Bradd Libby

Şanlıurfa/Haliliye earthquake February 7, 2023

A Plan for Türkiye: Recovery from this Disaster and Preparation for the Next

February 15, 2023 / By

by Çiğdem Özgen, guest contributor Şanlıurfa/Haliliye, Türkiye. 7th of February, 2023. Photo by Ömer Çörten   From the city of Gaziantep in southern Türkiye (the country formerly called ‘Turkey’), close to the epicenters of the strong earthquakes that recently killed thousands of people, it is easy to think, “it all started here.” And by “it …

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A mother hugging a baby

Oral Contraception Doubled the Sales of Ballpoint Pens (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 9)

October 25, 2022 / By

Russell Marker was a man who was good at finding answers and, in late 1941, he found in the book of a botanist friend an answer he had been seeking for a long time. Dioscorea mexicana, or the Mexican yam, is found throughout Mexico and down to Panama and can grow to several hundred pounds …

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a coffee cup filled with plastic pens, mostly Bic Cristal pens

Rocket to the Cristal (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 8)

November 2, 2022 / By

By all accounts the crowds were buzzing with excitement one day in late October 1945 at Gimbels department store, located in Manhattan near the Empire State Building, to see the shiny new “Reynolds Rocket”. With a silver-plated steel body and refillable chamber, an estimated five thousand people showed up on the day it debuted for …

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An image of a future Sri Lanka

Clean technology disruptions can springboard Sri Lanka from economic collapse to unthinkable prosperity

July 26, 2022 / By

Sri Lanka is deeply embroiled in a crisis. Fuel shortages have led to protests. Food protests have led to riots. The President fled the country and then resigned by email. A new President was just elected on Wednesday, July 20, but he is no outsider – he has been Prime Minister six times already. The …

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a woman wearing a silk kimono robe

Dropping Silk Stockings Created an Oral Health Revolution (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 7)

October 14, 2022 / By

For most of human history, it was not routine for people to brush their teeth. But by the 1960s, majorities of most Western countries had a daily oral hygiene routine. Because oral hygiene is so central to wider health, the mainstreaming of dental care had a huge impact on the global disease burden, reducing the …

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feast

The Shipping Container Disruption Helped End Famines (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 6)

October 13, 2022 / By

Images from Unsplash by Spencer Davis and Avel Chuklanov   The basics of life – energy, minerals, water, food – are not evenly distributed around the world, so peace and prosperity depend strongly on the ability to move goods and people quickly and cheaply. That’s how a seemingly obscure technology revolution starting in the mid-1950s …

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The Coming Global Fertilizer Crisis – and How to Solve it (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 5)

May 14, 2022 / By

A global food crisis is looming, with high natural gas prices driving up the cost of ammonia fertilizer and the war in Ukraine threatening this year’s crops from both there and Russia. The consequences of mishandling this crisis could be dire. Research by complexity theorist Yaneer Bar-Yam suggests that high food prices are directly connected …

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The Disruption of Slavery Unveils Fastest Path to End Today’s Wars (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 4)

March 29, 2022 / By

We are now at a crossroads in history, and no path forward looks pleasant. The war in Ukraine is killing innocent civilians, disrupting lives, and shaking the markets in energy, food and other commodities, making us wonder how we let ourselves become so complacent in trading with Russia, whose government has shown such little respect …

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How Synthetic Industries Replaced Natural Sources and Transformed the World (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 3)

March 29, 2022 / By

  When people figure out how to do something that previously only nature had done, this new technology can completely transform the possibility space for a sector while making old ways of doing things obsolete – and all in a surprisingly short period of time. While the time can be very long between when an …

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Emmanuel Macron, the President of France

France is Forgetting the Most Powerful Force in the Universe (The Pattern of Disruption, Part 2)

March 31, 2022 / By

Europe is amid an energy crisis of epic proportions, with a shortage in the supply of fossil fuels causing painfully high energy prices. And today, French President Macron wants to revitalize nuclear to solve this challenge. But if you understand the pattern of disruption, you will see why this might not be so straightforward. When …

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