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Our Background And Why We Think Differently

“Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.”

*—*Angela Davis

“Everything has a Step Zero. The assumptions and ideologies, baggage and legacy, are drawn into an innovation or creative process, just as they are into any relationships, personal or political. Equally, they constitute much of the soil from which new processes grow. In his recent Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty explains, “I use ‘ideology’ in a positive and constructive sense to refer to a set of a priori plausible ideas and discourses describing how society should be structured.” Yet, we must not only assemble resources, sketch processes, train for practices, build anticipation around planned events and intended outcomes, but also examine the “a priori plausible” ideas that swirl around innovation policy and practice. We must understand where missions have come from, and why, and thus what they might be good for — and not so good for. Step zero, or even -1, is perhaps the most important of all.”

*—*Dan Hill, Designing Missions

An Introduction To ‘7 Ways To Think Like A 21st Century Economist’

In 2018, Kate Raworth — author of ‘Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like A 21st Century Economist’ — accepted an invitation to visit Impact Hub Birmingham.

We’d reached out to Kate on Twitter, sharing how inspired we were: a group of people who were yet to see themselves as budding renegade economists had become curious and energised by the clarity and possibility of the ideas shared in her book. A particular inspiration was the humility of not proposing fixed, singular solutions but, instead, inviting a number of shifts in how we think and welcoming us into a new economic story.

Since 2011, through Impact Hub Birmingham — which had grown from the city’s TEDxBrum movement — we were experimenting, nurturing and deeply believing in a fundamental idea: that people in their city — with the access to spaces, resources, ideas, infrastructure, one another, joy, creativity, imagination, diversity and a chance to experience the future — are a foundational part of how we, as a city, are able to tackle the deep, most entangled and complex 21st century social and ecological challenges.