Month: July 2019

Buckminster Fuller failed in business many times and wanted to end it all. He walked to the waterfront, ready to throw himself in, when he had an epiphany. What if he dedicated his life to others?  “I sought to use myself as my scientific ‘guinea pig’ in a lifelong experiment designed to discover what — […]

Gina is just a teenager, but she could still disrupt a supply chain. Her full name is Gina Alejandra Jiménez Vergara, and she lives in Toca, Colombia — a farming village three hours from Bogotá the capital. For generations her family farmed items like pineapple, potatoes, chicken. They’d sell it to intermediaries who — after […]

Imagine this: You live in Bangalore.  Technically your home is a slum — like 65 million other Indians. You salvage materials from the streets and your partner works construction. Together you make $3.50/day. You don’t have electricity — like 400 million other Indians. So you spend $0.21/day on kerosene for your lamp. It’s dangerous, makes […]

In 1973 Ray Anderson founded what would become one of the world’s largest carpet manufacturers — Interface Inc. But in 1994 he read two books, and they blew his mind: Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce and Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael.  “It was an epiphanic spear in my heart, a life-changing moment…” Ray said. “I realized […]

Judith Johnson lived in North Carolina, and one day she noticed a problem.  After pine needles fell in a nearby forest, they dried up and became a fire risk. The Forest Service had to pay a trash company to haul them away. She knew pine needles made excellent fertilizer. So she hatched a plan. She […]

Mechai Viravaidya was born in 1941. Both of his parents were medical doctors — his father from Thailand and his mother from Scotland. After studying economics in college, he joined the Thai government to alleviate poverty. He became the Minister of Industry, but no matter how hard he worked his home remained poor. Why? The […]

“Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá; he was successful mainly because people in Colombia’s capital city saw him as an honest guy. With an educator’s inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who […]

“[This is one of those books] that gets on peoples’ lists of books that changes how they think about everything…” Stewart Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog “Normally we add new facts to existing knowledge. But once in a while a book like this comes along and does just the opposite – it adds […]