If you watch closely from within the society you can see the world is in an utter  state of confusion and disarray.
Volatility, disbelief and fear are the three essentials that are ravaging our society. That is, if you are a part of the suffering society.

However, if you are a bureaucrat, your experiential landscape is completely different. Governed by the diktats of donors (and/or political leaders ) the pressure on bureaucracy is to produce quantifiable results!!!! 


The Need for Effective Communication

The world witnessed  HIV and AIDS.  In 1981 first case was reported in USA and then over decades spread to several countries.  Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS, 2002-2003) originated in China and spread to nearly 29 countries, Swine Flu (2009-2010) appeared in Mexico and then spread to atleast 30 countries and Ebola (2013-2014) appeared in Africa and spread to at least 10 countries. It was the geographical spread of the virus which earned them the title of a pandemic. People affected by these viruses did not reach the proportion  of either HIV or the current COVID-19.

In the absence of a vaccine, communication with focus on risk communication forms an integral part of  non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). In 2005 the International Health Regulations underscored the importance of risk communication as a health intervention. Later on, risk communication became central to WHO’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework. 


The Learning from Previous Pandemics

1. HIV demanded the shift in discourse to risk communication;
2. SARS taught us the need to address mental health issues of people in isolation and healthcare workers.
3. MERS, Ebola highlighted the importance of real time monitoring of health data, importance of usage of advanced technology in healthcare.


How WHO (World Health Organization) Handled the Communication During COVID-19?

A dedicated webpage was designed on COVID-19 to tell the world on how to tackle the pandemic to reduce risk of getting infected. Graphic designers got in the game. They actively participated in spreading COVID19 awareness 

In fact, there are quite a few similarities between HIV and COVID-19:
1. Both started with no vaccine for cure.
2. Both the pandemics have created social and moral panic.
3. HIV was slow onslaught and took  nearly four decades to cause disruptions but similar to COVID-19, HIV had unprecedented impact on public health, human development and individual lives.
4. HIV made it evident that individual-centered risk reduction strategies have limited success since they discuss risk in a social vacuum.

HIV encouraged bottom-up approach in health communication.
The emphasis was on the need for communication for social change - ‘process where “community dialogue” and “collective action” work together to produce social change’.

In reality, the perception of risk is intertwined with the social context of the individual. Hence, health communication should understand and address the lived realities of individuals.



Driving COVID-19 Awareness Becomes A Bureaucratic Tool of Control


Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in India developed officially a plethora of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials related to COVID-19.  Along with print and electronic media; social media was used extensively to connect with the people. There was a dedicated webpage on COVID-19 on the website of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

The Ministry of Health ensured greater stakeholder engagement in risk communication by networking with different departments such as department of telecommunication, postal services etc. 

The IEC materials addressed various issues - health risks, mental health, empathy, care and support, stigma and discrimination.  There are messages such as ‘Do not stigmatise patients and family members’, ‘Do not stigmatise Covid-19 survivors’, ‘Standing together against Covid-19 stigma’. A psycho-social toll-free helpline has been created for better community engagement. For the first time, there is a series of communication materials talking about the contribution of the front line workers, their need for protection and the responsibility of the society to be respectful towards them.

Glaring Blind spots in COVID-19 Communication


Communication 'materials' with no community connect. Notwithstanding the positive endeavour of MoHFW, several challenges still remain.

Bridging Gaps or Deepening Inequalities?

By upholding the globally coined language of 'social distancing' but not WHO health advisory of 'physical distancing'  as key to risk reduction communication  existing inequities  in the pre-COVID society in India is only deepening . Social discrimination, stigmatization of social classes, COVID positive patients are  becoming ground realities of extremely added pain in the state of utter confusion in the economically shattering society.  The Indian caste system thrives on the idea of "social distancing" !! . The practice of purity and pollution is through the exercise of social distancing between castes. The upper caste maintains its purity by socially distancing themselves from the impure, lower caste. As history shows the concept of socially distancing is inherently divisive. So, for such a society insensitive communication material is deepening the crisis to the extreme.

Globally coined "Social distancing" also implies people have the requisite resources and the enabling environment to adopt such preventive strategies. As yourself, can a daily wage earner, migrant labourer and countless homeless; who jostle for space, living in urban slums afford to practice social distancing when they need to depend on larger society for their livelihood by providing domestic help and running errands, selling what little skills they have?


Blind spots?

No Bureaucratic IEC  materials address the vulnerability of groups such as migrant labourers, homeless people, sex workers and others. As if it was to protect only urban rich.

The approach remains top-down, 'control and convey', rather than being bottom-up. Moreover, given the socioeconomic realities of millions of people in India, as they try to navigate through survival, hunger and health; do you think it is possible for them to actually practice such elaborate norms of hand wash, sanitization practices and social and physical distancing.

In reality, COVID-19 communication highlighted a human society that has been blind to the basic needs of clean water and clean living spaces. The biggest cause of concern in the Indian context has been the uncritical acceptance of the global framework of "social distancing" risk communication.

1. Governed by the diktats of donors the pressure on bureaucracy is to produce quantifiable results.
2. Official reports are  on headcounts.
3. National achievements are shown in Counting numbers of IEC materials produced, new media used, number of NGOs supported in communication materials preparation, people to whom these have been told.

If we observe the pattern of risk communication in India, it becomes apparent that the exercise is an attempt to respond to the bureaucratic targets of preparing information book, reports rather than to uplifting the lives of people. Failure to connect to societal dire needs is the recipe for social distrust with very long term negative impact on sustainable progress.

HIV had clearly shown that health communication is effective only when social norms and cultures are honored. National strategy can be stronger if it is NOT donor driven. Community practices, socio-cultural wisdom can enrich  risk communication. Health communication will be inclusive, empowering and sustainable only when there is greater community involvement, articulation of local knowledge in health messages, existing power structures and inequalities are challenged. Sustainability depends on a hyphenated relation between global and local; we cannot let one overpower the other.


Take home messages from Covid-19  for way forward ?

a. Customize locally appropriate health messages
b. Local words, visuals and faces from the community should find a space in health-related materials.
c. Decentralize the process of health promotion
d. Health sector experts, workers to take lead rather than the standard bureaucracy
e. People  need to be proactive even when this Pandemic is over and prepare dos and don'ts. 
f. Investment and Wider engagement on a continuous scale in  community health promotion and  training.
g. Health and hygiene provision and training at all scales as basic human right
h. Local institutions to be engaged in documentation  and dissemination of local/traditional practices of good health.  
i. Information, communication and Education (IEC) materials need to be continuously taught to the society.
i. IEC should consciously highlight the healthy practices already in place and practiced by diverse communities.
j. Health  exhibits at the community level in the local language to sensitize people.

We should not forget that in India, despite vaccines, every year seasonal measles attack is an annual phenomena.  Family level Quarantine of the patient is a common family practice. The individual remains in self-isolation for three weeks. Such practices neither arouse stigma nor do they create any panic in the society. Instead of blindly following the global hype, we need to dip into our cultural intelligence and our sub-conscious wisdom. In doing so, we need to resort to messaging that uses local art forms to connect with community better.

Sreerupa Sengupta, works in the space of gender, media, public policy and human rights
@SreerupaS

The recent worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has placed us face to face with the ferocity of Gaia, prompting us to introspect — to reverse the wanton way of our life in enjoying the material world. Can 7.8 billion population sustain in the culture of consumerism, with unbounded material production activities in the  pursuit of 'go as you like' actions, putting pressure on the ecological and environmental balance  of the earth?

The appearance of the virus at this juncture hence came to be termed by many ( Gatti, 2020; Poudel et al 2020; Gourinchas, 2020) as the nature’s negative feedback to turn the things right. In the words of R.C Gatti –the planet has become sick of us and now it tries to make us sick. The  pandemic is the aftermath of Gaia’s pro-activeness to self regulate its system or a mere coincidence at this rat race and restless competitive human existence.


Gaia —The Natural Capital

“Gaia” is the ‘mother earth’ named after the Greek Goddess.  The Gaia is the super ecosystem,  a composite of diverse micro ecosystems like oceans, rivers, ponds, forests, mountains etc. containing diverse biotic and a-biotic resources. GAIA is self regulating and self perpetuating mechanism. The entire ecosystem is governed by the delicate balance of carbon, water and other gases. The fine tuned natural law produces ideal conditions that make life on earth possible.

Natural Law dictates the interconnected actions and reactions of the living organisms. This results in a dynamic process of  balancing, interaction and feedback loop operating among different species of living objects. Back in 2003 Lenton et. al. wrote (a) although there is a  state  of thermodynamic atmospheric disequilibrium owing to the activities of life, the  aspects of its composition are remarkably stable (b) the  conditions at the surface of the Earth are usually at the near optimal state for the dominant  organisms (c) life has persisted for over 3.8 billion years despite increasing solar luminosity and variable exchange of matter with the inner Earth. (d) the Earth system has time and again revived through self regulating mechanisms from enormous disturbances.



The Present  Imbalance — Why Gaia is Sick?

Carbon captured in fossil fuels burnt, released, and overloaded the atmosphere. Hence, the imbalance. Over loading of chemicals manufactured in the processes since the 18th century, without regard to nature’s self regulating law has resulted in deforestation, disposal of wastes from human activities, poisonous natural water bodies, destruction of land’s fertility. Human intervention has led to loss of species, locust invasion, diseased plants, arsenic and fluoride infested ground water aquifers, vector borne disease, toxic air pollution— all leading to a sick eco-system. 

In the words of  Picasso “If we can relearn to value and respect Gaia, God the Mother, we may know the honour of contributing to the balance that supports life rather than instability that threatens it”.
We are the last generation that can still reverse the course. Education, investing and repairing the damage rests on this generation and this generation only.



Post COVID-19 Recovery Can Reduce Consumerism and Revive Gaia

COVID-19 brought into limelight one unique, but common realization for those who are living the life of plenty — non-essential material possessions is not essential for living a dignified life.
The post- COVID-19 conversation should hail the encouragement of resource re-direction towards meeting the essential needs of meeting of 50% of 7.8 billion who are deprived of the essentials of a dignified living.

While traditional mass knowledge producers are looking for putting old wine in a new bottle, the wisdom of Gaia provokes us to re-imagine and produce COVID-19 Societal Self-regulatory Recovery path.

According to living planet report (2010), myopic vision of nature, deposits of carbon rich fuels and blindness to all other bounty has led to all undesirable consequences:

(a)  Habitat loss due to rampant  conversion of forest land for agriculture, aquaculture, industrial or urban use .
(b)  Depleted stock of biodiversity  through over exploitation. between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of forest, according to the World Bank—an area larger than South Africa ( Nunez, 2019)
(c)   Pollution from excessive use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, mining waste, urban and industrial effluents etc
(d)  Crop loss due to invasive species, infestation of  predators and parasites
(e)  Climate change due to burning of fossil fuel and  massive deforestation
(f)    Indigenous communities and many local communities who lived with nature for ages are retaliating the colonization impact
(g)   Ground water extraction has been at the rate of 982km3 /year (NGWA, 2020).

Biodiversity has declined by about 30 per cent between 1970 and 2007; and with business usual practices, 2.8 planets will be needed by 2050 to provide for consumption and to store carbon generated from combustion of fossil fuels, land use change and chemical processes. Humanity’s footprint had been about 2.7 gha per person while biocapacity only 1.8 gha per person with resulting in ecological overshoot  by about 50%. Current projections indicate a CO2 concentration between 600 and 1000 ppm by the year 2100 which is likely to change the biology of invasive agricultural diseases, insects and weeds (IPCC, 2007).  Big question is how long can we afford to neglect this scale of adverse natural phenomena that threaten our sustainability?

At this rate of extraction the balancing mechanism is considerably lost and in her urgency to bring about balancing mechanisms, we experience her fury in the form of adverse natural events like wild fire, flood, pestilence, famine, storms, global warming etc.



The Pathway Forward

1.   Re-build and educate a larger society aware of the regenerative capacity of Gaia.
2.  Re-think of Natural Capital that needs servicing to maintain clean air and clean water.
3.  Re-define the use of Natural Capital that provide minerals, woods, food.
4.  Re-develop the science of Natural Capital that regulates daily temperature and rainfall patterns.
5.  Re-imagine the amenity services of Natural capital with its mountain peaks like Himalayas, Denali, Alps, ocean and coasts provide.

Need of the hour is to educate economists and researchers with environmental economics, ecological economics, bio-economics, but also urgently needed for company executives, NGOs, decision makers, policy makers, bankers, investors, national accounts departments to know how to correct distortion in  economic progress accounting, greening of GDP accounting, correct distortion in market prices, government regulations and work with communities to empower them for keeping Gaia healthy and productive with natural regulatory mechanism.

Soumyendra Kishore Datta

References:
Christina Nunez(2019) Climate 101, Deforestation, National Geographic, Feb 7
National  Ground Water Association (2020) Facts About Global Groundwater Usage
Padam Bahadur Poudel*, Mukti Ram Poudel1 , Aasish Gautam, Samiksha Phuyal, Chiran Krishna Tiwari, Nisha Bashyal, ShilaBashyal, (2020), COVID-19 and its Global Impact on Food and Agriculture, Journal of Biology Today's World ; 9(5): 221.
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas2020) Flattening the Pandemic and Recession Curves, Policy Brief 23:econfip,
Roberto Cazzolla Gatti (2020) Coronavirus Outbreak Is a Symptom of Gaia's Sickness, Ecol Modell.
Timothy M. Lenton and David M. Wilkinson(2003), Developing the Gaia Theory. A Response to the Criticisms of Kirchner and Volk, Climatic Change 58(1) · May
US energy Information Administration www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/global_oil.php(2020), Short-term energyoutlook.

21st Century Needs More Creative Minds

Human civilization has sustained itself through ‘creative’ thinking that leads to discoveries which ultimately translates into innovative technology. From antiquity the knowledge about universe is evolving for many centuries, so are our technologies  leading to the progress of human civilization. To usher into a new world of sustainability, the journey from illusion of obscurity to the effulgence of reality need to continue even at this trying time of 21st century.



17th Century: Great Plague Leads to Great Scientific Discovery

It was 1665 during Great Plague of London one quarter of population died. Students were sent back home. Newton in his 20s came back home. During 1665-1667, young Newton’s creative mind made the base work on calculus, experiments on prism that paved the way for the foundation of optics, and most importantly propounded the concept of gravitation that resulted in first unification in science—the unification of the laws of Earth with that of Heaven. Falling of apple from tree caused by the force of acceleration due to gravity acting on the body (apple) was found to be exactly the same force that keeps planets to go around the Sun—his ‘little moon’ calculations established that the natural law of gravitation is true at every nook and corner of the universe. Newton’s laws of motion and the concept of acceleration (rate of change of velocity/speed) are experienced in our everyday life. When driving a car we press the ‘accelerator’ to increase the speed or more precisely the rate of change of speed of the car to run it faster. Newton’s universal law of gravitation makes planets to go around the Sun in specified orbits.



20th Century: Golden Period of Scientific Discoveries in the midst of War and Chaos

Leaping Beyond the Horizon—Einstein’s Legacy. Einstein came-up with his famous theory  of relativity; special theory of relativity (free of gravitation) in 1905 and general theory of relativity (where gravitation was included) in 1915.  He was then a technical assistant -second grade at the patent office of Bern, Switzerland, Einstein taught us to  think out of the box but with reason.

It is the engagement of a thoughtful, creative, and revolutionary but rational mind that matters. Einstein once said: “I am not particularly intelligent but I am curious”—and thus we have been bestowed with the most beautiful of theories, theory of relativity; that has totally changed our view about universe from its predecessors like Aristotle, Ptolemy, including Newton. Albert Einstein was visualizing a ‘new physics’ through Maxwell’s electrodynamics that shook the foundation of Newtonian understanding of cosmic world.  With Einstein’s theory of relativity we have come across the terms like ‘big-bang’, ‘gravitational waves’, ‘black hole’, ‘expanding universe’, and so forth.

Just before the great depression of 1930s, back in 1929 Hubble’s experimental observation of the motion of galaxies established the concept of expanding universe and in 1940s George Gamow propounded the big-bang theory based on Einstein’s expanding universe as the origin of universe that was verified in 1965 on the basis of experimental observation of the existence of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation.

On the TV screen the ‘static’ or the so called ‘snow’ we see when there is no TV signal is due to Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation left behind by big-bang explosion that happened at the beginning of the universe when it was born 13.8 billion years ago.



20th Century Vision of Einstein Leads to 21st Century Marvels of Technology

Einstein’s great vision of 20th century and theory of relativity led to the development of marvels of technology in 21st Century.

Einstein, unlike Newton and all his predecessors, visualized that space and time are not different entities.  They together form the fabric of the universe known as space-time.
According to his concept, gravitation is not at all a ‘ghost force’, as was predicted by Newton.
It is a manifestation of the space-time curvature near a body having mass. Larger the mass of the body more curved is the space-time around  that  body and more is the gravitational force.

A ‘black hole’ having ideally infinite mass has extreme extent of space-time curvature around it with stupendously large gravitational pull. It  does not allow even light to escape from it’s monstrous grip.

Hence came the name black hole. The  term ‘black hole’ was coined by relativity expert John Wheeler in 1967.

According to Einstein’s relativity theory a moving mass , stupendously large ones like black hole can generate gravitational waves. A moving charge generate electromagnetic waves. Both electromagnetic wave and gravitational wave travels with the velocity of light. In nature gravitational waves are extremely feeble compared to electromagnetic wave thus need extremely sensitive instrument to detect it.

Here comes  the marvel of technology LIGO that was capable to detect the presence of ‘gravitational waves’ after a century of Einstein’s prediction from his general theory of relativity.

In 2016 gravitational waves have been detected by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) experiment.

Image Source: Wikipedia


Investment in Science and Technology is Always the Way forward

On September 14, 2015, the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO.  Scientists made it possible to first-ever directly observe gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years earlier.

The public announcement took place on February 11, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Each of the twin LIGO observatories—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—picked up the feeble signal of gravitational waves generated 1.3 billion years ago when two black holes spiraled together and collided. The information of that collision was there in the nature and was carried to Earth by ripples of gravitational waves. They have traveled a distance of  1.3 billion light years riding on the shoulder of space-time curvature with the velocity of light. This took 1.3 billion years.

The instrument LIGO which could receive this gravitational waves converted them into audio signals and the sound resembled the noise of chirping birds.

Barry C. Barish with Rainer Weiss, and Kip Thorne who led the team to build and experiment with LIGO were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 2017. Barish  commented: “The detection of gravitational waves is truly a triumph of modern large-scale experimental physics”.

Subal Kar,
Author of a forth coming book 'Knowledge about Universe-Down the Ages'
For more stories keep visiting the Blog page

Whether it is COVID19, AMPHAN, LOCUST several sub-national and national leaders failed miserably despite their consistent Global Commitments

They failed to coordinate, they failed to involve the necessary agencies, they failed to involve people and follow inclusive process in preparation of risk management plans prior to the disasters to face disasters fearlessly and minimise the losses. It clearly shows lack of understanding of the science behind disasters, technological, social and humanitarian approaches and a clear disconnect between integration in Multi-level governance, Risk communication, Science policy interface.

In a  disaster especially in a double disaster like situation as was Kolkata in Amphan, two way flow in both vertical and horizontal  risk communication is a must in monolithic government. It is no longer an issue to get political mileage but a complex crisis situation to be solved collectively.  One way instructions from top without being sensitive to bottom up feed-backs outside the formal chain of command creates chaos and disorder. Trained  manpower with capacity to face extreme risks is the key to keep the disaster risk governance functional and effective. Be it Cyclone Amphan, Public health emergency like COVID-19 or  Dengue. While the early warning in Amphan was not responded with necessary preparedness , in Covid-19,  delayed  communication without enough risk framing by epicenter China created confusion for Global Preparedness.

Since 2015, the landmark UN agreements (e.g., the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction [SFDRR], Paris Agreement, and Sustainable Development Goals have set the Goals, targets, priorities for practical actions to reset and preset the developmental actions on Sustainable Development Path by 2030.

Governance Priorities in multi-hazard contexts in SFDRR

What is multi hazard add couple of sentences please
1. Understanding disaster risk
2. Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk  
3. Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience  
4. Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Who is the Main actor identified by SFDRR

Governments have been given the power to take proactive actions to coordinate, involve people and follow inclusive process in preparation of risk management plans prior to the disasters to face disasters fearlessly and minimise the losses.


History of Global Governance for Disaster Preparedness traces back to 1994

It started in Yokohama Strategy for a Safer World: Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation and its Plan of Action in 1994.  Aim was to protect persons and their property, health, livelihoods and productive assets, as well as cultural and environmental assets, while promoting and protecting all human rights, including the right to development.

In 2005, United Nations General Assembly convened World Conference on Disaster Reduction, in Kobe, Japan. As a result, the Hyogo Framework for Action [HFA] was adopted to frame risk reduction. It was endorsed by 168 countries. HFA was the global blueprint for disaster risk reduction efforts between 2005 and 2015 with a goal to substantially reduce disaster losses by 2015 - in lives, and in the social, economic, and environmental assets of communities and countries.

As a sequel, in 2015, 193 UN Member States adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR 2015-2030) endorsed by UN General Assembly.

What makes us to frame COVID-19 as a Disaster?

The UN defines disaster as:
•    a sudden or major misfortune calamitous event
•    seriously disrupts the normal functioning of the community or society
•    when a hazard caused by nature/ human action exposes and makes people vulnerable
•    causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources.


COVID19 and Other Hazards

Exposure to COVID-19 as a disease became a global hazard because it infected in first half of 2020
~6.8 million people (with about 3.0 million active infected patients),
~3.05 million suffered mild
~53,000 suffered severe
~0.4 million lost life

Fact check also show global disasters on a yearly basis:
~1.6 million people get infected lungs due to indoor air pollution
~200 million people suffer from malaria; But Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Global Burden of Disease (GBD) puts this estimate at 620,000 in 2017.
~390 million get dengue;
~0.65 million die of influenza

In Post COVID19 World How to Get Long Term Accelerated Bottom up Demand for Actions and Accountability?

In 21st century it is people: individual, family, community will be confronting the hazards of natural fury and man made developmental mistakes due to unfinished agenda. To successfully thrive with a rapidly changing climate in this decade and coming decades will depend on:

• How to interpret risk information flowing to us through market, government, institutional and social media sources.
• How we decide on our own coping capacity and strategies.
• How to educate and train ourselves to enhance our power of observation through a thinking mind and acquired research skill, integration with indigenous wisdom.

There is clear need for knowledge creation and human capital building through regular updates and participation in course work, student training, researchers, scientists, technology developers, relief workers, recovery managers, policy makers, financial institutions, to get introduced and ready for a new 21st Century job market for disaster risk study, risk reduction and risk mitigating services.

Indrajit Pal
Promotes interdisciplinary higher education for disaster risk managers

The business of the 20th century was about 'fitting in' — being a 'cog' in the production value chain. Keep your head down, don't ask questions, do as you are asked and you will be set for your life. Passive complacency was the name of the game.

The business of the 21st century is about mind expanding creativity, imaging a sustainable world by fusing form, function and profit. The 21st century is about competing in a  'flat world'. Technology has flattened the barrier of entry, allowing a new era of competition, where the winning is all about 'imaginative fusion'. Even long-standing brand leaders are exposed to this inevitable risk from new competition that is cropping up everywhere and anywhere.
The game has changed. The game changers who wishes to survive the business landscape of the 21st century will actively create and re-create their business mind for relevance, purpose and profit.

To exist in this 'flat world', commerce is now demanding new mindset, new thinking, and new doing. For this, entrepreneurs and CEOs ought to inculcate a strong, observing mind — a mind that will never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by fear or distrust, and never give way to regretting.

In this new century, the age old competitive dictum — 'same, but better' is the destiny that is bound to lead you to your demise. In this new century, creativity is the mind of your business and relevancy is the beating heart of your brand. "Never feel comfortable where you're now, get stuck, complacent, and stagnate in one spot; be always relevant, dynamic, and multi gifted. This is one of the rules of the 21st C."

Fusion of Commerce and Creativity

Why the product selling companies are no longer selling products?

These brands are in the business of creating and expanding eco-system for the survival of their business and growing their market share. Of course, these are just few of the many examples that are defining trade and commerce in the 21st century.

Here are few examples.

Philips is no longer in the home-lighting business. It has creatively  transformed into a “connected business” to improve sustainability, cost of ownership, and creative control by integrating smart applications such as scene personalization, home automation, security services, and sleep quality into its core product." Moreover, this brand is continuously using it's status to leverage generosity and gain relevance in the 21st century market place.

Rolls-Royce, some time ago moved beyond merely selling jet engines to selling engine hours and locking customers  in a lifetime service relationship. Now, they are laying down the blueprint for the the next hundred years.

Elevator operators, such as KONE, emphasize the number of floors their products will serve over time, not just their physical products They are well on their way to transform themselves into sustainable city builders.
Thanks to COVID-19, they are now expanding in health and safety brand. No missed opportunities here.

The ride sharing company, Uber partnered with Bell to showed off a second-stage concept of its flying car that both companies swear they will begin testing in 2020. A full-scale model on the CES 2019 floor promised to fly five people at speeds reaching 150 mph. Of course, Bell is an established aircraft developer that makes the propulsion technology behind the V-22 Osprey (the crazy-expensive military helicopter plane thing).

Again, thanks to COVID-19 Uber is now well positioned to highlight another aspect of it's brand — UberEats. The brand was proactive and had mapped out various aspects of it's offering under different scene settings when the going was good.

Why the digital service companies are going beyond 'Freeium' and 'Premium' modes of conducting business? How, they are branching out into selling products and making 'sustainability' relevant in their business model?

These brands are being driven by the urge to try something new and stay relevant in the minds of their clients. They are charting out unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the expansion they seek lies there.


Creative Mindset — Revitalize Rural Economy — The Business of Sustainability

 San Francisco based company, Airbnb, an online rental platform, originally partnered with the Italian city of Civita in 2016, and now is partnering with Grottole (via nonprofit Wonder Grottole) to help revitalize the city.
“We will find every way possible to support sustainable tourism, and give visibility to these rural areas,” says Federica Calcaterra, PR Manager at Airbnb Italy. Thanks to COVID-19, they are now how hosting online experiences as people are locked down in their individual residences.


Creative Mindset — Reduce Cost —  The Business of Saving the Planet

Embr Wave is the thermostat for your body. Warm up or cool down, as you need it when you when you need it most. Founded at MIT, backed by Bose Ventures & Intel Capital, Embr is  also exploring the application of its patented technology in a number of other areas, such as virtual reality, entertainment and non-verbal communication.


Creative Mindset — Reduce Cost — The Business of Using Behaviorial Data

Progressive Insurance’s connected-car devices allow the company to charge drivers according to their driving behavior. Started in 1937, it was the first drive-in claims office, became the first to introduce reduced rates for low-risk drivers, and then transformed the insurance shopping experience by offering comparison rates on the Web.


Creative Mindset — Indulge in Innovative Spaces — The Business of Sub-Conscious Selling

Amazon chose to create Spheres. Not, yet another soaring skyscraper.
The office space that the environment supports a is a sub-concious call to action on doing, thinking and acting in ways that are diiferent from the competition.

"The Spheres are a place where employees can think and work differently surrounded by plants. The Spheres are a result of innovative thinking about the character of a workplace and an extended conversation about what is typically missing from urban offices– a direct link to nature. The Spheres are home to more than 40,000 plants from the cloud forest regions of over 30 countries.

Have you wondered why car manufacturers like Tesla open fancy showrooms in shopping malls and prime locations, with a completely transformed customer experience and lifestyle companies, like Apple, builds on the customer experience with open-space concepts, a sprawling Genius Bar, and diverse sales staffs who are not selling. It is all about priming your sub-conscious with their products and services.  Read more on how to hack the sub-conscious. 


Tracking back in time, yet timeless is the Chrysler Building.

Built in May 1930, after the stock market crash of 1929, it was a beacon of hope for a forward marching towering future.  After, almost 90 years, the Chrysler Building is a creative testament on the flow of capital and a creative convergence of mathematical allure and human grit. It is designed to pause your brain and look — really look and visualize the flow of money and markets from the depths of dismay and disillusionment.

Creative Mindset — Pro-active Healthcare — The Business of 'Caring' with Smart Clothing

Nanowear has developed a medical-grade textile, SimpleSense, capable of capturing millions of signals on the skin and giving it the potential to unlock biometric insights to help wide-ranging medical conditions — monitoring patients through the likes of ECG, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, actigraphy, impedance cardiography, thoracic impedance and cardio-phonography to help keep them out of hospital.


Creative Mindset — Fusing Commodity with High Finance — "Opportunity Favors the Most Prepared"

The Swedish startup Konabay, partnered with Barclays' bPay to bring contactless payments to its hybrid watch band — now, that is a clever idea of upgrading the band that goes with the watch. Again, thanks to COVID-19, this brand has now have a market ready product because, they had dared to imagine that the band of the wrist watch should do more than wrapping around your wrist.



Creative Mindset — When the Market is Not Ready

Have you ever wondered why a product, inspite of a massive 'cool' factor fails miserably in the market place?

Simple answer: people do not buy product that they do not understand.
"In 1973, auto executive John DeLorean left General Motors to form the DeLorean Motor Company. After years of production delays, the DeLorean DMC-12 was released in January 1981. The car’s unique design was poorly received, however, and by 1982 less than half of the 7,000 DeLorean units produced had been sold. The DeLorean is widely recognized due to its use as a converted time machine in the “Back to the Future” series. However, the first of these films was released in 1985, far too late to save the ill-fated brand. DeLorean filed for bankruptcy in 1982."

Signing off with these ending thoughts.

Creativity is about letting go of the certainties and be comfortable with the chaos around you. Creativity is observing what is already there and fusing it with doses of worthy value. Creativity is about unfolding the rhythms of our planet and derive contextual  earth technology that drive sustainable local economy. Creativity is about identifying the evolving hard trends and taking note of the creeping soft trends, only to merge them with evolving customer expectations and design accordingly.

Above all, creativity is about caring. Research by Cone Communications, a PR agency for consumer brands, found that 87% of Americans said they would purchase a product because of a company’s alignment on an issue they cared about. It also attracts would-be workers: nearly two-thirds of millennials – the generation that will make up half of all US employees by 2020 – said they take a company’s social and environmental commitments into account when weighing a job offer.

You are competing in a flat world. Just having superior products or services does not cut it any more. A shocking study from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University estimates that 40 percent of today’s F500 companies on the S&P 500 will no longer exist in 10 years.

Today’s consumers simply 'do not buy just products or services'—they want more — their purchase decisions revolve around buying into an idea, an experience, something more that taps into their own creativity, curiosity, and their fullest use of their potentialities.

Talk to us about creative implemetation of socio-economic changes.

Sarmistha Tarafder
Creative Solutions Strategist