Mar 14, 2022
Dear Friend,
We just passed the 10th week of this year — the law of accelerating returns seems to hold true for time itself as well. With no time to waste and much to cover, here is our weekly dispatch.
FutureFWD
In our last dispatch, we shared a link to an article discussing the concept of “cozy futurism” — an antidote to the techno-utopia (or dystopia) we typically encounter when debating the future. My colleague Matthes Lindner at the Falling Walls Foundation pointed me to a paper by Julian W. Fernando et al. on the importance of “green utopias” versus “sci-fi utopias”. In essence: “When participants were primed with either of these utopias, the Green utopia was perceived to entail a range of other positive characteristics (e.g., warmth, positive emotions) and—provided it was positively evaluated—tended to elicit both motivation and behavior for social change. In contrast, the Sci-Fi utopia was associated with low motivation, even when it was positively evaluated.” This is an important and potent insight not only for society at large but also for any leader steering their organization into the future — and thinking about the best way to communicate their vision to their respective teams. (via Pascal)
Disrupt Disruption
With the ongoing and lasting disruption of supply chains (first due to COVID-19, now due to the war in Ukraine), companies start to deploy drastic, and quite frankly unheard of, measures. Over the weekend, car manufacturing giant Ford announced that they will sell vehicles with missing features due to the chip shortage. The intent is to ship safe-to-drive, but somewhat crippled cars, and deliver the missing chips (and thus features) within a year of purchase. Companies like Ford have large amount of excess inventory sitting idle as key chips are missing (here is a pile of Ford Broncos which won’t ship due to missing chips) — and consumers can’t buy cars due to lack of inventory. Another sign of the complexity and thus fragility of our global economy. Meanwhile, and not surprisingly, the FREDs World Uncertainty Index continues to climb again. (via Pascal)
What We Are Reading
🙅♀️ When Women Leaders Leave, the Losses Multiply Due to the pandemic, millions of women have left the workforce. Since women leaders have more engaged teams and drive better job performance, the collateral damage includes loss of engagement and productivity from every employee who now won’t be working for a woman. Mafe ⇢ Read
📣 Increase the Power of Your Narratives We can increase the power of our organizational and personal narratives by learning to effectively frame big opportunities for the long term. Jeffrey ⇢ Read
🏔 This Is Peak Subscription Subscriptions are so ever present in our lives, but also so seemingly intangible. We might want to take a closer look. Julian ⇢ Read
🤑 The Internet Is Just Investment Banking Now The possibly the biggest contribution of crypto/Web3 might very well be that it turns the once-beautiful utopia of the Internet into the ultimate strip mall. Pascal ⇢ Read
Internet Finds
Space — the final frontier. And a very empty one. Find out how many people are in space right now. Hint: It is literally just two handfuls. 👩🚀
In Case You Missed It
🏴☠️ The Heretic: I Have Questions
⚠️ Disrupt Disruption: This week we are launching our conversation with Hydrow’s CEO Bruce Smith. Stay tuned!
Radically yours, take good care, friend!
— Pascal, Mafe and the three Js (Jane, Jeffrey, and Julian)
