The Economic Legacy of Ebenezer Scrooge - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

Consider a contrast between two visions of the festive season — the first, a time for consumption (thoughtless, aggressive, pushy, relentless); the second, a time for what you might call cultivation (the human stuff that really matters, lasts, and multiplies). While, admittedly, business has done its bah-humbug brain-dead best to try and shamelessly commandeer Christmas in the haggard name of crass, vulgar consumerism, try as the masters of the universe might, they can't stop the holidays from being about the deeper elements of an authentically well-lived life: lasting relationships, human intimacy, animating passion, enduring ideals, higher purpose, shared values, meaning (and maybe a homemade fruitcake or two). In fact, when you stop to think about it, the stuff that makes the holidays resonant with happiness is exactly the opposite of the nakedly self-interested, hyperrational, profit-maximizing, utility-seeking behavior that's supposed to, in the gleaming vision of orthodox economics, unleash prosperity.

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What Is This Thing Called the Attention Economy - Tim Kastelle, Innovation Leadership Network

Most of the economy now is based on information. Even physical things are embodied information. Consequently, the scarce resource that is being competed for now is our time. Here is how Richard Lanham talks about it in an interview discussing his book The Economics of Attention: The basic argument is simple enough. We’re told that we live in an information economy. We remember from Econ.1 that economics studies “the allocation of scarce commodities that have alternative uses.” But information is not a scarce commodity; we’re drowning in it. What is scarce is the human attention needed to make sense of it. We really live in an attention economy. What does such an economy look like? What are we to make of it?That attention is in short supply seems to be born in upon us from all sides. From frantic multi-tasking two-career parents to soldiers in computerized fox holes or pilots inundated by cockpit information, we’re all drowning in a sea of information.

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Defining A Creative Ecology - John Howkins

Following on from his groundbreaking The Creative Economy in 2001, John Howkins' new book Creative Ecologies Where Thinking is a Proper Job grew out of a research project for the Chinese State Council. Asked to provide a global overview of the creative economy, he took the opportunity to go back to first principles and work out a general theory that identifies three general conditions for a creative ecology: talent, freedom and markets. From this he proposes an evolved concept of the creative ecology. This is leading thinking for a new knowledge economy.

Download the first chapter of the book here.

TED Talks to Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Here is a latest TED interview, very interesting Source: TED

Creative Leadership can Transform Your Organisation - ThinkXchange interview Ralph Kerle

Ralph Kerle, Executive Chairman of the Creative Leadership Forum, explains the how to of creative leadership.

Download the podcast here

Interview courtesy of ThinkXchange.com.au