What comes after Africa?
We’ve left Africa and are now back in ‘civilization’. Being here raises the question – how do you live back in Western society after you’ve lived for a short time in Africa? Read more
Businessworthiness: a business and social innovation?
Oslo is a beautiful city. We have already commented on the Noble Peace Centre and the opportunity to learn about ways to make peace – or to or to dismiss it as of less value than going out to dinner (see our last blog). But Oslo also impressed us with another unique idea – the Oslo Business for Peace Award. Read more
Social innovation in Tanzania for $16 a month
You can read about it, see a documentary about it, make a donation to it, buy a cow at Christmas to put in it, but until you experience it, it is really hard to fully understand. Read more
Eyes wide open: knowledge for the common good
Professor Nico Stehr, the Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies at the Zeppelin University in Germany remarked on the first day of the Masters of Social Innovation program that “most of our lives are spent half-asleep”. It jolted me awake given the fog of jetlag that was floating around in the corners of my brain.
The focus of our discussion was ‘knowledge’ and how knowledge differed from ‘information’. It is well acknowledged that those living in the Western world have more access to information than at any other time in history. But does this information give us knowledge? Or does this information keep us half-asleep? Read more
Here’s a new social innovation: stop mindless consumerism
One the second day of the Masters in Social Innovation program, two questions were asked – how much is enough, and what makes for a ‘good life’?
The questions are analysed in a book by Robert and Edward Skidelsky called How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life. The authors ask, within a world of ever diminishing resources, how much ongoing consumption is really necessary to achieve a ‘good life’?
That got us thinking about the Western world we live in, why it operates the way it does, and what we might do about it. Read more