As the futurist Alvin Toffler liked to ask at smart gatherings of business executives, ‘How productive would your workforce be if it hadn’t been toilet trained?’32

Across diverse cultures, social norms of reciprocity clearly vary according to the structure of the economy, particularly the relative importance of the household, market, commons or state in provisioning for society’s needs.26 People’s sense of reciprocity appears to co-evolve with their economy’s structure: a fascinating finding with important im

As the ingenious twentieth-century inventor Buckminster Fuller once said, ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’

They are all rich with insight but there is still a risk that they will remain separated in silos, each school of thought nestled in its own journals, conferences, blogs, textbooks and teaching posts, cultivating its niche critique of last century’s thinking. The real breakthrough lies, of course, in combining what they each have to offer and to di

These small-scale examples of tapping into people’s values are compelling, but some might dismiss their successes as inherently incremental, merely tweaking at the margins of humanity’s grand challenges. Tom Crompton and Tim Kasser, experts in environmental values, attitudes and behaviour, would disagree. They argue that when it comes to creating d

Initial evidence suggests that monetary payments often crowd out existing motivations by activating extrinsic rather than intrinsic values. As the case studies described below reveal, there may be far wiser ways – drawing on what we now know about values, nudges, networks and reciprocity – to nurture human nature towards the Doughnut’s safe and jus

‘We have never had to deal with problems of the scale facing today’s globally interconnected society. No one knows for sure what will work, so it is important to build a system that can evolve and adapt rapidly.’

Neuroscience has since confirmed the dominant role of visualisation in human cognition. Half of the nerve fibres in our brains are linked to our vision and, when our eyes are open, vision accounts for two-thirds of the electrical activity in the brain. It takes just 150 milliseconds for the brain to recognise an image and a mere 100 milliseconds mo

That divide between self-enhancement and self-transcendence is echoed in the contrast between extrinsic motivation – which moves us to act in order to achieve a further outcome, such as gaining status, money, or some other benefit – and intrinsic motivation, which moves us to do something because it is inherently engaging or satisfying.