How to go beyond good intentions and become a global decentralized moonshot — This article was originally posted on the ReFi DAO Blog. Hello everyone! I’m Rafael, CTO of Digital Gaia. We’re on a mission to ignite a regenerative agricultural revolution from the bottom-up, using open science and AI to empower the world’s 1 billion farmers and land stewards with decentralized tools to…

How the purpose economy is deploying the tools of capitalism to help solve massive global challenges and creating value in the process — This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on the purpose economy. Check out Part 1. In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the concept of the purpose economy as an alternative to the predominant paradigm of business, based on maximization of growth and profit for their own sake…

The new wave of disruption is coming from companies that help customers and employees be of service to the world — Update: read Part 2 of this series! The magnitude of our century’s challenges is daunting. Achieving net zero (and then net-negative) carbon, helping our biosphere regain its balance, increasing standards of living for billions of people, all the while responding and adapting to the many crises that are certain to…

This piece was originally published on the Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation & Development newsletter. A big thanks to Patricia Jacoby for editing and feedback. The “never” normal, the age of disruption, late-stage capitalism, VUCA world: our era is not lacking in labels, nor in excitement. The apocryphal “Chinese”…

I’ve written about the resurgence of morality in economic and business thought. It’s a crucial and long-overdue evolution in our social mindset, and by and large, I welcome and embrace the growing body of work and discourse on the topic. However, as the meme spreads and evolves, it becomes increasingly…

We now have the will to invest in service of ourselves and the planet. The establishment’s slowly taking note of it — Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s most recent article has been making the rounds with a bold premise: it’s time to build. The Western world, and the US more specifically, have been systematically under-investing across all sectors of the economy. …

For many people these days, it’s hard not to feel like the end of times is at hand. Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion have brought extreme climate concerns into the mainstream, big-time. Global catastrophe and the collapse of civilization have made the leap from fringe to commonplace so quickly that…

“We are as gods and have to get good at it.” — Stewart Brand The system that learns to see itself We are deep into the age of cybernetics. It started with a set of subtle but persistent ideas that were gleaned as early as the 17th century — notably by Thomas Hobbes, André-Marie Ampère (the first…

Imagine a group of people with a reasonably large amount of resources woke up tomorrow and decided to solve some of our big problems. For the sake of argument, let’s say that they’ve landed on the following goal: Reduce atmospheric warming and ocean acidification to within certain levels, while minimizing…