F. Blaine MacKinnon's Blog (8)

Sport development, especially team sports, for all ages is one of the

most under utilized tools for social innovation. Amateur sport teaches

health, fitness, team work and cooperation, goal setting, commitment,

peer group bonding, and many other things. It also keeps focus of the

often uncontrollable calamities of life. As Wyclef Jean commented, when

he was an impoverished child in Haiti running and playing he didn't

realize he was poor.



Organized sports… Continue

This link is a good example of commercial scale thinking by ordinary people making healthy food production possible.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U27Aizi64Wg&feature=related



Whether its vermiculture, hydroponics, aquaculture......much can be done without spreading out over acres of land, losing most of our water to evaporation, consuming energy because markets are far, far away.



In this… Continue

Hayeks solution provides a great understanding of how we need to think of innovation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fBQyNiWOuU&feature=related

There is an overriding biological imperative to perpetuate the species. Matt Ridley's book The Red Queen:Sex and the evolution of human nature, is an excellent explanation of this. Just as a parent must give children direction while letting the child develop their own way, as stewards of our planet, we must also act in a way that gives direction, benefiting others as they strive to find and/or follow their ways. The most we can hope for is… Continue

Pursuing continuous economic growth precludes sustainability. Planned obsolescence, celebrity obsession and retail therapy are the diseases not the cures. Products should be durable, safe and repairable. Features and "apps" have replaced durability and dependability resulting in nothing more than a garbage problem. Social innovation shouldn't contribute to the ever growing piles of crap we now produce.

I'm am currently changing my lifestyle to "walk light", having what I need and no more. This will allow me to experience people and places as a global citizen. A wise man once told me " if you act like a regular person and treat others as regular people they will give you the shirt off their back whether you need it or not." My travels have proven this to generally be true so my objective is just to be an ordinary person, doing right by others.

William Easterly's book "The White Man's Burden" is the primer that we all should be familiar with on this quest as it helps avoid wasting time on repeating past mistakes, allowing us to move on to successes now. Just as there's no I in team there's no I in EVOKE. We need to include the wisdom of those who've gone before and learn from those that have failed. No need to repeat past mistakes. Humbly go where your needed.



I'll be expanding my knowledge by observing his… Continue

Solutions come from being involved, hands on, skin in

the game. Tough decisions have to be made and usually the best

decisions have low visibility and receive little recognition.

Solutions must be sought out, not wished for or planned from afar. It

is necessary to focus on the doable, often small problems which

ultimately give c**ulative results instead of focusing on utopian

solutions to issues that may never go away.



Social innovation is… Continue