MBA programs prepare leaders for the corporate and non-profit worlds, and are now under fire by various quarters for the failures and foibles of Gall (Wall) St. After teaching Leadership in MBA programs for the past couple of decades, it’s become clear that people do not get any expert knowledge or skills in MBA programs. They do not come out with expert competencies in marketing, engineering, information systems, finance, or economics.

So what should be the deliverables in these programs? Simply 3 things: Students should be able to:

1. Know what questions to raise when interacting with any experts in these disciplines
2. Know what kinds of expertise to bring into executive level conversations, and when
3. Know how have enough discipline-specific literacy to understand the answers the questions they raise

How can we make it possible for neighborhoods and regions to grow entrepreneurs who practice crafts of products now only available in big box stores. We’re talking about common consumer products like: cosmetics, shoes, handbags, sports and musical equipment, cleaning products, linen goods and clothes. These are already being offered, but how do we support more small businesses?

If we do, then we have whole new trade alternatives to students not wanting to get a 90K PhD to work for a 40K salary, as cultivate local living economies.

What will be the future of ancient aboriginal and wisdom traditions that speak about how we live in the world, how we relate to existential issues and our place in the universe? Will they continue or be replaced by new generations of myths?

It may be important for future generations to discover their own myths and create their own sense of meaning, but there will always be archetypal themes that will endure because they speak to the human experience.

Luciano Passuello talks about 5 thinking traps to avoid, especially applicable to group thinking in futuring:

The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts

The Status Quo Trap: Keeping on Keeping On

The Sunk Cost Trap: Protecting Earlier Choices

The Confirmation Trap: Seeing What You Want to See

The Incomplete Information Trap: Review Your Assumptions

What if funders in regions aligned on funding principles, within a shared and deep understanding of the capacity and possibility landscape? This would lead to less fragmentation, isolation, and competition among funded groups, programs, initiatives, and institutions.

Funding principles are statements of vision and impact that funders are committed to achieving with their investments.

So where does P&G go for new ideas that stubbornly resist the rigors of inside experts? Naturally, to the biomimicry experts at the San Diego Zoo. As it turns out, there are better new ideas outside than inside the industry where problems are defined.

Thinking outside the box means thinking outside your expert space. Do not consult experts in your field for the intractable problems; consult those outside who have handled problems with parallel patterns. Chances are, someone or nature has already solved your problem. Why should we constrain ourselves in the hubris of our own field’s arrogance that we would even frame the problem right in the first place?

When we seek innovations, we need to stop asking “what kinds of ideas” we need to make that happen, and instead start asking about “what kinds of talent” we need to make that happen. Innovations don’t come from ideas, they come from talent.

When adults in career and life transitions struggle with lack of clarity, is it because of some deficiency on their part, or the community’s failure to communicate what would help it thrive more fully?

How do we position and engage talented retired seniors as core figures in early childhood education? How do we make them central to the wholistic learning, and playing, that will prepare next gen’s for lifelong learning and connection in their communities? How do we leverage them in history-based learning in all disciplines and media, and by the way, have the very young teach elders shameless fear of technology?

Violent crime is down in this past year, good news indeed. Now, let’s divert public moneys typically used to study crime and its causes and instead use it instead to study success so it can be replicated and scaled.