The Future of Money

Have just spent a few hours discussing the Future of Money, hosted by James Bibby at Microsoft in Sydney and facilitated by Peter Vander Auwera from SWIFT/Innotribe. I’d like to flag that everyone understood that the session was way too short for such a big topic and everyone would agree that we just scratched the surface (not that the scratch would leave too much of a mark just yet). The session was a kick start for a group from a wide variety of interests: banks, payment providers’ IT specialists and some specialty consultancies.

 

The framing of the day enabled us to get a handle on the way Innnotribe run their innovation events/interventions and the group was given some opportunities to discuss some ideas about money, where digitial currencies may be headed and to have some idea starters (provocations) tossed into our thinking space.  All in all a most enjoyable way to chat about what could become a very dry topic.  I was the first of the provocationists with the overall brief not to pose solutions but to toss some ideas at the group they might not have considered.  Value Systems came into play again.  I’ve made a couple of small adjustments to this PowerPoint to ease things for those not in the room, and the last slide includes some of the notes I took from the day.  Marcus Barber’s Future of Money presentation

Happiness Makes the World Go ‘Round

Apr 9, 2012

Columbia University’s Earth Institute have just made publicly available their World Happiness Report, joining the expanding list of happiness reports emerging ultimately from Bhutan’s Happiness Index. There’s some interesting results in this one and some that you might expect were more obvious, like the idea that at a certain point, more money won’t make you…

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Local Councils’ Role in Economic Activity

Apr 4, 2012

Whilst the main thrust of Australian economic activity is said to be in the hands of the Federal Government, we should not overlook the significant role that Local Council Government’s can have. As the Federal Government wrestles with falling taxation revenues and an apparent inability to get the message across about distributing the income of…

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Eat or Extract – Farming versus Mining in NT and Australia

Mar 26, 2012

Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber chats with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin about the challenges facing the Northern Territory, the farming and mining sectors. In summing up the emerging signs of a clash between agricultural uses of land and land use for resource and mining needs, Marcus uses the phrase ‘Eat or Extract’ as the…

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Top 10 Tips for Resilience

Mar 25, 2012

As most of you know I nominated this year as the 2012 International Year of Resilience because frankly, that’s what I reckon large chunks of the world need right now. The twitter feed is #2012YearofResilience. I sent a few of these tips out at the start of the year and have seen a few of…

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Is more foresight needed for Urban Planning in Darwin?

Mar 12, 2012

A new city is due to emerge in Darwin over the coming couple of years and the key question is – what sort of attention is being paid to weather related disasters in the design phase? Paul Dale on ABC Radio Darwin chats with futurist Marcus Barber about planning and weather. You can download the…

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After the Rains – thinking about Urban Planning in a future of havoc weather

Mar 5, 2012

Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ is best known for its second verse – “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains”. As vast tracts of Australia again face the prospect of massive floods I wonder if our Urban Planners ever consider the significance of…

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Innovation in Your Supply Chain – Symbiotic Supply Chain management

Feb 14, 2012

Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…

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Remote Mining poses challenges for Australian Airlines

Feb 5, 2012

There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…

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Is Your Organisation’s Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?

Jan 18, 2012

Simple question really. Or is it? In this quick article I provide an overview of the difference between strategy that is D.E.A.D and A.L.I.V.E Think of it as a potential ‘do this’ collection for your Organisation   You can download the article for free here – ‘Is your Organisational Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?’

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Are you lining your future up in the right direction?

Jan 15, 2012

Lots of thoughts for the year already underway, with some covering a range of ideas from ‘don’t cut corners on relative incidentals when the project is significant for you’ to ‘you can’t change your approach if you keep thinking inside the same box’. But for now a reminder about planning for your future: If you…

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