 We were told that a free market principle would allow money to flow freely into all the right places for all the right reasons. But actually one third of the wealth of this world is now held in offshore tax havens. The model doesn't work. And what we've seen is since the global financial crisis and even before that, the middle class is stored around the world. That's really, really dangerous. It's politically and socially dangerous. And even when I wrote No Straight Lines in 2011, I said, we are at the adaptive edge of our industrial society and we face Houston a major design challenge. And if we don't fix it, then something really, really bad is going to happen, which is why the book was called No Straight Lines, right? Making sense of our nonlinear world. And here we are in a very, very nonlinear world. So we either get on with the business of regenerating planet and societies, respecting diversity and all of those things, or in fact, actually, we don't actually have a very good outcome. Alan Moore is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Alan is the author of The Best Selling Due Designed, Why Beauty is Key to Everything. And he has written a new and timely business book for our post-COVID world, Due Build. And I've got it right here. Business is changing. The single pursuit of profit at any cost has been replaced by a desire to build companies that create a better future and enjoy commercial success. Alan is a designer and business innovator on a mission to help businesses discover their own unique beauty. He mentors teams and individuals, delivers leadership programs, and advises clients on regenerative business practices. He has collaborated with companies and institutions all over the world, including PayPal, Microsoft, Xero, and MIT. Due Design as his old book came out in 2016 with over 20,000 copies sold. He has spoken at South by Southwest, The Hay Literary Festival, and the Due Lectures. In Due Build, the new book, Alan draws on his years of research and some of the most pioneering and progressive businesses on the planet. By speaking to their purpose-driven founders, he discovers that it is possible to lead with generosity, have a transparent supply chain, design products and services that are considered and joyful, and create a company culture where individuals flourish. By sharing these wonderful examples of best practice, more invites us to create a different type of business, one that will regenerate and restore our economy and our environment and our civilizations. Alan, it is so wonderful to have you here on the show. Thanks for coming. Great, Mark. Thanks a lot for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I am too. This is great. So just for my listeners, our past should have crossed many times, but we have a mutual friend, Harold Nighthart of Emlove and Future IO Institute. He and I travel and do different things all over the world, and somehow we're connected through him. You spoke at his Emlove events in 2009 at the castle. I don't think I was there in 2009. That was still the old castle, the kind of very, very roughing at the camping type of a castle area. I came into Harold a little bit later with the Heilegedum castle, which is up on the North Shore of Germany. But somehow, and we've been at South by Southwest as well, but somehow I think our past crossed. I had both of your books and as minute that in March is when your new book, Do Build, came out, immediately bought it, got it, read it. I also follow Paul Hawken a lot as well. And so I saw that he'd given you a nice mention in the beginning kind of that unbelievable read, but it's also very much in alignment with what I've read in the past. Paul Hawken's original books are very much in the same movement, very beautiful, a lot about regenerative business, a lot about doing things differently with purpose and happiness and beauty. Having said all this of how we kind of came together and came into this, you've been doing this and I don't know if people can gather that out of my introduction in your biography for a while. You've been on this path and you originally told me you met Harold through the mobility and innovation and kind of thinking about business and other ways and what's the better future that we can design for ourselves. Has any of that helped you to deal with this craziness, this crazy time we've been in pandemics? I mean, you wrote a book during this time and just launched it this month. So how has that been? I mean, I think with everybody, it was a real shock to the system, the pandemic, the lockdown. I mean, I can remember actually when we first went into lockdown and I went to the supermarket and I was kind of, I don't know, I was pretty cool with it all. I can remember sort of going to go in the front door of the supermarket and then all of a sudden this guy says, no, you have to go around the side. And I went, oh yeah, of course, or I understand that one-way system. And I remember walking around the side and this was a big supermarket car park. And then I kind of just pan from left to right to see how long the queue was that was going all around. And that was like, that was a really weird moment where the world looks the same, but you know that it's tilted fundamentally on its axis. And I can remember going into the shop and I mean, this was all before, you know, we had to wear masks and all the rest of it, but social distancing was there. And just watching how people were reacting to each other, you know, some people were getting way too close, some people were running down the other end of the aisle, you know, and I can remember coming out of that and going, oh my God, the world has changed. And I made a big joke about it. I mean, psychologically, it was really tough. And I can't really put my finger on why. All I can say is that I live in a small village just outside of Cambridge. Cambridge is a stone store from where I live pretty much. But if I walk out of the village on the left hand side, I can walk into the fen, into the countryside, and you know, my walks are like two to two and a half hours every day. My God, you know, if I didn't have that as a sort of opportunity, then to do that, I don't know why I would have done to be honest with you. And that said, I think that I don't know, I kind of hear some other people's stories and things. And as much as it was really challenging for us, I kind of saw a look back and think, well, maybe I'm a bit more resilient than I realised I am, you know, and yes, in the middle of all of that, we were busy working on the book, perhaps in some respects, that was, you know, that was a savior, because it was something to really focus on. I mean, the work was already well advanced in its development and its writing. But, you know, Miranda, who's my publisher, the do book, fantastic human being, fantastic publisher. You know, we really kind of worked very hard to create a great product, which I'm very proud of actually. So yeah, there you go. That was that was that was locked out for the last 12 months. Did did. So obviously, you saw this, this this going on and kind of had this form of resilience. I know, like in certain places where it doesn't snow that often, the first snowstorm, everybody's kind of like running off the roads, learning to drive again for the first time in snow or kind of, you know, there's this first sign for the for the pandemic. For many of us, this is like a total shock that people don't know what to do. Do you run and buy out all the toilet paper, all the the preservatives and canned goods, you know, there's there, you know, what door do you go in? Do you have to wear a mask? Social distancing? There's all these new things. But there are some models. And this is kind of where in some respects, I'm leading you in both of your books. One, you talk about craftsmen, designers, people who build businesses and products and things that are just have purpose and beauty in them, and they're well thought out and they're, they're, they're, yeah, they make a profit on them, but they're designed for a much greater purpose. They're, they're designed in a different way. And with that thinking in those models in mind, did, did you, is there, is there a model that we could have been dealing with or living either regenerative or sustainable models that really are better apt at, at helping you whether such type of situations, whether it's pandemics or Black Lives Matters or Brexit or inaugurations, whatever it is, or, or do you, did you not really realize that or what are your thoughts or feelings on that? Well, I mean, I've helped that point for you for a very long period of time. And yeah, I mean, my, you know, the work breaking that down in terms of what you're, what you're asking and exploring is, is that I've always described myself as a designer, as well as a business innovator, but I've also described myself as a craftsman. You know, my, my journey into that was through book design. And, you know, we talk about the, the holy trinity of the hand, the heart and the mind of the craftsman. So that means that your work is meaningful, you're very engaged with the work you do, it gives you purpose, and actually a lot more things than that in terms of the rewards of the work that you are creating and how you're working. But equally, this principal idea for me, which is the craftsman, craftswoman, craftsperson, their work is in service to the greater good, their work is to all society, you know, and that to me is like, whether you're baking bread, you're making books, you know, the traditional acts of the craft, but in a sense, this work was actually for more than just a profit in many senses, a form of sharing, your skill set is a form of sharing. And I'd always really held on to that. And as I sort of moved from, you know, as a young man, that world into the world of graphic design, and then into advertising, and then got known as someone that take on from very challenging innovation projects and a whole variety of different ways as the digital world kind of, you know, really started to sort of, you know, disrupt the analog world. I mean, right back in the sort of, you know, the middle nineties and things, that that idea of growth and exponential growth really kind of clash with my with my value set. There's also a wider health belief in terms of how we see each other as human beings, how we see each other in terms of our sense in the world. And those things were also really important to me. And so I sense that that that work then naturally flowed into this idea of beauty, which we can talk about in terms of how that came about and what that means. But the word regeneration is very much in there as an idea and the principle. And I suppose what made me deeply sad was is that the pandemic is a manmade creation. Now, some folks may want don't want to disagree with that. But the reality is, is that in the exponential cutting down of our rainforests, forest planets, whatever, the way that we found the land, we are putting ourselves up against a whole set of, you know, viruses and whatever else, which will be deeply damaging to us. We've been disrespectful of the planet for growth for growth's sake. And I've always said that, you know, the pursuit of profit all in any cost will ultimately cost us everything if we're not careful. And I really hope that the pandemic has asked people to look into the abyss and just see how bad it can be if we're not respectful of each other or the planet that we that we live on. And I think the other part to that speaking purely from a British perspective is watching our leadership in government not listen to the science. You know, the Cheltenham race course when a quarter of a million people were, you know, meant to invited to go to watch a bunch of horses run around a field, because that was good for business shows to me the idiocy of how this has been approached. And so what you've got is an ideology about growth and about profit and economics, which means that we've damaged our economy much, much more by what we've what we've done, rather than actually sitting down and saying, so what do we need to do to create a more regenerative or resilient response to the pandemic that has far widened, you know, wide wide ranging, but absolutely, I think that we need a massive reset in terms of what is growth, what is profit, what do we measure surely well-being should be part of that conversation, you know, so the sort of values and the metrics of what I call a regenerative economy really needs to be fundamentally rethought. I know that I'm not the only one asking that question at the moment. In both of your books and specifically, you know, and do designed about beauty, beauty and everything. I really like the way you write, because you're talking, you're giving us good examples of businesses who've applied it and ways that it's going positive. And it's all science-based, it's fact-based, but you don't go into more about the evangelizing or the preaching about the sustainability and this reason because of that, really, it's more about here's these beautiful examples and the returns that you get as the way I read it. Maybe I have a different lens when I read it instead of harping on it. We need to do this, you know, in the doom and gloom, it's more about these positive, beautiful stories and what comes out of them and the different works that I like a lot, but I'd love for you to kind of tell us a little bit more about the beauty and that process and then we'll go into the next book. Well, I mean, I think that, I mean, the story comes about from a very personal journey. I mean, I'd sort of, you know, I'd ended up, I started off in book design and ended up sort of, you know, running some, as I say, some massive, you know, big innovation projects around the world, developing products and services, helping people, big companies think strategically in terms of how they move forward, helping to bring those to the world, even developing patent strategies for a bunch of different companies, one which ultimately was sold to Apple. And, and then all of a sudden, I kind of, when this work is not making sense to me and I feel a long way from home is the best way that I can describe it. And the story, which I've told many times now, but I'm very happy to tell again, because this is where it all starts, because I want to make the point that this is not something that I thought was a, you know, cool hip and groovy thing to do, was actually being in that very lost place and asking that question of myself. You know, I end up as a seven year old boy on a beach in Cornwall on a family holiday. And my mum was always a very kind of stressed and anxious person, I think that was partly to do with family childhood and trauma. Also, I think that she was an anxious person, perhaps anyway, and she was so worried, you know, how do we put food on the table every day. And it was just sheer joy as I remember this memory of watching almost almost completely different human being, being this carefree, you know, fun loving person on the beach. And unfortunately, you know, when my mum got very anxious, it made me very anxious. So there was a very kind of, you know, it's a very tight knit kind of thing going on there. My father was a beautiful human being, he never earned a huge amount of money his life, but he always worked, he worked with his hands. And he was a very kind and loving human being, always up for a laugh, always up for a game, always playful, always there for us. And so to watch them two together was great like that with my brothers and my sisters. You know, that was all wonderful. And I remember I was playing with my toys. And I thought, you know, I'm at one with those that I love the most. I'm at one of myself. And as I got older, there appears in my life where I certainly wasn't at one with myself. And, you know, I've traveled at times a very dark path and a shadow land. And I think actually, that has been a gift to me now. And I thought, and I'm at one with the natural world. And the only way that I can describe that oval integral sense all those things is beauty. And then I really sat with that. And I thought, that is, that is, that is the call for me to go home. That's what I need to look for. And, and exploring it within do design in terms of what did that mean as a human being, as a spiritual person, as a creative person, as a maker. What does that mean in terms of my experience of the projects that I've run, the way that one leads? What does it mean in terms of the moral compass of the purpose of business and why businesses should be in this world? And I think that that to me was a real reclaiming of, you know, when I was working with, when I was working with, you know, artists designing catalogs or books for them or whatever it was I was doing, essentially, I felt I was really bringing something of value into the world that was sharing that idea and that insight, or whatever it was. And I also had seen, you know, in my journey, what happens again, when people don't leave with generosity, when people aren't prepared to be open and compassionate, and to use empathy as part of their practice and their daily lives, to watch people suffer through the political shape of an organization or watch an organization damage itself because it's so arrogant. It doesn't believe that actually nothing bad can happen to it. And actually what it believes is that the more it takes from its own personnel, or from the world, or from the planet, they're doing really good. And I just felt this binary way of looking at the world, you know, you're either doing good, you're a tree hugger, you know, or you're in business and you've got to, you know, be this big bad, you know, human being because that's just it's only business. And, you know, I would say to people that when you use that term, it's only business, what you're saying is, I'm actually giving myself this idea of I can do anything to anybody in the world without any form of integrity whatsoever. And to me, that is utterly unacceptable. It's and, and, and you can do the good thing, you can create the cool thing, and you can do good at the same time, you know, and if you're not in that kind of part of how we want the world to be right now, then you shouldn't be in business as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I totally agree. And that came out so clear on the journey. And also, you know, talk about bike company and axe company, and you talk about some really beautiful things there. And it's definitely one that even though we're talking about your other book, I want people to go back and get that one and definitely read it. It's available in all formats, audio, ebook, and then physical book as well. And it's a nice, I found it a nice preparation, more insight into who you are in this long journey you've taken with many different types of businesses. And you also have a plethora library of other wisdoms and knowledge that you that you have online, either interviews or your blog or your newsletter, which are really wonderful transitions on to give people the tools and the knowledge and the wisdom, but you also offer some other things that that are really nice. So if people want to go in a deeper dive and a little more substance to you, you do these nice walking discussions, walk and talk type of experience, very, very personal. And you really cater to to whatever the need the individual, but also if it's an organization or a company leader. Yeah, I mean, I think that so the walk with me is you come, you know, you come come to my house, and we'll walk out in the fan for two hours. The floor is yours, in a sense, what comes up comes up. I mean, I've written a bunch of books, these are the things I've done, you know, the framework is beauty. But actually, what I'm very interested in is, as you know, in both books, I really talk about the individual as well. And I on those walks, I really want to listen to the whole person. We are again made into silos, you know, we're a very complex, messy piece of equipment as a human being. And so those walks are a really profound deep dive into what is really going on inside somebody. And, you know, that could be, yeah, I mean, everything from talking about one's background, love, trauma, guilt, shame, struggles with maybe leadership, right through to patent strategies, innovation ideas, whatever, and what people say is that. And what's interesting is the walking is is this incredible container, it's a technology in a sense. I mean, there's a reason why there are pilgrim roots all over the world, I think. Although, you know, might be some base within a religious context, but walking is a creative exercise. When you walk with each other, you're equal, you're in synchrony with each other. There's a lot of listening that goes on. You create a really interesting container of trust. And if none of that works, you've had a really good two hour walk anyway, so you've had a bit of a workout. And lots and lots of people say to me that they've never been able to have that type of conversation with anyone quite in the same way. You know, I'm not a trained psychotherapist, I'm not a trained coach, it's just this is me. This is my lifetime's experience now as a 57 year old man. And I'm really happy to put my vulnerability on the table as well. And if whatever has happened is useful in terms of helping you reflect and move on from where you are, that would be useful. And so it is actually really important. And in that sense, I'm in service to that human being. And the most important thing is as they come away really feeling that they've really been able to explore something fundamentally important for them. I really don't mind what that is. I mean, some people want to ask me about how did I learn to write? How do I start writing? You know, what is the creative practice or process? And I'm very happy to go down that road as well, because that's been part of what I do. In terms of then the really professional stuff and with with businesses, business leaders and organizations, we are working currently on setting up a school, which is really exciting. And I've got some great conversations going on with that with some folks. But in between all of that, we run two day seminars, we run six part deep dive programs. Again, the way that I work, however, is it has to be very relational. And it has to be intimate. So I won't run a program to say 100 people, because we won't learn that way for me learning is through in a sense back to the walking thing is every time we walk, we walk out, I don't know what we're going to talk about. So each one is is a journey of inquiry. And I believe in the way that I've also written the books or the way that I approach my work is I'm not saying to people be like me. I'm not saying these are the seven habits of a highly successful person. I'm saying, here's a framework, here is a way of maybe looking at and thinking about the world. I can bring in a philosophical framework, because I believe profoundly that the way you pick up a tool is the way that you will use it in the same way, which is the language which we choose to use and the language which we choose not to use, right. And we've seen that a lot in both North America and in the UK and other parts of Europe where certain people have decided that they want to use a certain type of language, which is framed in anger, and is spoken with hate, and that does some profoundly bad things to people. So for me, that deep philosophical framing is really important in terms of then how we want to bring things to the world. Then there are the tools in terms of what it is we're going to make and how we're going to make it. And that to me, all of those things have to be connected up together. You can't unhitch one thing from the rest. And all of that can be achieved by using really simple, plain, but poetic language as best we can. And I think just kind of building on from that, because it comes to my mind now. Somebody once asked me when Dude Design first came out and they said, you know, what does the language of beauty give the world sustainability? You know, and it's like they got me in a corner and I said, well, you know, it's really simple. We all, as human beings, understand the universal language of beauty. Not that it's a thought language. It's a felt language. Beauty is about joy. It's about wonder. It's about transcendence. It's about really understanding the fundamental difference between doing the right thing or the wrong thing, doing the beautiful thing. It's the oxygen. It's the lifeblood of what a better life can look like. And that is why when we walk out into the natural world, it speaks to us. Because what that says is when that grass is green or the flowers are blooming or the sea is kind of looking at you glimmering and glinting, all of that is saying to you is life can thrive here. And I said the language of sustainability is a completely different language and it's a totally different metaphor. I said, you know, I'm a musician and I can play what is called a sustaining note on my guitar, but I can't hold that note forever. And so what you're saying to me is that I'm hanging on by my fingernails. You're telling me I've got to stop doing stuff. You're telling me that, you know, my life as I've known it is over, that I can't have fun, that it can't be joyful, you know, and it's got this kind of moral kind of finger pointing thing, which I said makes people feel really uncomfortable. Now, I said I'm a fully signed up member of, you know, what we need to do. But I said we have got to describe a better world for people. And I said, you know, that is where I think sustainability is this abstract metaphor for a lot of people. And what we've got to do is we've got to be profoundly good storytellers. And to make those stories feel really rooted in I can participate in this journey of profound transformation. I have a role to play. It doesn't matter whether I'm one or whether we're many, it's how can I contribute. And these are the things to me, which I think are really essential, which changes the framework of sustainability, and then this world of creating something which is more beautiful. And that's what I think we need to reclaim. Absolutely. I love it. So your website is beautiful.business. So you live and breathe beautiful and beauty and every worse. I have a good friend, Tim Laborrecht, he wrote the book, Business Romantic, you probably know him as well, from Hamburg, Germany, but what lived in San Francisco for a long time in California. That whole principle or those ways of looking at the world through a different lens of who you work with, how you work, what the beauty is and all you do in daily life is really, I hate to say, but it's a successful systemic type of model for life. It's one that really also goes back to the golden rule, treat people and planet how you would like to be treated, you know, and the fruits of your labors and the fruits of that tree, you'll know, you know, from the fruits you can tell what that business is and does. And I love that the way you express that and how that is. In your second book, and even in the first, you touch more and do build this philosophy or principle of that model is really or that framework is really regenerative or regeneration. Am I correct by that? I mean, that's kind of, there is a framework or a way of thinking in that way that that sets the tone. Absolutely. So the way that I kind of unpack that for people, which is the laws of the universe are described to be beautiful Einstein's theory of relativity, Paul Dirac's theory of how subatomic particles will dance with each other over huge distances and things. And in fact, actually, the artist, Anselm Keefer said, you know, when God created the world, you know, or when a star explodes, you know, he doesn't waste a single atom. And what I kind of argue is that nature, within all of that, has been running the longest R&D project we've ever known. And in fact, her purpose is to support the needs of all life. And, you know, as I said, Anselm sort of made it in his own words, but nature doesn't waste a single atom. And they just got a very long horizon line. And, you know, if we want to be around for a little bit longer, let's just say, perhaps an eternity, because nature's horizon line, as I said, is very long. And she's worked out, then we've got to start learning from that playbook. We've got to work from the playbook of regeneration. You know, nature doesn't go and plunder a single species. It doesn't go and plunder anything in the world where it completely destroys it. You know, it works, as we know, as a very, very complicated ecosystem from the very, very large to the very, very small. Nature doesn't, you know, nature understands the limits of growth. You know, if she didn't, then we just wouldn't be here, I don't think. And so we've got to redefine what that idea of, you know, growth means. And that's where I think this question of the role of business within that mindset has fundamentally, you know, got to change. There's in the book, I talk about the 19th century critic and social thinker, John Ruskin. And he kind of said, look, if we want to focus on what will sustain us for an eternity, perhaps we need to rethink about what we create a gift bestowed upon the world, you know. And with businesses, what I say therefore is that you've got to reflect on what type of world you're trying to make, build and create, you know, and consider, reconsider, you know, the social purpose of making, you know, whether it's a vineyard, a bank, an energy company, a farm, a trainer brand, you know, how does that matter to the world? And they're the sort of fundamental sort of parts of the framing at the beginning of why I titled the book, How to Make a Leader Business the World Needs, where the emphasis is on the word need, as opposed to the word wants. I absolutely love that. And so I have been speaking about regeneration, mainly regenerative agriculture for a long, long time. And in the past few years, it's moved more into regenerative organics and regenerative practices. But just in, since the end of 2020, and this year alone, I've already given 17 different talks about regenerative economies, regenerative medicine, regenerative capitalism. There is a new book called Green Swans by John Elkington, fabulous book also talks about regenerative capitalism. Paul Hawkins books, natural capitalism and others also have that regenerative principle in it. And they're fairly older books as well. But there are a lot of people when they hear this, and I'll tell you, one big organization that I spoke with this year at their conferences in Yokohama, Japan and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in Thailand was sustainable brands. And their theme for this entire year of their talks is on regenerative and regeneration, obviously. But the organization, those brands that were coming to the table, they're like, okay, so we went from sustainability to corporate social responsibility to environmental social governance. And now we're hearing this new word regenerative. And all of them looked at me and they said, okay, Mark's going to talk about regenerative agriculture. That's what he's here to talk about. No, I absolutely was not there. It was about regenerative economies, that whole philosophy, that framework of regeneration. It's the endless re-imperatives almost that tie into this closed system circular economy, one planet living framework of regenerative thinking and practices and way of viewing the world and you so eloquently just said that in your kind of summation of the frameworks that you use in your discussion and working with these businesses. But that leads me to this bigger overarching question. And I kind of want to tie it into this global citizen. We're all distant cousins type of philosophy. Do you feel like you're a global citizen? And how would you feel about a world where there were no nations and borders or divisions of humanity or species one from another? And more so, do you believe that this regenerative operating system, this regenerative framework is one that can work for the entire world? Well, absolutely. I think the regenerative framework needs to work for the entire world. We've seen the damage of what an extractive economy does. And in many respects, you know, I think that I've been thinking a lot about race just recently for a variety of different reasons. We in Britain cannot come to terms with our colonial past. And I was watching a program on the TV yesterday about the Black Power movement here in the UK. It appalls me at how these people were asked to come from, we're talking Windrush now, to come from the colonial islands of the Caribbean to help Britain rebuild after the war. And what they experienced was appalling. That's an extractive philosophy and mindset. And of course, America has its own unique problems because it will not deal with the reality of its slavery and its past as a consequence of that. In terms of myself, I'm only an Englishman when England play rugby at an international level. That's kind of when I sort of, you know, would wear the red rose. But, you know, I've been gifted with in my lifetime to travel extensively around the world. And what I see is that all human beings want the same things. You know, they want a roof over their head. They want to feel that they can turn on the taps and there's clean water that runs, there's heating, there's enough provision for them, essentially. And they want to feel that there's progress in their lives, whatever that may look like. And of course, that's all kind of, you know, wrapped up in different types of cultural ways of sort of looking at the world. But I can tell you that my lens is really shifted, you know, quite early on in my life, having sort of, you know, lived and worked abroad extensively. It's quite interesting how things again, you know, changed quite profoundly, but they're very subtle. So I am a citizen of the world. And, you know, Theresa May, our ex-prime minister said, you know, those sorts of people are citizens of nowhere. And I completely think that's a, you know, again, that's politics playing out. And I think that there is a very different type of generation, I mean, not my age, but, you know, half my age, where they see the world fundamentally in a very, very different type of way. You know, some of us are just trying to do our best to be better custodians of maybe what comes next and to sort of, you know, plow that furrow. That's it. You know, place and culture are important for people. And in the same way that, you know, nature thrives because she is diverse. We have to celebrate that diversity. What we should do is to be open to the idea that there are different cultures and customs. There are different religions. And I think the left alone to our own devices, people will work out how to rub along, you know, shoulder, cheek by jaw. I mean, come to London. All right, it's not perfect, but there are over like 270 languages spoken in London on a daily basis. Our world has been enriched by people traveling and moving and settling in different parts of the world in terms of writing, food, music, you know, you name it. And I'm sorry, America, but, you know, Steve Jobs came from Syria and he was an orphan, right? So if he wasn't brought there, you wouldn't have apple perhaps. And people are very myopic in those things for a variety of different reasons. Lastly on that, what I think I'd like to say is that also back to this idea of an extractive economy, we were told that a free market principle would allow money to flow freely into all the right places for all the right reasons. But actually one third of the wealth of this world is now held in offshore tax havens. The model doesn't work. And what we've seen is since the global financial crisis, and even before that, the, you know, the middle class is stalled around the world. That's really, really dangerous. It's politically and socially dangerous. And even when I wrote No Straight Lines in 2000, and we'll publish in 2011, I said, we are at the adaptive edge of our industrial society. And we face Houston a major design challenge. And if we don't fix it, then something really, really bad is going to happen, which is why the book was called No Straight Lines, right? Making sense of our nonlinear world. And here we are in a very, very nonlinear world. So we either get on with the business of regenerating planet and societies, respecting diversity, and all of those things. Or in fact, actually, we don't actually have a very good outcome is what we're looking at. And I don't like to be a doonster and a gloomster. You know, as we said, what we need to do is we need to say, there's a great universe. There's a great economy that we can create, but we have to frame it within those principles of regeneration, which goes right back, as we know, to, you know, indigenous First Nation, you know, philosophies and ideas of the idea of equilibrium and respect and reciprocity, reciprocity, sorry, I struggled with that word, reciprocity. These are the things that we have to think about in terms of reinvigorating a world that is going to be better for all. Definitely in both of your books. And there is no doonster, gloomster at all. I feel very positive, upspent on all of it. And that's very optimistic. And there's a lot of tools and good examples that I really like. So just so my reader listeners know when they read the book, they can be, they'll be pleasantly surprised. I'm kind of taking a little bit down some negative things where we have to tickle the surface of some negativity. In what you just mentioned about the extractive, extractive economies and extractive way of thinking, you mentioned there's a limit to growth. Well, that comes from the book, The Limits to Growth on Elementals, Dennis Meadows, your grander, Steve Barons, which is considered the climate science Bible, so to say, is from MIT and written in 1972. That's this original kind of not only systems thinking, but putting the world together, getting out of this linear way of looking, getting out of the siloed approach, and seeing what's this, where are we headed based on the World Model 3 and computer modeling and stuff at all. You also, just in case my listeners aren't aware how that ties in this extractive economy and into where we're going with this regenerative model, but also in do build, you mentioned the civilization frameworks, and you don't really get into it a lot, but I do. I kind of want to touch on the existing models that we have in our world, whether in there in the US or in the United Kingdom or different, they're not working for us anymore. We have more disease unrest, we have more strife amongst each other, and politically we're disappointed that our governments, our politicians are not delivering the futures that we would like, and that we're kind of trying to find some other models. The civilization frameworks that we have right now are kind of, and I don't know, this might be a question for you. Do you feel that there is this disease in the current civilization frameworks that we see and we feel on our planet now that they're on the verge of strife or conflict or collapse, that they're just not working for us all around the world as global citizens? And I guess the example I would take is there's well over 20 different civilization framework models that have existed in the past, early antiquity, Mesopotamia, Incas, Aztec, Mayas, Greeks, Romans, on and on, and all but two of those 20 civilization frameworks collapsed because of ecological and environmental collapse and we're just left with their ruins. How can we not feel with a crazy, sorry, shit that's going on around the world with different frameworks that we couldn't be, because we have computers that we're not going to face a collapse or that we don't need some kind of a better model to transition to? I could get more into that discussion with you, definitely. Well, I mean, I think that, I mean, for sure, I mean, I think that you again, you know, right back to writing those straight lines and the seven years that was the sort of research, you know, up to that, you could really see the damage that was being done to people by the destruction of their communities and the way in which actually that then had a huge psychological impact on people and the nature of work on top of that, because I was very interested in the rise of fundamentalism and I made that in its broadest possible spectrum. And, you know, what happens is if people can't create meaningful identity and a sense of belonging within the world that they exist in, then they become machines in the ghost called life. And that is in part what we have seen today, because that is driven through fear and anger. And this is where we need a very different type of leadership, which is based on an essential kind of component of nurture of a society. You know, the reality is human beings are designed to work collaboratively together. I mean, that is that is our that is our design. As much as people might think that, you know, there's a great there's a great story, actually, when when Ali Muhammad Ali was being interviewed by Michael Parkinson, it was a very famous talk show host, you know, again, back in, you know, back in the day, and I think I was a 10 year old boy at the time, and Ali and Parkie got on very well with each other. And he said to Ali said, Ali, you write poetry, don't you know, he said, Yes, I do. He said, what's your shortest poem? He went, me, we. And I just thought that was great. And that links actually into Carl Jung's work, which is I need to be to truly be I, you know. And what we've got currently, however, in terms of your, you know, your civilization framework is the other ring. Politicians are using the other ring to lay blame, and to create victimhood in people, which is catastrophic in what it's doing. Because all they want to do is get into power. And that in a sense is why at the moment I've said, the means by which we transform our world is through the process of business. It's not through political leadership. I think ultimately, we need both. I'd like for there to be both. But I think that for me, yeah, I mean, you know, just you know, Jared Diamond, who wrote the book collapse and guns during the steel, right? And there's a great quote, which is when civilizations fall, the only thing that is left is art. And so for me, I suppose, yeah, the reframing is, is what is the contribution that you are going to make to the world? You know, the first thing I want to think about, how do you serve society? What is the societal interest that you are currently serving? So you could say, for example, we need a company like Uber, we need a service like Uber, but we don't need a business run like Uber is run because they're not serving societal interest in terms of contribution in the way that they are going about those things. Now, a friend of mine says that's fixable. And I said, well, it shouldn't be fixable in the first place, it shouldn't have to go to the high core in London, you know, to say that actually these guys are, you know, it's a form of indentured slavery, basically, right? We've got to think about our social impact, our environmental impact. We've got to move from, you know, this idea of exponential growth to understanding that, you know, there needs to be a circular go. So what are we measuring? You know, are we measuring carbon capture? Are we measuring regeneration? Are we measuring well being, which is actually part of what New Zealand does as part of its KPI in terms of its, its way that it evolves and develops, which is why I put them in the book, because they are a business, they are administered, people are paid to administer the nation's state, right? And to think about those things. And what I'm saying is, is that that civilization framing needs to be based on a very different type of KPI, key performance indicator. That whole idea about moving from short term to long term. This is also, I think, a really fundamental problem. So if you look at, say, VC, for example, innovation, you're looking at funds, which are say, you know, 10 years maximum in terms of their horizon line. And there's one of the guys that I interviewed in the book, Jan Wurtzbacher, who set up Climeworks, you know, which are building these incredible machines to suck huge quantities of carbon dioxide out of the year, you know, billions of tonnes, because that's what we need to do. He said, all of our money has come from private individuals because their horizon line is completely different. You cannot build a regenerative business on a 10 year programme, right? And that to me is also very important. And what we've got is, is a political system pretty much around the world, which is not prepared to actually entrust the idea that you could be laying foundations for the greater good of all society that you are in service to over, say, you know, a 25 year, 50 year period or 100 year period, or kind of whatever. But these are the things, the sort of the reconfiguring that I think that we need. And we need to go back to the idea of really, you know, community is important. Again, the conversation I was having with someone the other day in the States, I mean, I've travelled extensively to Americans, you know, no offence, but in terms of the, you know, I think we were talking about, I don't know, the economy there and I've just got a picture of a massive Walmart in my head. I've got a picture of a massive Walgreens, you know, but they still talk about Main Street. But it's like, these things are really important in terms of the fabric of what makes community work and thrive at a micro scale. And again, back to the idea of cultures. What do we think about culture? How do we nurture them, rather than actually how do we create division through them? And these are sort of the framing things that I think are very important of what we look at. And I think finally, I mean, in terms of governance for business, it's like, you've got to really think about maybe how you set your organization up. Of course, B Corp is popular, but there's lots and lots of other types of organization where actually, you can say we will, you know, ensure the sovereignty of our organization and its integrity is protected. Because there will be some folks which will want to come along and say, I'm sorry, but it's just only business. And they won't have your best intentions at heart when they say that. I know that for a fact, for sure. Absolutely. Does that answer your question? Absolutely. It answers my question. And you brought up that so nicely that there's ingrained in the core business models or vision of an organization. It's really not only these regenerative principles or framework, but it's also the fact that these organizations are like an organ. You know, there are multiple parts of this organism, an organ, organs of an organism, so to say, but that they are addressing a lot around planetary services or doing things to leave the planet or their reach of environment that they touch or their services better than they found it type of type of thinking and principles, which I really see in that. And I don't want to, I mean, we've teased quite a bit on your book. So and it's not a hard or difficult read. It's not, it's not too thick, but it's to the point and it's concise. And at the end, there's just a beautiful manifesto. And I want to encourage everybody to go get it, to read it. I do want to ask, are you eventually also going to do an audio version of it as well? Yes. I mean, if Miranda asks me to do an audio version of DoBuild, then I will. There is an audio version of DoDesign, as you know. I mean, just to put those two things together, I mean, in DoDesign, I talk about the philosophy of Inge, because beauty is a verb, right? Not a noun, because that describes the animacy of life. And that language to me is really important. And I just put a list of things together, which are, you know, banging, weaving, coving, coding, loving, you know, leading, whatever, but the Inge, so that you can put beauty into every part of your everyday life in a whole variety of different ways. And that's where, you know, I want people to configure themselves, which is, it starts with me. It starts with me on the inside, but actually then I can bring that to the outside in a whole variety of ways. It is absolutely important. Then with the manifesto of re, you know, it's back to that idea of re-everything. So the re-imagining, the re-engineering, the redesign, the remaking, all of these things in the manifesto, I'm saying you can be part of doing that. And that's where we start to get into a movement and have some momentum and energy where that is happening. I mean, you know, Paul Hawkin, as you said, who wrote the most amazing review of the book. And I have to say, actually, the story was, you know, Paul and I sort of know each other. I wouldn't say we're great friends, but you know, we've known each other for a while. And I asked him whether he would look at the manuscript and give me his thoughts. And, you know, he said he was incredibly busy, but sent it anyway. And then one Saturday morning, actually, I was out in the out in the Fen walking in my phone pings. And it's an email from Paul. And I read what he wrote. And I have to say that I kind of teared up a little bit, because it meant so much to me that he wrote those really just incredible words. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting a bit emotional now about it. That's okay, I would get emotional as well. I'm a big fan of Paul. But because and it's because of his work, his whole life and not only Smith and Hawkin tools and gardening and kind of the journey he's taken. You know, I've got two copies of the drought drawdown on my shelf, but it's just genuine beauty and business, genuine ways to make the planet a better place to draw down, to offer services, to get us to a better future. And so when someone not only recommends your book like that, but also says such beautiful things about it, I would get emotional as well, because things that he touches and and and has done in the past. And a lot of people don't know about his past books. They only know about the drawdown. And I'm like, are you insane? This this guy's been doing this for for decades. And it's just a great person. Yeah, I mean, what I want to say is also is I think the I mean, in terms of the book, as you know, there's, I put an appendix in the back of 49 businesses that I believe to be beautiful because the 50th one is you. And that's an invitation and a provocation. But as I said, I've, what I want to show is that, you know, Buckminster Fuller wrote that great book about, you know, how to fly a spaceship Earth. And I suppose I'm saying, this is another way of thinking about how we can fly our spaceships. But equally, the term, you know, you could be a country, you could be a city, you know, you could be a big business, but you could be a one man ceramicist, which is also I have in the book, because it, for me, it's that philosophy, which is, you know, Suetsu Yanagi, the very famous ceramicist, you know, talked about beauty in the everyday or William Morris, you know, founded the arts and crafts movement, which said have nothing in your house that you believe to be neither useful nor beautiful. And that, to me, is extremely important just to just to sort of make that point so that I think anyone, a bit like through design, and I wrote it to sort of, to be as open as accommodating with a universal language that people could each, you know, could get something out of this book that would help them in terms of their own, you know, journey, whatever that may be. And that, to me, was extremely important, because what I do say is that, you know, we need as many beautiful leaders and makers in this world as we can possibly get, you know, so it's not about me, it's not about, you know, the eye, it's about how can I be in service to the we, because I think we need that right now, more than we possibly can. And that in a sense was, you know, a big part of the mission of the book, yeah, do design was taking me home, and do build is really kind of going right. So now we need to get really mission focused in terms of, you know, the work that you guys are doing with your moonshot thing with the innovation, you know, we've really got to shoot for that, and we've got to be unreasonable about it. And we've got to be, we've got to defy the orthodoxy. I mean, lastly, what I would say to that also, however, is, you know, there is a real sea change happening right now. People are really starting to understand that we can't continue as business as usual. Of course, there will be some that will want to continue as business as usual, because they're powerful. And their model of extraction has worked for them. So they're not going to want to learn to use, you know, a new framework. But unfortunately, I think their days are numbered. I agree. There's a huge appetite for change. You may not really on the front pages of the National New Papers on a daily basis, because they're, you know, their business model is doom and gloom. And, you know, that sells more newspapers. But I can tell you from the work that I've done, there are some amazing people on this planet, a lot of them that are really invested in bringing the good into the world, you know. I love the companies that you listed. I'm also friends with Climeworks and one of their original sponsors and still helping them. Matter of fact, I flew in the first 100% carbon neutral Airbus converted helicopter, very experimental, into Davos 2020 with Climeworks. They're doing crazy, amazing things. And it was very, you know, so not only was it running on hydrogen jet fuel, but then it had retrofit, direct air capture thing, converting whatever emissions were to come out. So it was amazing. But there are some great organizations you have listed there. And I think that there's a lot of hope for an optimism in all this. I have a few more questions for you before we are even close to wrapping up. I mean, one of them's a little bit, I guess, the last plug for the do lectures, the do books, the do events, because this is such a great organization. I mean, I went in and looked at the events that they do, not only the types of speakers, but the environment and the beauty and the connections that you see on those people is very in line and congruent with how you function and work this very individualized, personalized in that there's this nice exchange of just the brightest minds and beautiful people as well. Can you tell us a little bit more how you got in that and how that's evolved and kind of give us more positive? Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, you know, Dave, Dave Hire and Claire, Dave and Claire, Hire are the co-founders of the do lectures and actually Dave and I go back to 2001. And actually I met him. He founded a company initially called Howies, which eventually was sold to somebody else. And I had just come back to the UK after being abroad for quite some time. We connected. I went down to see him and actually that week he was literally selling that sold their house in London and was moving down to Cardigan Bay to set up Howies. And then a while later, Dave said, look, I'm starting to do this thing called the do lectures, doers of the world inspiring others to go and do great stuff. Would you like to come and talk? And I said, of course, I'd love to come and talk. And so I went down to Cardigan Bay and I gave a talk, which was 2009, actually. I mean, that was like a long time ago. But yes, I mean, over the years, they've evolved and developed that into an amazing place. And what was interesting, I think, is when you think about constraint of design. So I think that it's about 80 people that initially went to the do lectures. And I think it was only 80 because that was the biggest tent they had available to get people in, right, which I were kind of really like. But what they realized was is the intimacy of you speakers and the people turning up to listen to the lectures became something incredibly special. And they really kept on that. And I salute Dave for doing that. And of course, you know, he went off and then set up Hyatt Denim, which has been an incredibly successful company with a great backstory, which which I which I love. And then, you know, a while later, Miranda West set up the the do book company. And it's a very simple deal, which is you only get to do a do book if you've done a do do lectures. So I'm probably very lucky that Dave invited me to come and do a do lecture back in 2009. And yeah, you know, it's a great series. I think they've built a great brand. I think it's framed with the whole idea about bringing some sort of positivity practical practical, but it's grounded stuff, you know, it's not, it's not. I mean, all of those people that write the books to give the lectures, they are all doing some really, you know, great stuff in the world. I mean, sadly, you know, they've they've not been able to run the festival for two years, they won't run it this year either, because I think David believes it's as clear that the magic is not online in the same way. The magic is now these 150 people that come to this, this farm in in Wales. And, you know, it's the time where people come together, eat together, play together, you know, all of that dialogue, that's what makes it absolutely special. And yeah, I, you know, I feel immensely privileged to be part of that of that community. You know, I can't speak highly enough of Miranda as a publisher. I mean, she's a really tough taskmaster sometimes. And, you know, there are days when, you know, as we've been working on this project, you know, that's been, that's been hard. But that's fine, because she knows that I'm absolutely committed to making the best possible products I want to make. And I know that she's absolutely committed to making the best possible product she can make. And that gives it is best chance to be out there in the world. And you've got that, again, a really personal engagement with someone working in a publishing company. And I know that not every writer gets that type of experience from their from their publisher, right? So, beautiful. So, yeah, you know, they're, they're small books, but they pack a punch, I think is what I would say for sure do. And I absolutely love them. And I have a few of the other ones as well. And they're just, they're just really wonderful. I have now my last four questions for you. This is probably the hardest one that you'll receive from me today. It's, it's actually, and I have high expectations coming from you. It's the burning question, WTF. And that's not the one we've been asking ourselves these last 12 months. It's really, what's the future? I'd like to know your vision of what's the future? Well, I'm not sure I can, I can predict that. I can say that if we are prepared to reframe our world within the concept of being regenerative and all that that means, then we have a really bright future in front of us. I do think that it could well be that things get a little bit rockier before they get better. One of the reasons why I say that is it's actually, there used to be an organization called GVN, Global Business Network. And that was founded by Stuart Brand and Peter Schwartz and some other folks. And in 1999, Peter came to Sweden where I was working at the time and gave a seminar. And for some reason, I was invited to this thing. I have no idea why I was, you know, that's back in the midst of time. But GVN was really based on this idea of deep scenario planning about the future of the world, which came out of Royal Dutch Shell and actually that came out of military planning in the Second World War. And what he said was that over the coming 20 years, there would be a war or a battle or battle between a fundamentalist view of the world and a more progressive view of the world. And even back in the day then, you know, there was already this sort of, you know, a sort of more East-West religious kind of tension that was going on. And so I put my hand up and I said, are you talking about this sort of, you know, a fundamental war between, you know, religions? And he said, no, no, no, no. He said it's not, it's about there are people in this world that want to stop where society wants to go. And they have a fundamental view of the world that they want to control it. But he said, human nature's not like that. You cannot stop its progression. And as I said, if I believe in what I said earlier in the talk, which is cooperation is our superpower, then what we do is we, at a memetic level, I think we stop, we think, and we say, and there'll be 51% of us, as opposed to 49% to say, we'd like to be around for a bit longer. What do we need to do to make that happen? And that's where I think we have an optimistic future that we can look into. You know, that's not to say it breaks my heart to see the damage that we've done to societies, to people of race and religion and to the planet. We need to grow up a little bit, I think. And leaders need to grow up in terms of actually being to lead properly. And that's not to say, well, we need to respond to the media, or whatever else we need to say, this is where we need to get to. And these are the reasons why we need to get to it. But if we do those things, and I do think we have better and more optimistic future ahead of us. These last three questions are really for sustainable takeaways from my guess. By the way, your answer was absolutely correct. You got it right. But I also see for you personally, as that answer that you gave to the question that you gave your individual, but you also gave this world perspective of what the future is. In the model, just in our discussion and what I've read in the book and what I've seen online from you, you live a very regenerative type of lifestyle. The way you do business, the way you live, is that that's your model for the future. And I think it's one that will take you very far because I consider you, for sure, among that 51%. The question is really, if there was one message, you could depart my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life. What would it be your message? I think it's a very simple one, which is how can I contribute to a better world? And what I do has to matter. So at the end of the book, there's 13 design questions that I've formulated by looking at lots of different organisations and businesses. Does it matter to the world? Does it matter to me? Does it matter to my team? Does it matter? And I call it the mattering. And that is the one thing that you really need to ask yourself because it's like when I wrote the design, that was the question I asked. And that is where the journey towards beauty started on for me. So it's a big question. Alana, what should young innovators in your field be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make a difference or a real impact? Well, I mean, I think that the question from them is how do I bring equilibrium through ecology and economy and society through the innovations that I create from start to finish? What does that mean in terms of supply chain, end product service? What does that mean as a business model, which is why Climb works as plays a principal role within the storytelling of the book because they set themselves no easy task, those two young men, to bring that transformation into the world. And I'm back to that thing about be unreasonable, be a great storyteller. You've got to be able to tell a really, really great story, simply, plainly, so that everyone gets what it is. Please don't use jargon and all of that kind of stuff. Go out there and tell a story that makes everyone to be part of your journey. That's what I would say to young innovators. Bring the good into the world. We need you. What have you experienced or learned in your journey so far in life, your professional journey or life journey that you would have loved to know from the start? I know when Nicely started this discussion, you said, you know, when I was seven years old, this vision of my family and just the happiness, the beauty that I felt. So you've been a thinker for quite some time and had some wisdom. But really, what would you have liked to know from the start? That's a really profound question. I think that to listen to your deepest, quietest, innermost voice, that is the one that speaks the loudest. And it's the one that we tend not to listen to the most sometimes when we're younger and learn to sit with that. So in a sense, in a way, I think that giving yourself, you know, even if it's only, you know, 15 minutes reflection every day or 30 minutes reflection every day, no mobile phones, no music, no nothing, you know, just sit with yourself and listen to what is being said to you because actually, you, all that you need is already within you. All of your potential, all of your creativity, is there. And actually, if you meditate and you know that what you have inside you is a vast universe, it's a massive landscape. And you're the only one which is privileged to journey over that sovereign land. So I would say, honour yourself and always say to yourself that you are good enough. And that the world needs you as you are the best self that you can be. I wish I'd known that as a younger man for sure. Yeah, that's so beautiful. That's all I have for you today. But I want to thank you for really letting us inside of your ideas and inside of a glimpse into your mind and how you think and your ideas on the book and these tools that really can be used and applied. That's all I have for you unless there's something you didn't get to let us know or say to us during our talk. No, I think I've taught myself out. That was a great conversation and I really enjoyed it, Mark. And again, thank you so much for thinking of me and inviting me on to your show. And I hope that this conversation cubes of value to your listeners. Definitely will. Thank you so much, Alan. Have a wonderful day. Thanks very much, Mel. You too.