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Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations.

I found this so interesting because he shows that companies as they grow bigger don’t become more efficient more less. Which is different from most economic believes, advantages of scale quickly turn itself against the company.

Plus an article about him and his work:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

I just keep sharing TED talks, this one of Donald Sadoway is very interesting! It tackles the question how to store all that renewable energy we are going to produce!

(Source: lmbcorporation.com)

A pretty famous TED talk from Salman Khan (http://www.khanacademy.org/) but if you haven’t seen it, check it out!

A different view than what I shared on Wednesday. Paul Gilding makes the argument that the earth is full and before we turn finally sustainable we are going to have a major crisis (probably more than one). I think he is partly right, although I hope it won’t be a suffeer as he imagines. But his motto his interesting: never waste a good crisis. 

After his talk Chris Anderson had them both on stage (Peter and Paul) to discuss some things. 

It’s very interesting, you can find it here 

(Source: ted.com)

If you ever start to lose hope about the future, just watch this talk from Peter Diamandis, he will definitely make you feel better.

More of Peter: 

http://singularityu.org/

http://www.xprize.org/

(Source: ted.com)

How much inspiration do you need? I really like this video and can’t stop thinking about how to scale something like this and which parties should be involved. Of course they have to prove the system and show that it can scale. But the Seawatergreenhouse already works in Australia so it should also work in Qatar. 

Find out more:

http://seawatergreenhouse.com/

http://saharaforestproject.com/

People often credit their ideas to individual “Eureka!” moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the “liquid networks” of London’s coffee houses to Charles Darwin’s long, slow hunch to today’s high-velocity web.

So if you want to nurture innovation and new ideas you should get people in the same room and talk to each other, share ideas and the ideas will get better. 

(Source: youtube.com)

Finally someone who is actually measuring the effects of aid and using it to make improvements (not to kill it). Fascinating TED talk and also the book (Poor Economics) she co-authored is interesting! Poor Economics

Someone to watch, some day Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo will win the Nobel Price for their work.

Think of the ocean as our global savings account — and right now, we’re only making withdrawals, not deposits. Enric Sala shows how we can replenish our account through no-take marine reserves, with powerful ecological and economic benefits.

I think Enric makes an excellent point, it’s not only very smart to create a number of no take marine reserves from an ecological point of view, but it makes a lot of sense from an economical point of view as well. It means more fish, more tourism hence more economical activities. 

(Source: youtube.com)

Another Open Source Project (After the Open Source Ecology Wiki of last week). This time R&D-I-Y with their alpha project: Window Farms.

Just imagine what their beta, gamma… omega project will look like! They developed a process which they can use for many more fascinating products. 

(Source: ted.com)