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Don’t worry, don’t optimize. Innovate now!

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Early switchers at earth2tech.com

Early switchers at earth2tech.com

Fears and hopes

Guess you know Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” (youtube). When the wall came down in Berlin some 19 years ago it happened that this easy swinging a cappella sound was the somehow perfect soundtrack for the ambiguity in the mood of the reunified Germans. Ambiguity of fears and hopes – and what followed really was political “change management XXL” – with the inevitable pains of transformation.

Now, this is end of October 2008 and I feel a certain resemblance to the situation of 1989. In these days a lot of commentators suppose that the financial crisis is just the beginning of a longer lasting downturn of the global economy.  

One last look back

Futurists and scenario planning people are prepared for the discontinuities of complex systems. This time the wild card was to expect. Warnings date back to 2006 (nypost.com) and even 2004 (abajournal.com). By the way recession cycles of market economy are observed since its beginnings. And Talebs book about the improbable “black swan” has been written in 2007. But who wants to hear bad news? We have to. That’s why we are implementing early warning systems and pay experts, even futurists. 

Looking forward – Opportunities in times of transformation

This is the time of cutbacks and layoffs, but that is only the one side. At O’Reilly’s Web2Expo Europe some days ago I heard Robin Daniels (Salesforce.com / Cloud Computing: Freedom to Focus on Innovation”). One of the messages was: “Don’t optimize, but innovate!”. So don’t worry to much, for example sustainability will be a sustaining issue. The economy has to be transformed – and on a global scale. There is no alternatiIve – world economy has to go eco, better sooner than later (see my solar stuff posts). This is a time of decisions, actions and making a brave jump. Need more arguments? Look for example to the change in the valley, where bright minds started switching before spring 2008. 25 Who Ditched Infotech for Cleantech « Earth2Tech

Some 3.0? Yes, emerging.

You are still focused in ICT, GPS, graphs, the web, mobile and stuff? No problem, green and IT make a good couple: Energy efficiency, monitoring, sensors, recycling, new mobility solutions … And “Web 3.0″? Whatever the next innovation wave will be called, with its clouds, tweets, id managment, semantics, sensing, mobility, ubiquity – it is knocking. Microsoft just tries to start a  bit of new thinking: Windows Azure: Microsoft mainstreams the cloud | Software as Services | ZDNet.com

And even Kevin Rose, the founder of Web 2.0 poster child Digg.com, encourages to start a company: Start Something During Web 2.5 (Video). Actually it should be something really new, even in the mean time.
Update for tea time
Thanks to Dion Hinchcliffe’s tweet I found a related post of George Colony (Forrester): “Why this tech recession will be different”. His second of five points is: Transformation and innovation will lead recovery. The other points there are worth the reading too. 



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