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A fundamental flaw in our society and the way we act as humans, is our lack of taking responsibility. Society is built on not taking responsibility, from the wording of legal contracts, to our acts towards each other in the work place, to how we treat our business customers and the way we build our important and personal relationships, that end in divorce, law suits family crime and demise.
Read more on the Dead Seriously Blog
A short introduction video about the Hub. Have a look & see what The Hub is all about !
Here’s a real-life example of how someone with passion can make a difference in the lives of those around him (even those not around him!)
Rodrigo’s passion was to help people on the poor side of the Digital Divide get access to modern computing services. In the short article, there are some pretty impressive acts that prove he funnels his passion into action.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes:
In all of Rodrigo’s pursuits, his credentials and education don’t matter as much as his belief in his ideas and his ability to persuade others to join him. As his story suggests, people respond when social entrepreneurs ask them to do seemingly unreasonable things — which is precisely what social entrepreneurs do all the time. People respond when they believe the leader is a) exceptionally trustworthy and b) fully committed to the idea or initiative being proposed.
Check it out for an inspiring story!
<Via Harvard Business Review>
Zero Rupee Note
Here’s a fantastic idea coming out of the Sub-continent. The firm Fifth Pillar, an Indian NGO, has created a set of fake Rupee bills to offer as Corruption fighting tools.
The catch: They’re all for Zero Rupees. Zip, Zero, Zilch. A fantastic idea.
[via Fast Company]
A basic premise for human life is the exchange of value. In every single word we communicate, even our desire to communicate at all, is based on a need for a value exchange. If we were not seeking to gain something from the other person, there would be no reason to speak in the first place. In fact one could argue, that much of the richness of human life, exists through the value that we experience subjectively.
read the entire post at dead seriously
Blekinge Institute of Technology has an acclaimed Masters Programme, for people wishing to work with Sustainability.
According to Hub host Timothy Nichols in Kings Cross this is a great course for defining sustainability and learning how it can be implemented to all organisations.
There is also a two year course which is offered for the first time this year and focuses on sustainable product-service solutions.
It’s scary how our entire legal system is based on negative definitions of possible situations. Our laws are largely made of what we are not allowed to do. We legislate, particularly from a contract point of view, using negatives, constantly talking about what we are not allowed to do. Instead of focusing on what we can do. In fact much of the way our education system, our business relations and our marriages are put together, is set in a negative framework.
read the entire post on caring contracts on deadseriously.com
In an ideal world, the Hub movement has no real center. The idea is that competencies flow from node to node and hub to hub, based on a needs and a value exchange that can serve the need. There is no need for a centralised command structure, a corporate hierarchy or rules designed for control. The Hub in its nature differs so greatly from other structures and networks that we see today.
Compare if you will, the Hub to Facebook. While the Hub never will reach Facebooks current magnitude of 230 million daily users, there are some comparisons that are interesting to make. Facebook grew exponentially in size, seeing particular strong growth in users in 2007, where a large part of the community on Myspace migrated to Facebook. This move happened within a few weeks and remains one of the most amazing examples of social media tipping points. Similarly, the Hub had existed for a couple of years, before interest and traction took effect and suddenly the number of potential Hubs is not in low double digits, but into the hundreds. Hubs are beginning to open faster than the organisation can handle and much faster than anyone ever could hope or dream of.
The major difference when comparing the Hub and Facebook, are their natural characteristics and the value they propose. Facebook for most people remains a network where one exchanges superficial comments and give sporadic attention. While people happily share pictures of themselves and post comments on each others walls, the intent put into the content remains frivolous and with minor depth and people rarely express opinions and emtions related to deep personal attachment or meaningful conversations or relationships.
Here the Hub, in it’s own nature, differs dramatically. The hub is a very much an alive network of people, where what we create within the physical and metaphorical frames of the Hub, from the outset is loaded with deep value. Firstly, the purpose and the vision of the Hub, A Space for People with Good Ideas for the World, rings a clear sound into most peoples ears. More importantly though, is the characteristic that when people engage in the Hub, they engage with something more than a comment on a social networking site. They engage with their passions for the world around us, their curiosity for exploring new people and ideas and finally they engage with their businesses and their lives. Because of the fact that the Hub costs money and rarely is the cheapest alternative, the sense of commitment is somewhat higher than in many other communities and networks, that are free of charge and where the daily level of commitment is lower.
This is the real value of the Hub. It’s born in the moment that a member chooses to place their business, their curiosity and their life within the frames we as hosts hold for them.
This also goes to show, that we cannot think of the Hub as an organisation, in the traditional sense, that we should govern as a company and harvest for profit. The fashion, in which people have joined the Hub (whether the want to open a new hub, be a host or a member), how people catch on to the idea or the mere notion, moves like wildfire and without clear direction. This has a similar characteristic to that of a movement, where the individuals involved generally are brought together by the same beliefs rather than that of an organisation, where the term greatly implies that it’s organised.
What’s important to understand about movements, is that they do not let themselves be controlled. Movements are fed entirely by the the joint aspiration of the people who join them and likewise are subjected to the joint perception of the public observing them. Individuals have historically managed to stand on the shoulders of movements to achieve great change or impact, but in all most cases after an objective is partially achieved, the movement often breaks into different organisations and the momentum is lost. Recent political examples are the Polish Solidarity movement and the Anti Apartheid and Freedom Movement in South Africa.
It would be en exciting development for the Hub, to encourage the frames for the movement and to not focus too hard on the organisation. How can we enable and empower the qualities of the movement and how can we use the “organisation” as a tool to support this rather than as the model for the system?
You aren’t crazy—there are good reasons why starting a business feels hard. Like any big change in life like getting married or having a baby, entrpreneurship has its ups and downs.
Once you get over the initial rush of your launch, certain that everything is going to go according to plan, you run into some snags.
Martha Beck, O Magazine columnist and author of Finding Your Own North Star, has a very useful framework for describing the cycle of change experienced by new entrepreneurs.See if you can identify which square of change you are currently in according to Beck’s framework here
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Hub Brussels
