Category: creativity

Developed countries are joining the collaborative community

I just return from a trip in one of the World’s poorest countries – Laos (181th country on 229 for per capita GDP according to the CIA’s world factbook). A great country to visit!

What is always amazing in all these countries, on all continents, including Africa, is how well connected people are today. The tuk-tuk drivers and the women selling vegetables on the market all have their mobile phones – and chat often. Cybercafes with reasonably high speed internet dot the urban landscape.

More than that – I could book my internal flight tickets or hotels in advance on the web on very good quality websites.

Cheap long distance interactive communication not only empowers those in developed countries that have something to say but could not publish before (‘the power of the long tail’), it also empowers citizens of developing countries to contribute to the debate. To interact with each other. To open to the world. To contribute without being discriminated against, because in the virtual world, people are much more equal.

We should not underestimate the power of this new interaction. Opening to “developing” countries contribution will make us realize how much these countries have to bring to our too westernized vision of the world. The diversity of their views will be an eye opener. This will drastically shift our worldview.

Are we ready to listen to the developing countries’ people voices? Are we ready for the shift?

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Overcoming our fear

Failure is free today. But fear is still lurking.

Fear to take the first step into the unknown. Fear to be exposed in the spotlight to the judgment of the crowd. Fear to jump in the unknown.

jump into the unknown
overcome your fear

Overcome the fear. Kill the fear. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen to me if I do this? If I publish my idea? What will my family, boss, friends, colleagues, think about me?

There is just one risk. That they like it because they discover a new facet of your personality.

Go and do it. Lean into our fear.

FEAR is just False Evidence Appearing Real.

Get out of your shell. Contribute to the world. Start today. The first step is the most difficult. Do it.

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Failure is now a free opportunity. Grab it!

In the Industrial Age, failure was expensive. Any activity involved material stuff, capital and sweat. You could not fail too often or you would become broke.

Today in the Collaborative Age, failure is free. All it costs is some effort and learning.

The Fourth Revolution website cost me 10$ to setup – the cost of securing the domain name. All the rest is free including the hosting. It will remain so until I decide that this initiative is worthwhile, well received, and it is worth investing a bit more money in improving the service for its followers.
If the initiative does not work, then I’ll shut it down and the only thing it will have cost me is my time. And actually I will have learned so much from the experiment that that’s more an investment than a cost.

20 years ago, to pass my message across, I would have had to write a book or newspaper article, try to find a kind publisher who would have looked at my background and decided whether he would take the risk.

So, failure is not only free today, but it is an opportunity. We can go quickly through failure cycles, learning in the process until we find the right product, idea, message.

We still don’t embrace systematically free failure because of our Industrial Age mindset. And because of our fear.

We often read about improving a little bit every day so that the compound improvement gets significant.

When will you decide to fail once a day so that the compound investment and opportunity becomes significant?

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