Reverse Engineering The Future To Create The Businesses, Communities, Planet, And Life We Want

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The Unusual Gatherings Talk Show

A few years ago, we decided to set up camp at a crossroads where people from a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures, and professions happen to walk by.

We invite them to stop, rest a bit, and join our conversations — most of them gladly do.

We call these encounters Unusual Gatherings.

Co-Host: Dr. Jonathan Reichental, Author of 'Smart Cities for Dummies' and Former CIO of the City of Palo Alto

Guest: Gil Friend, Author of 'The Truth About Green Business' and 'The Green Business Field Guide' and the First Chief Sustainability Officer at the City of Palo Alto

Hosts: Sean Martin | Marco Ciappelli

Reverse Engineering The Future To Create The Businesses, Communities, Planet, And Life We Want

Regardless of a project's scope, there is always an excellent strategy to evaluate feasibility and strategy to accomplish it: Reverse Engineering.

Our guest today draws upon the 1969 NASA Apollo 11 moon mission, suggesting that we should always start with the end result we want, and not the one we think is "possible." If we can envision what that looks like as if it was actually completed successfully, we can act by reverse engineering that result, working back to the starting points of definition, design, and planning.

With this model, the impossibilities don't magically disappear, but they do surface in a way that can be seen and contextualized in a manner that allows us to measure and value each milestone as we deal with it. By working backward, roadblocks can be removed to ensure the previous steps can arrive in a safe place that has already been prepared for success.

From building a simple mobile app to creating a valuable business, a smart connected community, city, or planet, if our goal is an environment where humanity can thrive safely and sustainably, then we should look up at the sky, and reverse engineer that vision to make it happen.

Because we must, we can, and we should.

“What do we really care about? What's the world that will enrich us and have us thrive? What does that look like? And then ask the question, how do we get there? And then ask the question, how do we do that with the least trade-off? I think the thinking stack has to be flipped and done in a different way.”
— Gil Friend

“In the private sector, as Gil so well articulated, it's about maximizing value and giving the biggest return back to the shareholders. That's not the motivation of a city, although it’s analogous with, perhaps, giving value to the community. You're trying to take tax dollars and give back in a way that optimizes that.”—Jonathan Reichental

Enjoy this conversation and share your thoughts with us.
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