Saturday, October 6, 2007

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge
Any scientists and great thinkers out there? Want to put your mind where your mouth is and start creating the future we all want? Check out this interesting site: The Bucky Fuller Challenge.

A Design Science Revolution
"If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on
how I am and what I do ... How would I be? What would I do?"
— Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller's prolific life of exploration, discovery, invention and teaching was driven by his intention "to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone".

Fuller coupled this intention with a pioneering approach aimed at solving complex problems. This approach, which he called comprehensive anticipatory design science, combined an emphasis on individual initiative and integrity with whole systems thinking, scientific rigor and faithful reliance on nature's underlying principles.

After decades of tracking world resources, innovations in science and technology, and human needs, Fuller asserted that options exist to successfully surmount the crises of unprecedented scope and complexity facing humanity – he issued an urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all.

Entry Criteria

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge seeks submissions of design science solutions within a broad range of human endeavor that exemplify the trimtab principle. Trimtabs demonstrate how small amounts of energy and resources precisely applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change.

Solutions should be:

  • Comprehensive — a clear demonstration of holistic systems thinking.
  • Anticipatory — projectively tracking critical trends and needs; identifying and assessing long term consequences of proposed solutions.
  • Ecologically responsible — reflective and supportive of nature's underlying processes, patterns and principles.
  • Verifiable — able to withstand rigorous empirical testing.
  • Replicable — capable of being readily undertaken by others.
  • Achievable — likely to be implemented successfully and broadly adopted.