II-06-03-Stamos-REBEARTH 425-432

II-06-03-Stamos-REBEARTH 425-432

rebearth™: Growing a world
6.6 billion people would want to live in

Marc Stamos, B-Comm, LL.B¹

Growing a world that 6.6 billion people would want to live in requires mass collaboration and vision.

Several years ago, the author and his collaborators became increasingly concerned about where our collective future was headed. In an effort to be a part of the solution, they started digging. One quote they came across changed the course of his life: “The best way to predict the future is to design it.” (Buckminster Fuller)

Success leaves clues. The author spent several years researching history, politics, psychology, entrepreneurship, ecology, philanthropy, business, sociology, spirituality, and current events to discover an effective means of exciting, inspiring, and enabling people to design, build, and grow a world we would all want to live in.

REBEARTH™ is the name attached to this effort. REBEARTH™ seeks to answer the questions: What if the human footprint was a positive force? What could our world look like? And what tools and strategies already exist to grow such a world?

What is REBEARTH™?

REBEARTH™ is a connector. A hub linking vision with talent, capital, innovation, and leadership—all committed to executing diverse projects that take us closer to a world we would all want to live in. Such projects would be executed in line with REBEARTH™’s core values, and realized by applying proven strategies.

REBEARTH™’s strategic, systematic, and infinitely reproducible approach will enable the design, launch, and evolution of a portfolio of related but independent projects.

What could a world that 6.6 billion people want to live in look like?

Or, as renowned visionaries William McDonough and Michael Braungart put it, “A renewably powered world, full of safe and healthy things: economically, ecologically, equitably, and elegantly enjoyed.” How do we grow such a world? The answer is surprisingly simple. We can use what works.

Strategies that work

History has proven the strategies below to be uncommonly effective. Imagine what our world could look like if these strategies were directed and applied together, in a systemized, cohesive approach, to grow a world we would all want to live in.

The strategies below apply directly to growing REBEARTH™, and to any project growing out of the REBEARTH™ hub. The use of the word ‘it’, in the strategies below, refers to both. In fact, ‘it’ can also refer to anything: Architecture and Urban Planning; Products and Services; Energy Production and Sewage Treatment; Transportation and Commerce; Resource Management and Agriculture; Spirituality and Religious Study; Science and Medicine; Economics and Environment; Technology and Sociology; Schools and Governments; Laws and Nations…literally anything.

Give it a visionary mission…

Every one of the marvels that we take for granted today was at one point a laughable proposition. Visionary, bold, far-reaching missions not only come true and inspire diverse supporters; they have always been the ones responsible for all of our species’ quantum leaps. Rather than scorn the dreamer, this strategy is simple—trumpet the Visionary Mission and share it widely.

Decide who will build it, then how it will be built…

After five years of extensive research, Jim Collins and his team of 24 discovered that the leaders of companies who exploded from good to great, and maintained their greatness for over 15 years, did not first figure out the route the bus would take to get to where it was going.

They “first got the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus,” and then together figured out the route.²

We will find the right people who can help us find our path, give them their place and let them take us where we are capable of going.

Brand it…

What are the Promise, Core Values, and Strategies that you employ? As Walter Landor said, “Products are made in factories. Brands are created in the mind.”

Products are just objects begging to be used. Brands are filled with emotions. They can inspire, motivate, ease pain, create excitement, and open doors. The more coherent, compelling, and desirable the brand story, the more it will power the success of any endeavour. Brands, when their stories are effectively communicated, come to embody the endeavours’ promise/mission, its core values, and its strategic approach.

Systemize it…

Systemized is rich; haphazard is broken or breaking.³ Systemizing produces expandable and replicable results. We can grow models that work—models for the creation of just about anything—and tweak the model to make it increasingly more effective. Then, lather, rinse, repeat as necessary!

Continuously evolve it…

Problems  Solutions  Growth  New Problems (start again)

This simple strategy has been effectively used as a social / business model for centuries. Historically, and in the present, we run into trouble when we forget to continuously evolve, or only evolve when forced by circumstances. The best companies, governments, and relationships are always evolving. This cycle has no beginning and no end. Wisely directed, it is simply a strategy of continuous improvement—of evolution towards a desired end.

Make it a hybrid of commerce / media-education / philanthropy…

Initiatives that are a hybrid of all three are the most interesting to the largest number of people. They have also proven to be uniquely effective at creating positive impact—for individuals, economies, and communities.

All initiatives can be a hybrid of all three, falling anywhere on the spectrum. Example: Profitable Businesses, with Media-Education generating increased returns and a Philanthropy component to be a good corporate citizen and earn good will.

Design it to mimic nature…

Nature represents impeccable design. From a design perspective, Mimic Nature means widely applying the following four design strategies distilled from nature:⁴

Mass collaborate to design it, build it, and evolve it…

The debate over which is more powerful, collective intelligence or expert/visionary leadership, misses the point. Collective intelligence has far more potential horsepower—provided that someone, typically an expert or visionary, takes the steps to orient and direct the collective intelligence.

Mass Collaboration takes many forms. For example, Ideagoras are marketplaces for ideas, innovation, and uniquely qualified minds. Peer Production has been used to produce an operating system, an encyclopedia, media, and even physical things like a motorcycle. Radical Sharing expands the logic of sharing and can apply to virtually any industry or initiative. Since new and expanding markets create opportunities for everyone, collaboratively innovating to grow such markets benefits business, humans, and the environment. Prosumers are consumers entering the conversation with businesses to help design the products they will ultimately purchase and use.⁵

Teach people how to do it / enable them to do it / benefit from them doing it…

It is like the old saying goes: Buy people fish, they eat for a day. Teach them to fish, they eat forever. Expanded results are achieved when they are also enabled to fish. The whole process becomes win/win and spreads faster when teaching people how to fish. Enabling fishing also leads to a benefit for the teacher/enabler.

Grow it through branded strategic partnerships / entrepreneurial managers…

Think of it as branded venture capital. When capital, entrepreneurial managers/partners, and a clear brand identity/strategy come together, the results are stellar. An interlinked web of partnerships and businesses (“ring-fenced” as bankers call it), coupled with a venture-capital / private-equity model has many advantages over a single hierarchical enterprise.

This structure allows for infinite expansion—each venture stands on its own business case, each management team is focused on its own business and entrepreneurial goals—as long as it is right for the brand. Furthermore, while each shares the benefits of being affiliated and branded, the failure of any one initiative has little impact on the whole.

Simply put: Create a clear brand identity, systemize a repeatable approach, find entrepreneurial managers with an equity stake, provide resources, and the sky is the limit.

Pre-sell it to diverse stakeholders, then build it…

This model has been used to fund real-estate developments, golf tournaments, business start-ups, etc. It can be applied to just about any initiative—including those designed to grow a world that 6.6 billion people would want to live in.

Work with human nature to do it…

We are a diverse lot of Consumers and Business People; Voters and Politicians; Students and Teachers; Designers and Builders; Trendsetters and Followers; Generalists and Specialists; Professionals and Blue-Collar Workers; Artists and Scientists; Visionaries and Builders; Capitalists and Socialists; Philanthropic and Greedy; Secular and Religious; Dreamers and Naysayers; Rich and Poor; Left Wing and Right Wing; Hopeful and Scared; and everyone in between. And we have diverse motivations.

Since it unlikely that 6.6 billion people will ever all care, sacrifice, or be inspired by being less bad, why not capitalize on the strengths and predictability of human nature? Why not orient its rich diversity towards growing a world that 6.6 billion people would want to live in?

Connecting the dots

The innovative projects coming out of the REBEARTH™ hub will apply the effective strategies above, and any others that have proven effective, to take us closer to a world we would all want to live in, rather than put band-aids on the mistakes of the past. They will be projects that excite, inspire, and enable people to be a part of, and benefit from, growing a world 6.6 billion people would want to live in.

What kind of projects could come out of the REBEATH™ hub?

Potential projects are limited only by the imagination, and can span an endless array of social, economic, and ecological sectors. An example of one such project is an open-sourced, mass-collaboratively designed, funded, and built house of the future—slated to be REBEARTH™’s prototype launch project.

Why a house? Housing touches almost every aspect of civilization: Family, community, shelter, food, energy, finances, transportation, waste management, sewage, air quality, materials, etc.

A holistic house designed in this fashion can provide a glimpse of what our future could look like in all these areas. Similarly, the educational potential of sharing the innovation connected to execute such a project is vast. And it also allows for an incredibly diverse spectrum of contributors and collaborators to be a part of, and benefit from, transforming vision into reality.

What is required to make all this happen?

The short answer is people. People with belief. People with talent. People with capital. People with connections. People with a desire to grow the world envisioned in this cahpter. Are you such a person?

1 Marc Stamos contends that social, economic, and environmental objectives—far from being mutually exclusive—are intrinsically linked. www.REBEARTH.com.

2 Jim Collins, Good To Great (Harper Business, 2001), 13.

3 T. Harv Eker

4 William McDonough

5 Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics (Portfolio Hardcover, 2006).