Imag­ine see­ing a top sheik from Dubai, wrapped in tra­di­tional Arab cloth­ing, exclaim “Yes We Can” in front of the 800 experts gath­ered dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Global Agenda that just took place in Dubai, co-organized by the World Eco­nomic Forum and the Gov­ern­ment of Dubai. This same sheik added that “we build the future with our own hands”.

You can read more about the main points of the Global Agenda Coun­cils con­ver­sa­tion here: Dis­cus­sion High­lights. Below go some of my own still-jetlagged reflections.

The finan­cial cri­sis has made obvi­ous the obvi­ous: that we live in a truly new and global world.

And that busi­ness as usual will lead to global dis­as­ter — we need new approaches to col­lec­tively adapt to and thrive in this new envi­ron­ment. The answer is not to go back to any old par­a­digm, which sim­ply will not work in a new real­ity, but to imag­ine and build a bet­ter new way of doing things.

Some of the atten­dants urged us to “reboot” the sys­tem. I don’t think that a “reboot” is enough — we need to upgrade to a new oper­at­ing sys­tem. We can call it Planet Earth 2.0.Based on the group dis­cus­sion we had on Sun­day morn­ing, let me pro­pose some of the archi­tec­tural prin­ci­ples that should under­lie any emerg­ing Planet Earth 2.0 oper­at­ing sys­tem. And let me present those prin­ci­ples using a “Yes We Can” value-based approach:

Yes
– From Busi­ness As Usual to Imagination-led Action.
– From Analy­sis to Syn­the­sis.
– From Talk to Walk.

We
– From Finan­cial Hege­mony to Human and Nat­ural Cap­i­tal.
– From Us vs. them to Win-win Diver­sity.
– From Regulation/ Dereg­u­la­tion to Mind­ful Archi­tec­ture.
– From Top-down Author­ity to Shared Respon­si­bil­ity.

Can
– From Self­ish Genes to Com­mit­ted to Improv­ing the state of the world.
– From Account­ing Rules to Val­ues and Stan­dards.
– From Being Stuck to Learn and Evolve.

Given that each of us are in fact part of that new oper­at­ing sys­tem, we could start by pledg­ing to live by prin­ci­ples like those. How can we refine them?

Need­less to say, this new oper­at­ing sys­tem upgrade would ben­e­fit from a new empha­sis on cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance, such as the one dis­cussed in the pro­posal for a Global Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Innovation.

In short, no more Busi­ness as Usual. We need more Imag­i­na­tion, and Action. By each of us.

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