Sustainability Life Writing Books Lists Entrepreneurship
A dream written down becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action becomes reality. There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations. It’s like magic! Nothing worth having comes easy
Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts…
The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary: A deck of cards, or a bird… or a man… [or an Idea]
He shows you this object, and pledges to you its utter normality. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed real, unaltered, normal.
But, of course, it probably isn’t.
The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary.
Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it. Because of course, you’re not really looking, you don’t really want to know, you want to be fooled.
But you couldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back.
That’s why every magic trick has a third act. The hardest part. The part we call…
The Prestige!+
The Pledge
Among the loads of authors who present the future of economy we discover sorcerers, charmers, necromancers, astrologers, fascinators, fortune-tellers, seers, forecasters, doomsayers, mediums, Kabbalists, spiritists, conjurers, alchemists, thaumaturgists, and pythonsess. Between them, there are few magicians of Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability and Impact, Circular Economy, Biomimicry, Conscious Capitalism, New Economy, Benefit Corporations and Social entrepreneurship and venture capital which showed us something ordinary: ideas.
They exposed their texts and told us that what they propose is something completely normal. We inspected them, we read, we discussed them and yes, everything seems to be normal! But, of course, it probably isn’t.
The Turn
From the famous Our Common Future (1987) to the present, ink hectoliters have run defining, forming, criticizing the workings of the corporate world and governments. ‘Men like wolves of men’ (Hobbes, 1651) who struggle to set a standard, sell consulting hours, break the routine of processes and change something for the better. Some have done it seriously, professionally, and relatively successfully. Success story listings are just a click away.
Extraordinary things have happened. What is the secret? We can’t find it. I’m not really seeing, I really don’t want to know, I want to be fooled. I can’t clap yet. Many of those excellent ideas disappeared. They have to go back.
After an unusual, indescribable, strange, implausible, illogical and weird 2020 I want them to come back. For this reason I share my Top # 8 Impact Readings for this year:
- Universal circular economy policy goals: enabling the transition to scale by Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2021) MacArthur Foundation
- Creating Shared Value by Michael E. Porter and Mark Kramer (2011) Harvard University
- The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard (2010) Greenpeace
- Conscious Capitalism by Raj Sisodia and John Mackey (2014) Conscious Capitalism
- Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab (2021) World Economic Forum
- Biomimicry Toolbox by The Biomimicry Institute (2019) Biomimicry Institute
- Impact by Ronald Cohen (2020) GSG
- Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs by Muhamad Yunus (2010) Grameen Foundation
I wish this was the year of The Turn! I hope so. I long for it. Although I know that ‘The Prestige tells us that the truth can be dangerous, and it really is better to be misled about the world around us. We hold the truth in such high regard, but are we really willing to do whatever it takes to get there? (G. S. Perno, 2015)
+Michael Caine opening scene from The Prestige (2006) by Christopher Nolan.
