The science section of today’s New York Times highlights an organization called InnoCentive that seeks to solve the most challenging problems by inviting a large number of people from different walks of life to participate in the process. The article, If You Have a Problem, Use Incentive to Ask Everyone, describes the process of [...]

The great innovations of the 21st Century will be social. I predict that the solutions to our greatest challenges will emerge through new ways of coming together. Case in point, the Drake Landing Solar Community is a fully integrated housing development that takes solar to the next level. Solar panels channel heat [...]

Once again, I’m out to show that the Lone Hero does not typically save the community from peril. When problems arise, it is the coming together of people - the community itself - that is the real hero. Take the small town of Felton, CA as an exemplar of this phenomenon. In [...]

I just watched an inspiring video that reminds me of what I know deep inside, that social change is a team effort. The old adage says that “change comes from within.” When the change is a societal transformation, this is a golden insight that captures something truly profound:
A society changes from within - [...]

A common habit in the Western world is to consider words to be one-to-one mappings of thoughts onto the world. By this reckoning, the word community would have just one meaning that is correct. That would imply that there is only one correct set of ideas about what a community is.
How does this [...]