The urban planning - obesity equation

The race for an obesity cure is on. More than one-third of all U.S. adults are obese, despite an onslaught of public health messaging. Meanwhile, the proportion of obese children has doubled in the last 30 years, and only 8% of 12- to 19-year-olds get the recommended hour of physical activity each day. Research has shown that some factors are genetic, or habit-related, but one of the less-explored areas of obesity research has to do with what surrounds your body, not necessarily what you put in it. New research indicates that urban planning plays a role in obesity patterns in children. No surprise, children in walkable neighborhoods live more active and healthy lives than their suburban counterparts whose parents cart them around in large carbon footprints. via Bad Urban Planning Is Why You’re Fat

Culture as product in innovation

HopeLab is a curious place.

The California-based nonprofit researches and designs video games and other technology products for kids. But they don’t create ones that involve sitting on a couch, staring at a screen, zapping warriors or aliens. Instead, HopeLab’s games help motivate players to take on healthy habits, to be more physically active (Zamzee) and even help fight cancer (Re-Mission 2).

“We look at our culture as a product, just like Re-Mission and Zamzee are products,” says Pat Christen, president and CEO of HopeLab. “And we believe a culture of curiosity is key to innovation.”

Their secret sauce to a culture of curiosity:

  1. Encourage inquiry
  2. Write all agendas as questions
  3. Avoid blame
  4. Assume all learning as good

via Four Ways to Cultivate a Culture of Curiosity

Why Mayors Should Rule The World

In his recent TED talk, Benjamin Barber boldly proposed that a parliament of cities should replace the growing inept and irrelevant nation and state rules.

We are an urban species, at home in our cities. So to come back to the dilemma, if the dilemma is we have old-fashionedpolitical nation-states unable to govern the world, respond to the global challenges that we facelike climate change,then maybe it’s time for mayors to rule the world, for mayors and the citizens and the peoples they representto engage in global governance. When I say if mayors ruled the world,when I first came up with that phrase,it occurred to me that actually, they already do. There are scores of international, inter-city,cross-border institutions, networks of cities in which cities are already, quite quietly, below the horizon, working togetherto deal with climate change, to deal with security, to deal with immigration, to deal with all of those tough, interdependent problems that we face.

via Benjamin Barber: Why mayors should rule the world | Video on TED.com

As they continue to grow in scope and complexity, cities will need local engagement-based governance rather than impersonal remote rule by legislators without passion and perspective on local dynamics and issues.

The Frontiers Of Biofabrication

Andras Forgacs dreams that one day biofabrication will sustainably produce leathers and meats without the incredibly expensive and violent process of growing and killing sentient beings we call animals.

I’m convinced that in 30 years,when we look back on today and on how we raise and slaughter billions of animalsto make our hamburgers and our handbags, we’ll see this as being wastefuland indeed crazy. Did you know that today we maintaina global herd of 60 billion animals to provide our meat, dairy, eggs and leather goods? And over the next few decades,as the world’s population expands to 10 billion, this will need to nearly doubleto 100 billion animals

via Andras Forgacs: Leather and meat without killing animals | Video on TED.com

The technology already exists. Now the will and politics remain to make the possible real.

Announcing "The Power Of Circles"

Next month I’ll launch book 14, The Power Of Circles: The Design & Facilitation Of Engagement Where We Learn, Work & Live. It gives teachers, leaders and organizers in education, organizations and communities the mindsets and skillsets to design and facilitate engagement in their contexts. It offers a manifesto of 20 principles, a 5-dimensional model for facilitation and 60 practice activities for engagement.

The research continues to clearly indicate that the vast majority of students, employees and citizens are disengaged in these contexts and that the old models of teaching, leading and organizing actually sustain disengagement.

I have drawn from my 35 years of designing and facilitating engagement across a variety of contexts to develop the book which will support a soon to be launched virtual course in facilitation. Stay tuned, and thanks to the muses.

Organizations As Networks

When we think of high-performing teams, we often think of them as long-term allies—a band of brothers in the organizational world. It takes a while for teams to move through the traditional phases of storming and norming before they start to really perform. It’s logical, then, to assume that the longer a team is together, the better they’ll be at performing. But research into the inner workings of teams, particularly creative teams, suggests a different conclusion, one supported by experience from many of the most innovative companies: The best teams might temporary, with members forming around a given project and then going their separate ways to work on new projects.

via Why The Best Teams Might Be Temporary

Inspired by how things happen on Broadway, the evidence points to the fact that a dynamic network of continuously shifting self-organizing teams outperforms the old model of static and enduring teams. A model every organization can adopt and gain from.

Compassionate Leadership

An interesting trend underscores the imperative of compassionate leaders. For some of us, the notion as trending absurdly denies long held understanding that compassion works. We now see research surfacing to validate the business case for leadership compassion. Good news: people can learn it.

More evidence of this trend comes from the Conscious Capitalism movement, whose membership includes companies like Southwest Airlines, Google, the Container Store, Whole Foods Market, and Nordstrom. One of the cornerstones of the movement is to try to take care not just of your shareholders, but all stakeholders (investors, workers, customers, and so on). One member is Tata, the Indian conglomerate, who makes no bones about it: “Our purpose is to improve the quality of life of the communities we serve.”

via The Rise of Compassionate Management (Finally)

Proactive Parenting

Sproutling, a startup that aims to “grow your parent IQ,” is developing a new baby monitor that will pick up more than just sound.

Co-founder Chris Bruce told The Huffington Post that the monitor will have three parts: a small wearable sensor that will strap to a baby’s ankle, a wall sensor, and a mobile sensor. Together, the parts will constantly check things like a baby’s heart rate, skin temperature and movement, as well as the room’s temperature, humidity, noise and light levels.

The sensors will then convert the information into insight reports available on an app that parents can access on smartphones and other devices. If anything is amiss, the app will alert parents.

via Sproutling’s Wearable Baby Monitor Will Text Parents While Baby Sleeps

I expect the idea will migrate to sensor wristbands for older children to monitor the otherwise unnoticed beginnings of fatigue, tantrums, restlessness, aggression and the return to happiness. Very interesting world this could turn into.

The Year Without Pants

I worked at WordPress.com, the 15th most popular website in the world to write The Year Without Pants, a book about what we can learn from the amazing and progressive culture they use to get work done. One major challenge I faced there was learning how to work without email. That’s right. While all employees had email accounts and were free to use them, they rarely did. I didn’t either: 95% of the email I received while employed there was from people at other companies

via Is There Life After Email? Yes, And It’s Amazing

That’s author Scott Berkun outlining how email has two main fans: people who like to show off and people who like to cover their butt. The Wordpress alternative is the collaborative blog that allows readers to manage the experience instead and features a level of accessibility that email could never approximate.

We may have finally arrived at the time when we realize all we need are the tools of messaging and web pages to replace the dysfunctionality of email.

At Wordpress, this aesthetic permeates the whole culture where top heavy decision structures and formal meetings rarely occur and one can leverage the dominantly virtual environment to, if one so chooses, go a year without pants.

The Equality Equation

Nobel Laureate in Economics, James Heckman, argues that cognitive and life skill building in early childhood pays off well even decades later.

What’s missing in the current debate over economic inequality is enough serious discussion about investing in effective early childhood development from birth to age 5. This is not a big government boondoggle policy that would require a huge redistribution of wealth. Acting on it would, however, require us to rethink long-held notions of how we develop productive people and promote shared prosperity.

via Lifelines for Poor Children

Skeptics of the compelling research often resist the supposition that equality ultimately benefits the whole of society. In denial of the data otherwise, the finite and shrinking pie economic models argue that pie sharing hurts the haves.

The Chipotle Challenge

It’s just a YouTube video. Not a cent has been spent to air it on television. There are no live actors, either human or animal. The brand name doesn’t appear until the last few seconds of the video. But in just 48 hours it has generated scads of publicity and media attention, stirred controversy and angered folks in the food processing industry. And, by the way, its immediate goal is to promote a mobile app. But Chipotle’s new video “The Scarecrow” is an effective piece of branding in its own right.

via Chipotle Scarecrow Makes Enemies To Win Customers

Chipotle’s new viral infomercial with unique animation grade challenges fast food consumers to pause when choosing sources of unhealthy industrial ag choices. Look for more of this genre to provoke rebellion against unsustainable practices.

Creating Better Candidates

What if in local elections, communities would proactively publish a must-have list of preferences for candidates? These would include preferences of experience, knowledge, leadership skillsets, key relationships, brand and subject matter expertise. It would move conversations into richer spaces beyond the divisive and often unproductive debates about party positions.

It could apply to more macro levels as well and might even increase the quality of candidate pools.

Toy Guns

One argument against toy guns for urban children whose livelihoods don’t rely on shooting game for dinner remains that there are other play contexts that offer more intelligent options. Intelligence here includes all modes like creative, social, scientific and expressive intelligence. Whether we have sufficient data to correlate toy guns and violence, the alternatives exist with superior offerings of character development.

The Virtual Work Imperative

The more people complain about driving commutes cutting into their quality of life, the more imperative the conversation about virtual work. Virtual work becomes possible from work and communication redesign. Best of all, it challenges the myth that people work harder in an office they must daily navigate through expensive commutes. If nothing else, it helps protect the the health of people and planet.

Saving Europe

The time is ripe for a transnational, transgenerational, transpartisan, grass-roots and crowd-funded movement to take European integration to the next level. And before forming a party, we should look to Europe’s success stories to determine what our platform might be.

Let the Finns teach us about education; the French about health care; the Germans about flexible employment; the Swedes about gender equality.

At the moment, European countries continue to take comfort in their Old World status symbols. We boast rich histories and beautiful monuments and draw the world’s tourists, who admire our culture, fashion and gastronomy.

But Old World status symbols and tourists won’t save Europe. They might save Paris, Berlin, Rome and London, just as they will save the Loire Valley, Bavaria, Tuscany and Oxfordshire. However, outside the museum-filled capitals and historic countrysides, the rest of Europe is plagued by chronic unemployment, dismal growth and rapidly aging populations.

It is not that our elected leaders are malevolent or incapable of facing this challenge. They simply aren’t wired to understand the central reality of politics today. It’s naïve to expect traditional politicians elected for four- or five-year terms by citizens from within a sovereign territory to adequately address issues like resource scarcity, deforestation, chronic unemployment, global warming and fishery depletion that are intrinsically global, and whose resolution will take decades.

Today’s solutions need to be transnational, or they won’t be real solutions at all.

via The Fix for Europe: People Power

Thanks, Jack

Caffeine Spray

A spray bottle which delivers caffeine to the body through the skin is the latest product in the surge of consumables marketing caffeine like a drug you would never want to go without. The product, called Sprayable Energy, is a creation of Harvard undergrad Ben Yu and venture capitalist Deven Soni, and it contains just three ingredients: “caffeine, water, and a compound that helps it be absorbed by our skin (a derivative of the naturally-occurring amino acid tyrosine).” As a result of the sharp rise in caffeinated products, the FDA plans to (finally) investigate the safety of caffeine, especially its effects on children and adolescents.

via “New Coffee”: Sprayable Caffeine Absorbed by the Skin | IdeaFeed

Micro Crowdourced Libraries

“The premise of Little Free Library is take-a-book, return-a-book,” explains Ian Veidenheimer of The Architectural League of New York, who helped coordinate the project to bring these tiny libraries to New York. When the project has deployed in other cities, the books are usually guarded by a small “book shelter” in the shape of a bird house, but in New York they gave it a more design-centric treatment.

via Take A Look At New York’s Tiny, Secret Libraries

More cities feature these cleverly designed micro stations where people share books in unexpected urban venues like in community gardens and parks.