Someone in one of my MBA classes (years ago now) once asked me if I freely give away all my ideas and thoughts to each client, suggesting thus that holding back may be more beneficial financially in the long run.

I said yes. Every idea that comes is shared. He was not convinced of the prudence of that action. That question was raised again recently …

Times Online article Living without money

A German woman has lived 13 years without money. She set up a successful “Tauschring — a sort of swap shop — a place where people can exchange their skills or possessions for other skills and possessions…”

As one of the comments (Marco V) pointed out, bartering “may even bring a community feel back to the country.”

Many small and …

What Matters NowSeth Godin has released a PDF on What Matters Now – a collation of 70 worthy thoughts, hopes and ideas for 2010.

Highlights for me are:

Generosity
When the economy tanks, it’s natural to think of yourself first. …
It turns out that the connected economy doesn’t respect this natural instinct. Instead, we’re rewarded for being generous.

Fear
Fear plays the role of antagonist in the story of your life. …

“If society values customers and employees, service will be valued.” says Eva-Karin Anderman, head of research, Almega.

She said this in response to a question from the floor on how government and other agencies can introduce policies or mandates to encourage society to value service. The understanding is that a lot of time, service is not valued, especially when the service is attendant (and thus seen as …

“Small thoughts subversively strip away the fire of imagination, the generosity of the collaborative spirit, and that the halo of every dream.”

Small thoughts is publishers who try and grab more and more and give less and less. Always citing how costly and risky their business is, how it is such an honour they chose my work, and how hard it is. So I should take less of a …

At a recent exhibition of the Singapore Design Festival I came across a great little product design idea – a tea “stick.

Essentially a combined stirrer and tea bag, it is a tube of gauze containing tea and a central stiffening rod terminating in a finger tab. A most elegant and simple idea.

Unfortunately it was meant to be disposable. “It’s only a small plastic stick” was …

It’s New Year’s resolution time soon. Why stop at a mere one-liner resolution when you can write a manifesto? Some useful references below:

Manifesto TV
Creative Creativity E.piphanies.com
Conjure Crafts

The Story of Cap & Trade is a super-clear and worthy summary of the climate change issue. It highlights the role of business-as-usual in the creation of our climate problems, and the continued attempts to perpetuate the problem in the name of selfish profit – profit at the expense of the welfare of the world.

There are undeniably stupid actions being …

Three students, a iPhone app, 15,000 people inspired to do a small good deed a day.

Subscribers to the free application are prompted daily with a “DoGood”–a simple task from conserving water, to turning out a light, to beautifying the world. When they’ve accomplished their good deed for the day, they click the application’s “done” button.

The program tallies how many users are fulfilling that day’s deed, and users can …

The Australian government recently opened up data for the citizenry to make sense of and play with.

“the Government 2.0 Taskforce brought an army of 150 geeks together in Canberra over the weekend for a coding marathon called Govhack.”

Top marks for openness and community involvement.

Results (and debate) has begun.

Yay!