Ingenuity Gap

David Fleming
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The gap between our ability to invent solutions and the scale of the problems for which solutions are needed.

The market state is so impressed by its own ingenuity—by its ability to find technical solutions to its problems—that it finds it hard to recognise that it is not technical solutions that are needed. Forward movement (Kaizen) is not helpful if what is needed is a change of direction (Kaikaku).

Ingenuity in extending the life of the familiar is most useful if the time it buys is used to prepare for the time when it reaches its limits.I45

 

Related entries:

Intelligence, Wicked Problems, Denial, Lean Thinking.

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David Fleming
Dr David Fleming (2 January 1940 – 29 November 2010) was a cultural historian and economist, based in London, England. He was among the first to reveal the possibility of peak oil's approach and invented the influential TEQs scheme, designed to address this and climate change. He was also a pioneer of post-growth economics, and a significant figure in the development of the UK Green Party, the Transition Towns movement and the New Economics Foundation, as well as a Chairman of the Soil Association. His wide-ranging independent analysis culminated in two critically acclaimed books, 'Lean Logic' and 'Surviving the Future', published posthumously in 2016. These in turn inspired the 2020 launches of both BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's feature film about Fleming's perspective and legacy - 'The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?' - and Sterling College's unique 'Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time' online courses. For more information on all of the above, including Lean Logic, click the little globe below!

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