posting of several rather shallow reviews is not unusual, what *is* unusual is the equally rapid number of positive votes for reviews that generally lack specificity or any evidence of familiarity with broader literatures and larger contexts. Could the publisher be stacking the deck? Am interested in a co-reviewer willing to dialog as we dissect this book together. My email is bear/oss.net.

—original pre-assessment below—

This book is getting enough traction, but strikes me as very out of touch with a broad range of libertarian, collective intelligence, and citizen home rule, to the point that I expect my own review will be negative.

Let's start with corporate personality. The limited liability of corporate officials who have looted one fifth of the financial value, funded two dysfunctional parties, and the limited accountability of public officials who have sold public land and public spectrum to corporations below market value, while refusing to invest in local education and welfare, are all part of a massive decline of the Republic.

Of course too much private ownership is bad for the economy. Duh.

Here are a few books that I recommend alongside this one:
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Case Against Wal-Mart
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

Here are a couple of DVDs
The Corporation
Why We Fight

I read a lot, so my angst and my presumed annoyance with this book and its putative naivete about how we can free innovation may be more aggressive than many might think the author deserves. Who does he think sold off bandwith rather than supporting open spectrum, and how much were they bribed to betray the public interest?

I won't mention the books I have written, edited, or published, but I will say that I stand in shock and outrage as America (the portion that reads–NASCAR folks do not, see my review of Hunting with Jesus) is tillated by this “cool idea.” Cool? It was cool in the 1970's when Limits to Growth, Global Reach, Silent Spring, and all the other classics came out. The problem is that We the People allowed money to talk while abdicating our role as armed and informed, to keep government honest.

I'll go with Lawrence Lessig on eliminating corruption, Yochai Benkler on the wealth of networks, Mark Tovey on collective intelligence, Jim Rough on Society's Breakthrough, and on and on and on (true cost, natural capitalism, triple bottom line, buy-cott).

A full review by next week-end. For now, based on multiple reviews and what the publists have shared, this book merely annoys.

Home rule. Eat local. Take back our open spectrum (see comment for my “Open Everything” keytone to Gnomedex 2008. I am scheduled to appear at the last meeting of Hackers on Planet Earth 18-20 July, in New York City.

We do not lack for good ideas. We lack for outraged citizens (Lou Dobbs does not count unless he learns the ten high-level threats and twelve core policies that he must address), honest politicians, and accountable corporations. And all of those live or die on how inert we are in both our thinking and our buying habits. We are a dumb nation led by a crooked government with war criminals in charge of the Executive. Bah humbug.

2009/07/042009/12/04

Review: The Duke Encyclopedia of New Medicine–Conventional and Alternative Medicine for All Ages

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Culture, DVD - Light, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Best in Class Overview–Follow On Volume Warranted, July 23, 2008

Duke Center for Integrative Medicine

Below I list links to two other “alternative” or natural medicine books, and above I post a slide that I created as I contemplate a new book on Health Intelligence.

Unlike the other two books, this book is an overview book that integrates both conventional and “alternative” or natural medicine as commonly developed by both the Chinese (more structured, easier to access and exploit) and the Indian (more verbal and not as documented).

For this book to come out of Duke University (the “Harvard” of the South, but a powerhouse in its own right) is easily worth a fifth star, as Duke appears to be, along with the University of Washington, one of a tiny handful of institutions that is committed to balancing a very unreliable, wasteful, and often deceptive “conventional” medicine program (big phrama and lots of elective surguries that are not evidence-based), with natural cures including lifestyle and behavior or preference patterns that have been proven over centuries in China and India, but deliberately repressed, censored, subverted and scorned by the American Medical Association, which exists largely to protect a very badly broken medical “practice” that is closer to witch doctoring than it is to evidence-based holistic health.

I am very pleased to see that the publisher and Amazon have made it possible to “look inside” this excellent book, so my normal remediation is not necessary. This book is a “class act” in every possible sense of the word, from content to organization to presentation to glosary and index. It is true that “encyclopedia” may not be completely appropriate, “overview” might be a better term, but I have to give all those associated with this book real credit for taking the giant leap forward in integrating Part I, a Catalog of Health Conditions with Part II, Complementary & Alternative Therapies.

The book earns one of its stars for its emphasis on Prevention. I fear that more critical reviewers are missing the paradigm-shift in the forest due to their micro-focus on a specific condition about which they have deep knowledge. I regard this book as a true pioneering endeavor, one with huge credibility, and one extremely meritorious and worthy of follow-up.

The volume I would really like to see next from Duke would examine the true costs to society, and the true costs to heal (with an emphasis on the cost of prevention and the cost of natural cures), for each of the diseases covered in volume one. If we can articulate, in cold hard proven numbers, the costs, the common sense of the public will take us to the next leve.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: The New Age of Innovation–Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation

Brilliant in Isolation, Annoying for Self-Referential Insularity, August 24, 2008

C.K. Prahalad

This book is certainly worth reading, and especially by those executives that do not read much (the ones with the big egos and short attention spans). I admire the authors, but I am also increasingly annoyed by the annoying self-referential insularity that charactizes “star” authors who seem to not have read much by anyone else. Publishers need to begin demanding a proper literature search and more due diligence in “connecting” the reader to dots created by others.

Let's be crystal clear: Stewart Brand, the original editor of the Co-Evolution Quarterly and the Whole Earth Review, and the founder of the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference, did more inthe 1970's and 1980's for the concept of co-creating value that this pair will ever achieve.

More recently, in the 1990's and the past ten years, Collective Intelligence, the Power of Us (a Business Week cover story 20 June 2005 that the author's do not deign to notice), Wisdom of the Crowds, Smart Mobs, and so on, have all focused on the core concept of co-creation of value.

This book loses one star for its pretentions as an immaculate conception of a core concept that has been understood by the rest of us for the past forty years.

Now, having vented in defense of other scholars and practitioners that the authors should have respected, here are my flyleaf notes that easily warrant a solid four.

+ Roadmap for business leaders that does a superb job of showing how strategy and business processes both need to receive more respect as well as deliberate management.

+ Every individual must be treated as a singular client, and no firm has the resources to do it all–being able to connect the single client with a need and the single third party able to meet the need may be the ultimate business process.

+ Most interesting to me, as a deep admirer of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, the book that showed me my final calling as intelligence officer to the public, for which I and 23 others created a non-profit, the authors drop the one billion extreme poor from their client list, and focus only on the 4 billion above that line.

+ Properly embraced, these four billion are billed by the authors–accurately and wisely in my view–as a major source of innovation and need that can power the global economy by 2015.

+ Role of Information Technology (IT), which Paul Strassmann has demonstrated is often a negative return on investment, is to bridge the gap between strategic intent and “capacity to act.”

+ Analytics in this book are primarily mathematic and data mining of existing digital information, with a token reference to external information. “Intelligence,” “decision support,” “competitive intelligence,” and “commercial intelligence” are not terms to be found in this book. The authors appear to be oblivious to the existence of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) founded in 1986 and just now beginning to reach its potential.

+ The authors place great emphasis on the importance of the individual employee and customer, and again arouse my ire as they fail to refer back to such giants as Wilensky, Carkhuff, or Cleveland (see list of 10 books they either have not read or have chosen to forget).

+ Global standards plus local effectiveness is the key to mobilizing four billion new consumers.

+ They emphasize the importance of understanding the “hidden costs of the inflexible and archaic internal systems that exist in most firms.” They might also have thought to cite Ben Gilad on how most information reaching CEOs is late, biased, subjective, incomplete, and often wrong.

+ The three core concepts for the manager in a hurry to retain are: first, treat all others (consumers, employees, suppliers, regulators) as co-equals; second, do continuous analytics; and third, be ready to be turn on a dime. Efficiency is TIRED, flexibility (which means some redundancy) is WIRED.

For myself the real eye-opener in this book was the several case studies of what FedEx and others are doing with the detail that they amass from making their entire system transparent–not only are they tracking every package, but also every link and every inquiry–and then making sense of that to offer new services to specific INDIVIDUALs. I also appreciated the references to IBM's “ecosystem” of individuals and talents, and the emphasis on how many complex tasks can be “de-skilled” and migrated to very low-cost largely uneducated individuals, spreading the wealth while reserving the higher loads for increasingly scarce “full operational capability” programmers and managers.

I liked the authors' reference to A. V. Dhamakrishnan of Ramco India, and his focus on “evidence-based management” (page 165. I am considering publication of a work by many others on Health Intelligence, and the term I have found that rocks the health industry every time is “evidence-based medicine.”

The authors conclude that social networks are now moving into business-oriented collaboration platforms, and provide a listing of offerings that is long and interesting but not at all complete. Visit ArnoldIT.com for the real edge of the IT envelope.

This is a very fine book. It may be that publishers need to commission the literature survey, and then identify others to write forewords and afterwords that connect the dots. In no way do I demean the brilliant building block provided by this book–I am simply irritated that it hangs in space as an immaculate conception with no respect demonstrated for the considerable work by others–and to publish a book in 2008 and not even note the Business Week cover story of 20 June 2005 on “The Power of Us,” sorry, but that merits a spanking all by itself. Due diligence, anyone?

Other books, both old and new:
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
The Knowledge Executive
Organizational Intelligence (Knowledge and Policy in Government and Industry)
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

The authors might wish to demonstrate in their writing that which they preach so assidiously in this book.