The Collective Intelligence Needed to Help Solve our Environmental Challenges

Authors:

Gianni Giacomelli: Founder Supermind.Design and Head of Innovation Design at MIT’s Collective Intelligence Design Lab?

Peter Schelstraete: Co-Founder of Ubuntoo, the Environmental Solutions Platform??

“Hi! I live on the Greek island of Corfu. Like most Greek islands a lot of waste ends up in landfills. How could we go from a linear and broken waste system to one of reducing, reusing, and recycling?”? This is a message that was posted on the Ubuntoo platform more than 2 years ago.??

?We tried to help the person in question, by connecting her to several recycling professionals and by pointing out some technology solutions. But we soon realized that waste management on (touristy) islands provides unique challenges in terms of logistics and value chain, most of our efforts lacked relevancy.??

In the end, a groundswell of local associations and engaged individuals on Corfu self-organized and set up local recycling centers to compensated for a broken government-led system.??

But we continued to ask ourselves: how many more people in the world struggle with the same issue? It must be in the tens of thousands. What if we could provide them with exponentially easier and faster access to solutions, best practices and … to each other? It was clear to us: to help solve these kinds of key issues, we need a Sustainability Supermind – that is, a digital infrastructure to help leverage our collective intelligence.??

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Knowledge Transfer - a key reason why we are behind on our Sustainability Goals?

?An estimated 85% of companies is behind on their climate targets1, and an estimated 90% of them are behind on their waste & plastic goals2. In addition, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Progress Report is showing alarming gaps in our pursuit of positive and rapid progress. But why is that??

?The challenges we are facing are complex and interdependent in nature. They are the result of decades of unbalance between economic and ecological systems and will require holistic and systemic change. In corporations and other organizations, we found that the issue is often not related to a lack of good intentions, or overall strategic choices, or even resourcing. But time and time again, we witness key issues of capabilities. More specifically, professionals around the world are struggling with easy access to relevant solutions and to knowledge.??

?As the article “If the world knew what the world knows”3 points out: “Our world routinely throws away or ignores the knowledge we create. You can see it in your own daily work, and the work of your organizations: every day, we reinvent wheels, and we don’t access the right people (or organizations) at the right time to find (or remember) solutions. Our collective brain isn’t functioning as well as it could.”?

?Recently, an innovation professional at a sport company recently told us: “I have about 15 projects related to sustainability. Each one of them feels like I am looking for a needle in a haystack”. It shouldn’t. As the example of the waste management issues on Corfu show, there is a lack of knowledge transfer between people trying to solve similar issues.? At first sight, it is surprising that in today’s information age, we are still struggling with such information asymmetries. But fundamental flaws in the current information ecosystem prevent us from driving better effectiveness.??

?Consider search engines. Their algorithms, and their use, are still largely driven by advertising markets, not knowledge industries. As a result, a search for sustainable packaging will drive you to well-know often advertised options, rather than the long tail of innovative solutions that are more groundbreaking.??

Moreover, social media algorithms’ recommendations optimize for predicted engagement (e.g., likes, or shares), not problem-solving or creativity. Similarly, professional social networks such as LinkedIn are not optimized for skill-based search (“which people work on waste management on islands?”) and do not facilitate field exploration (“which subfields exist, and who works there?”) or validation of ideas.?

Surprisingly, language barriers are still significant and end up siloing up the world’s knowledge. Think about it: web searches only show results for same-language sites: if you are in the US and look for “heat pump installation methods”, you typically won’t see content from (machine-translated) German, Japanese, or Chinese sources. And while translation engines like Google Translate have improved remarkably, they’re still not used pervasively yet in a range of potential knowledge-sharing applications.?

?Ironically, we now have the tools and the methods to solve these issues. They have been well documented – among others by the Superminds.Design and the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence . The following outlines a simplified and practical approach.??

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The Creation of a Sustainability Supermind?

A simple way to create superminds is by connecting hyper-curated relevant knowledge to a community of experts and professionals to solve specific issues.??

In her book “Doughnut Economics”4, Kate Raworth is pleading for the creation of a global platform for sustainable solutions: “…there are ready innovators and experimenters in every community who, with access to the Internet, the knowledge commons and a makerspace, could copy, modify and invent technologies for tackling their own communities’ most pressing needs, from rainwater harvesting and passive solar housing to agricultural tools, medical equipment and, yes, wind turbines. What’s still missing, however, is a dedicated global digital platform enabling them to collaborate with researchers, students, enterprises and NGOs worldwide to develop free open-source technologies.”?

Instead of building one single platform, we argue that it is more effective to build a distributed network of thousands of connected hyper-specialized communities of practice. Solving climate change is too overwhelming of an issue, but creating a connected network of hundreds of dedicated “supermind hubs” – each one of them related to a topic like the prevention of food loss, the restoration of coral reefs, bio-based alternatives to pesticides etc. - is much more tangible and effective.??

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For this approach to work, we need the following approach. For any specific challenge:?

1. CURATE the most relevant knowledge: techno-commercial solutions, best practices, knowledge articles. It is important to emphasize practical knowledge, focused on the HOW (to solve issues), not just the WHAT/WHY.?
2. CONNECT the right people to the relevant knowledge: bring practitioners, researchers and other key stakeholders together, allowing easy and fast access to the relevant knowledge.??
3. COLLABORATE: drive collaboration on one single platform, ensuring the accumulation and reuse of shared knowledge, hence avoiding duplication of efforts, and encouraging building on each other's ideas. Incentivize collaboration through norms or rewards (intrinsic such as reputation, or extrinsic such as monetary payments)?

In doing so, these supermind hubs will generate a superior intelligence, emerging from the network of knowledge and skills that exists below today’s comparably superficial web-based interactions.??

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?A Supermind in The Making?

?Last year, we were introduced to the team at IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature). They have multiple projects related to waste management on small islands, have amassed amazing learnings on the topic – which, upon their own admission, they do not share effectively enough internally at IUCN, let alone with all professionals around the world working on this issue.??

During our first meeting, we told them about the post we had received from Corfu, asking for ways to improve a broken waste management system. They acknowledge that they have a role to play much beyond their own projects. So, we have been working on a platform that provides relevant knowledge, solutions, best practices and community engagement features – open to everyone in the world who works on this topic. You can find the demo version of the platform here .??

?Imagine what you could do with a common, scaled up infrastructure that powers thousands of these supermind hubs. We could indeed solve today’s problem with tomorrow's intelligence.??

#supermind #collectiveintelligence #ubuntoo #environment #IUCN

Gianni Giacomelli