Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: How to Design a Participatory System
Those who have stuck with me all week, know that I believe that participation is key to the next big wave of innovation in business and society. Whether it is in the fundamentals of how we think about wealth or the economy, how we parse the minutiae of individual transactions, or how we evolve our most important social systems such as health care, I believe that the interconnectedness of our information society makes this shift inevitable and highly desirable.
The question that I inevitably ask as a designer is how we design these kinds of participatory systems?
Posted Fri May 1, 2009
Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: Control Your Own Health Care
In the U.K. in the 1940s, Sir William Beveridge designed what became known as the welfare state. In an ambitious program, the post-war Labor government attempted to put in place a series of services designed to ensure that the population of Britain could reliably receive high-quality public education, health care and other public services. Beveridge envisioned a system in which citizens participated directly in their own well-being. Instead, he helped create what he later described as a "culture of consumption" of public services.
Posted Thu Apr 30, 2009
Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: Why We Need Economic Dashboards
A significant difference between those of us fortunate to be living above the poverty line and those unfortunate enough to be at the "bottom of the pyramid" is that the 'wealthy' can afford to consume. Being a "useful" member of a consumer society requires the consumption of products and services not directly necessary to survival. The very poor do not generally have that choice.
Posted Wed Apr 29, 2009
Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: Learning to Measure Participation
When I consider bidding for something on e-Bay, the first thing I do is check the reliability rating of the seller. When I want to meet a hard-to-reach executive, I try to establish a link through my network. When I consider which conference I will pay to attend, I choose TED because I know it will give me the most new ideas to feed off for the year.
Posted Tue Apr 28, 2009
Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: Moving Beyond Consumption
For the next few days I plan to explore what I am calling the Age of Involvement: the role of participation in an information society and how it leads to an expanded view of our economy. I am not an economist and have never studied economics. I am approaching this as someone who believes that innovation is redefining everything around us, including the ways that we measure human achievement. For those who do understand economics I apologize for the inevitable naiveties represented here but I hope there is enough of interest to stimulate a conversation.
Posted Fri Apr 24, 2009
