139,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Growth is a dominant economic driver accounting for the wealth of nations and organizations alike. However, in the face of environmental pressures, widespread social and economic imbalance, and the reigning climate of uncertainty we are experiencing today, there is now a need for a viable interpretation of what growth really means. In this book, the author redefines the limits to economic growth and tackles the issues involved in three parts, in order to study a variety of international issues, including the world economic system, climate change and environmental degradation.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 298
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Foreword: Why We Should Grow Beyond Economic Growth
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
PART 1: A Present-Day Imperative
1 A Present-Day Imperative To Think or Not To Think…
1.1. Where are we by now?
1.2. Situating this book
1.3. From local to global to complex
1.4. In search for growth
1.5. On futures and their values
2 Situating Growth in Time–Space
2.1. Two six thousand day lapses
2.2. Complexity to the fore
2.3. The message is not the content
2.4. On the approach taken by this book
3 Dominant Thinkings of the Past Century
3.1. Economic dynamics evolved
3.2. Change and no change: the art of governance
3.3. What’s in a “dominant design”?
3.4. Why are dominant designs important to consider?
3.5. Operating dominant designs on an example
3.6. Categorizing four general fixations found in the economic world
3.7. On the remarkable fixation on competition
3.8. Implementing the defixation process
4 The Historical Contribution of System Dynamics
4.1. The pioneering work at MIT
4.2. The historical quest for cracking the “world problématique”
4.3. The historical outlet with the Club of Rome
4.4. On complex systems and the legacy relevance of system dynamics
4.5. On the psychology of “not wanting to know”
4.6. Some prevalent differences and similarities with the seventies
4.7. Getting away from system dynamics from now?
4.8. The position taken in this book
PART 2: A Methodology for Tackling Growth Problematics
5 In Search for New Approaches Fit-For-Purpose
5.1. A GDP comfort zone
5.2. In search for growth
5.3. How to correctly model the situation problematics
5.4. Leaving duality
5.5. The ever-growing complexity
5.6. Searching for a representation framework beyond set theory
5.7. Shifting from problem-based to design-based methods
6 Angling the Core Subject Appropriately
6.1. Principle 1: find the “lowest lever point”
6.2. Principle 2: divide to multiply
6.3. Principle 3: going from the “two” to the “three”
6.4. Practical considerations
6.5. Case: reflections from a Haitian context
6.6. An asset base for growth
6.7. The exponential movement
6.8. The economic equation
6.9. Relationship with SDGs
7 Cracking Open a Growth Concept
7.1. On the presence of dominant designs
7.2. Some background knowledge relevant to GDP
7.3. Discussing GDP features
7.4. Evidencing past GDP’s dominant designs and breaking axes
7.5. A framed template for “new growth”
7.6. Charting GDP’s dominant designs and breaking axes
7.7. Blueprinting new growth concepts
7.8. Expanding on growth-related concepts
8 Opening Up New Growth Axes
8.1. Energy is everything; efficiency best manages it
8.2. Option one: “electrifying GDP”
8.3. Option two: “efficiency GDP”
8.4. A side note
8.5. On distribution and its criteria
PART 3: Going Beyond the Notion of GDP
9 New Growth Operational Formulations with Examples
9.1. A quick return to system dynamics
9.2. How to balance the disequilibria by injecting a conduct way
9.3. Why isn’t a circular economy enough?
10 Discussing Work, Labor and Money
10.1. Is work still on demand?
10.2. Cultural factors underpinning work
10.3. Work: background knowledge
10.4. Fixations on work
10.5. Work: dominant designs and breaking axes
10.6. Blueprint concepts for extending the notion of work
10.7. Expanding the notion of work towards a cooperation principle
10.8. The fixations on money
11 Case Study: Growth Through Cooperation, Work, Time and Space
11.1. Evolving work in co-working settings
11.2. Why co-working as a subject matter?
11.3. Generations of co-working spaces don’t act on the same premises
11.4. Departing from some current views opens up future co-working spaces
11.5. Using C-K theory for thinking future co-working spaces
11.6. Giving thought to today’s 1.0 co-working spaces
11.7. Mechanisms for expanding the original concept
11.8. What may be a language for “working together?”
11.9. Founding experiments – the protocol and schedule
11.10. Concluding with some considerations for the future
11.11. Acknowledgments
11.12. Further reading
12 A Society’s New Clothes
12.1. The main messages from this book
12.2. Enhancing dynamics
12.3. Consciousness as the molding factor?
PART 4: Appendices
Appendix 1: A Short Primer on C-K Theory
A1.1. Why use a theory?
A1.2. Beginning with a little formal introduction
A1.3. Proposing a little, more didactic, familiarization
A1.4. Acquainting with the mathematical foundations of C-K theory
A1.5. Introducing the DKCP implementation framework
A1.6. Further reading
Appendix 2: Some Chronological Reports to The Club of Rome Commented
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
10 Discussing Work, Labor and Money
Table 10.1. By combining the two basic strategies, two other strategies emerge
List of Illustrations
1 A Present-Day Imperative To Think or Not To Think…
Figure 1.1. As civilization progressed, it transformed itself profoundly
Figure 1.2. The simulations’ outcomes published by the Club of Rome 1972 report were plotted against all odds
Figure 1.3. The “base case” scenario late 2004 study from the Club of Rome (cited by Ugo Bardi, [BAR 11, BAR 17]), where the Seneca effect (forward leaning curves) was already observable
Figure 1.4. The five complementary codes building into sustainability (adapted from [MAS 15a, MAS 15b]).
2 Situating Growth in Time–Space
Figure 2.1. The Kübler-Ross change curve: how accelerating the progressing through the curve would certainly help – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kubler-ross-model-mohamed-ibrahim-bpharm-m-mba
Figure 2.2. A growth compass just to begin a defixing process.
Figure 2.3. The components of a sustainable development.
3 Dominant Thinkings of the Past Century
Figure 3.1. The four basic SEPE quadrants covering a notion of growth
Figure 3.2. Demand for growth typically calls for unsustainable power requirements. Hence, prices skyrocket while energy transformation becomes harder to sustain and maintenance becomes a hurdle
4 The Historical Contribution of System Dynamics
Figure 4.1. The “base case” scenario late 2004 study from the Club of Rome (cited by Ugo Bardi [BAR 11], where the Seneca effect (forward leaning curves) was already observable
5 In Search for New Approaches Fit-For-Purpose
Figure 5.1. Redressing a GDP computation at the light of alternative indicators (from [BRI 03])
Figure 5.2. Expanding the four SEPE representative model terms for understanding “growth†more formally. The greyed words are perhaps those with presently salient intensity, yet this depends on the orientation of the study at hand
Figure 5.3. Five domains which carry societal value
Figure 5.4. A vast value potential opened as a result of deconstructing a root “Value” concept (examples of partitions only)
6 Angling the Core Subject Appropriately
Figure 6.1. Setting an organic movement for growth through a three-pronged “3G” mechanism Give – Get – Gear
Figure 6.2. Engaging momentum through a connected series of “3G†mechanism models
Figure 6.3. The transformative point around which revolve the “3G” mechanisms plays an essential role in redirecting the dynamics. It can be an individual, a firm, an institution, etc.
Figure 6.4. How a three-pronged gearing model works, developing a potentially infinite spiraling mechanism
9 New Growth Operational Formulations with Examples
Figure 9.1. The mechanics for deflecting critical events in time (from Prof. Platt [THE 70])
Figure 9.2. Four modes of economy goods
10 Discussing Work, Labor and Money
Figure 10.1. Bernard Lietaer’s triangle characterizing money
11 Case Study: Growth Through Cooperation, Work, Time and Space
Figure 11.1. Can this be a co-working space?
Figure 11.2. The Brussels Apple Store a couple of days after opening in 2015
Figure 11.3. An initial artist depiction of the Apple headquarters which opened in April 2017, alias of the (mother) Space Ship. From MacRumors, https://www.macrumors.com/2013/02/28/what-apples-and-googles-headquarters-plans-reveal-about-their-cultures/, as of March 27, 2017
Figure 11.4. A gravity-defixing zorbing-like seen by the students of the collaborative working spaces workshop
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Pages
C1
iii
iv
v
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvii
xviii
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
57
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
131
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
211
212
213
214
215
G1
G2
G3
G4
G5
e1
Going Past Limits to Growth
A Report to the Club of Rome EU-Chapter
Patrick Corsi
First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2017The rights of Patrick Corsi to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941111
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-195-6
ForewordWhy We Should Grow Beyond Economic Growth
Our society owes a lot to economic growth. Growth was – and still is – a dominant driver for the increasing wealth of the nations and many people. Yet, it is more and more being questioned in the face of environmental and social pressures threatening humankind’s very survival.
Forty-five years ago The Club of Rome, founded by visionary entrepreneurs and scientists in 1968, hit world headlines by publishing the report “The Limits to Growth”. It was based on a new science of dynamic systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (MIT). Its mathematical model contained the interdependent parameters of population, environmental degradation, depletion of non-renewable resources, food production, industrial pollution.
The report evidenced dreadful trends for humanity if economic growth as then understood was to continue. Needless to say that the concept of limits to growth was unpopular in the euphoric years of rapid material progress, especially after World War II.
Today, the widespread ecological, social, economic and financial imbalances create a climate of anxiety and uncertainty in an ever more complex world. Such a climate calls for new thinking and concepts, leaving the paths of obsolete economic models.
The Club of Rome was deliberately created to obtain a better understanding of the “world problématique”, to contribute to new insights based on scientific grounds and to influence policies.
The Club of Rome EU-Chapter (CoR-EU) aims particularly at building bridges with the EU institutions, delivering lectures on a wide range of subjects and organizing special events as a platform for discussion. Among the crucial issues the concept of economic growth was identified as one of the root causes of the overall planetary problems. On 8 March 2017 the CoR-EU organized a debate at the European Parliament with the title A Different Kind of Growth: Europe taking the lead?
In the wake of this event several other initiatives, such as working groups on science & policy and on the sustainable development goals (SDG’s), were taken. We were fortunate to find among our members a distinguished practitioner in innovation willing to produce a report to the CoR-EU. Patrick Corsi produced a design-based approach for regenerating wealth under the appropriate title of Going Past Limits To Growth. We are much indebted towards him, as well as to his publishers ISTE.
Mark DUBRULLEEx officio Member of the Club of RomePresident and Executive Director of The Club of Rome EU-Chapter
Acknowledgments
Grenoble, Fall 1976. The multicolored valleys surrounding the city were embracing a myriad of yellowish to reddish shades. A treasure chest from Nature. Backpacking as a student in the mountain chains was like listening to its symphony of colors, seeing its mild windy tunes, smelling the harmonic tastes of freshness.
It was my last year at the then very young ENSIMAG engineering school, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Informatique et Mathématique Appliquées de Grenoble, the latest creation of the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble. A place to be that I knew nothing about when applying from… almost nowhere. I had done a lot of math before through a Master’s in applied mathematics. And I was still going to do a lot of math here.
Enter a young assistant professor for a one or so weekly hour of course that had no observable program, the content of which was arrows and bubbles written manually on the blackboard. I was listening silently… and telling myself, “what a strange course; everything seems so easy and so incomprehensible at the same time; so away from differential equations and complicated integrals.” How surreal this class was, different from all the others. So I enjoyed it even though I was not taking it very seriously. An aggravating factor is that this assistant teacher was speaking (eloquently) over and over again about the Club of Rome, its orientation, its famous 1973 recent book, the need to limit growth and the necessity to see things… systemically. Well, enough for an outer space ride, the semester passed and with it, the arrows and the bubbles.
His name is François Rechenmann – still a professor there – and he was the one who infused me with systemics, by sensing it, by writing it. Well, I should confess that it took me exactly 30 years to see that I had really learned something through his presence… when I began to get interested in complex sciences. Then, his words began to rise back to my consciousness. Gradually, I saw the piece and the pieces much like a Greek drama: planet Earth and Humanity entering in collision. The meteorite was us! Thank you Pr. Rechenman, you did well in alerting us with your fresh baked out-of-space course. This book is a grown up reaction, sprung from your vivid teachings.
To the founding professors of C-K theory at the Centre de Gestion Scientifique of Mines ParisTech – MM, Armand Hatchuel, Benoît Weil and Pascal Le Masson, my sincere thanks for having accepted my recurring questions and myself as a field practitioner applying your deep research every day.
Anna Federighi and your deep inspirational metaphysical orientation helped me deconstruct one mental wall after the other, patiently, which led me to approaches contrasting with traditional academic instruction. The initial model of the “three”, as well as many others, originates from you and many of your own sources. But it took me a good 10 years to understand most of these surprising, totally unexpected yet most basic models that apply every day in human life.
I would also like to pay a special tribute to the person who gave me that special inner confidence to embark into this book. Eleonora Barbieri Masini was right there at the forefront of the initial discussions with Aurelio Peccei, the core founder of the Club of Rome.
It happens I had heard of her several times over the years as she was also a member – long-standing in her case – of the World Futures Studies Federation. I thus took the opportunity to modestly send her a brief 20 pages or so draft that expressed my initial ideas about the 1972 report. It contained a few sketches of another approach, possibly more suited to our post-modern times made of high complexity and ambient uncertainty everywhere and for everybody.
As I could visit her in Rome during fall 2016 to discuss a few future issues, to my great surprise, she had already taken what was not even a rough outline quite seriously, and had already annotated it with her delicate calligraphy. She then scrutinized it and made further comments.
It’s that sort of encounter with people carrying some original vibration that transports you and your mind into another camp: to go ahead whatever the cost at the personal level. Thank you, Gentilissima Eleonora, please receive my full gratitude for your mentoring support.
To each of you this book is dedicated, for it took me meeting each and every one of you to begin to grasp parts of our today’s complex world.
And I wish to express my gratitude to my publisher and the admirable team of book producers, for the sustained trust in listening to project ideas and the exact professionalism in bringing these to real books in the market.
There isn’t a thing we do separately, isolated – that’s so plain an evidence. They’re only things that are made by linking up our different, distinct energies. We are unique, yet united. This makes a motto, and makes a world. It doesn’t mean being united in a unique thinking way. It means being unique within the rich diversity of one another. It expresses the quality that emanates from each of us.
List of Abbreviations
B2B
Business to Business
C-K
Concept–Knowledge theory
DKCP
Design–Knowledge–Concepts–Propositions
ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
ICT
Information and Communication Technologies
KIA
Knowledge Intensive Activities
KIS
Knowledge Intensive Services
NACE
Statistical Classification of Economic Activities
NPDI
New Product Development & Introduction
OECD
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
P2P
Peer to Peer
PLC
Product Life Cycle
PPS
Purchasing Power Standard
R&D
Research and Development
SCM
Supply Chain Management
SCS
Supply Chain Simulator
SITC
Standard International Trade Classification
TIR
Third Industrial Revolution
WWRE
World Wide Retail Exchange
WWW
World Wide Web
PART 1A Present-Day Imperative
1A Present-Day Imperative To Think or Not To Think…
“Society is facing a new and unprecedented challenge–responding to its own overwhelming complexity. The structure of our society must change.”
Yaneer BAR-YAM, NECSI
“Grow, baby, grow.” Here is a spiraling mantra that resonates in economic and political spheres about infinite growth, jobs sourcing and improving the already set economic indexes.
All right, so it be. But is there somebody listening out there?
The world – the material world – is finite. How then, could mankind sustain such an infinite spiral? At stakes is the way we think it. To think mankind, its role and its ambient effects.
1.1. Where are we by now?
Over the past few centuries, as civilization progressed, it transformed its rooting mechanisms, its governing methods and its intangible orientation. Figure 1.1 sums up the transitions from the 19th Century onwards and the late one from the 20th Century onwards.
Figure 1.1.As civilization progressed, it transformed itself profoundly
The original 1972 Club of Rome report famously illustrated the consequences of the latest evolutionary cycles through a series of curves which, whatever the scenario, ended up being cursed, however with notable variations in lapse time. The plots are recapitulated in Figure 1.2.
Figure 1.2.The simulations’ outcomes published by the Club of Rome 1972 report were plotted against all odds
A good half of a century later, and to begin with – let’s pause a bit and make a point – where has humanity arrived? Will humanity proceed easily and safely towards such a goal through the present and coming changes? Knowing that these very changes promise to become really exponential within decades.
Our civilization labors strenuously in finding a sustainable sequel to the Industrial Revolution. Albert Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, who comes as a poor help anyway.
Even time escapes us: we don’t have the time anymore to run from one part of the planet to another just to meet a few specific individuals. We require technology to supply the faculty to liaise with the many, from the many, and fast. Technology that substitutes us but that also offers the means to work collective consciousness in an instant.
There is a sentient need to rebalance… everything. Us included, probably. But the act and art of rebalancing has not enshrined our constitutions, at any level, it seems. Instead, the way our society functions is to mass employ resources – populations, minerals, whatever. Social capital is at odds.
Should we dare refresh our memory with the very words of the then contemporary UN Secretary General U. Thant, which served as the front introductory citation to the historical 1972 Report for the Club of Rome:
“I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary-General, that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left In which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control”.
These words were written in 1969. How can we push the production frontier in new ways that rebalance the whole lot? It is probably a preparation that day after day works on our consciousness, on the energy quality of our consciousness. But we need to go deep inside to find it. To balance outside, we are to balance ourselves inside. And this in a sense requires reprogramming the way we use our brain. After all, how can we churn out new things with an older software?
To begin, let’s make a few critical observations that seem to characterize our 2010’s times.
