On May 25, 1961, in his address to Congress, President John F. Kennedy proposed the national goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the 1960s. This goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on […]
Moving from the Past to the Future
By May 28, 2014 8 Comments
One of my favourite community projects in the world right now is The Downtown Project in Las Vegas. I had the pleasure of going there last year, meeting the founder Tony Hsieh and hearing him speak of how he is building his community. The results they achieve in one of the least likely places on […]
Wanted: 20 Families to Reimagine Education
By April 23, 2014 28 Comments
For some time, my wife and I have been wanting to reimagine what is possible for education. Our greatest challenge has been to find the right community in which to base our education project. The search for the village to raise the child has taken us all over the world, but in the end, has […]
The Best Investment You Will Ever Make
By April 16, 2014 10 Comments
There was a really interesting interview at TED recently in which Larry Page (Founder and Chief Executive of Google) said that he would rather leave his savings to Elon Musk (Founder and Chief Executive of Tesla and SpaceX, Chairman of Solar City) than to charity. It is a fascinating provocation with which I am inclined […]
The Inconvenient Truth
By April 9, 2014 4 Comments
On Friday morning I woke up crying. I had spent the previous evening hearing how the health and education system are failing the most vulnerable members of my community. How incredible are the people impacted by these problems! The heartbreaking thing about all the stories shared was just how simple many of these tragedies are […]
The Kodak Moment
By April 1, 2014 9 Comments
In 1996, Kodak was a multinational company with a market cap of $28 billion and 140,000 employees. In 2012, it went bankrupt. In 2010, another photography company called Instagram was founded and two years later with just 13 employees, was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion. This very much redefines ‘a Kodak moment’ – an […]
Let the Revolution Begin!
By March 24, 2014 11 Comments
Last week we asked 100 people an audacious question: ‘How can you make Guernsey the best place to live on earth?’ This week, we are getting on with the job of making it happen, by 2020. We are starting this movement with no idea of how we are going to get there. We are starting […]
Why Small Nations Can Change the World
By February 19, 2014 6 Comments
The outdated legislation and bureaucratic decision-making we face in the world today are major barriers to progress. There are good reasons for some of it, but compelling reasons to remove most of it. The answers to some of the biggest problems we face have already been solved – but government bureaucracy is holding them back. […]
The Taxi of Tomorrow
By February 5, 2014 16 Comments
I, for one, hate owning cars. They are a pain in the *****. If anyone talks about the freedom of driving, they haven’t really considered what it takes away. Depreciation. Insurance. Fuel. Cleaning. Maintenance and servicing. A tiny scratch, bump or scrape costing a fortune to fix. Paying for parking at home and away. And […]
Will you live to be 200?
By January 15, 2014 6 Comments
It is an interesting question, isn’t it? Well, the truth is – there’s a lot more chance of it happening than you might think. Life expectancy was 20 years a thousand years ago, and 37 two hundred years ago. Life expectancy where I now live is 80. The pace of change in life expectancy is […]