the idea that I have for knowledge-international. It's a coalition of people that help individuals, communities and organizations -- principally public sector organizations -- around the world so that they get into a knowledge-sharing mode, and use the power of storytelling so as to create a century worth living in. The activities have two dimensions. 
     One dimension is helping organizations and communities implement what we already know about knowledge sharing, i.e. building communities of practice and the rest of the ideas discussed elsewhere on this web site. 
     The second dimension involves the use of storytelling in helping create a century worth living in. If storytelling is our native language that we learn at the age of two years, and abstract language is like a foreign language that we learn at the age of eight or ten years of age, in which we never feel truly at ease in speaking, then surely storytelling should have a larger role to play in every domain of life. 
    These two dimensions are aimed at creating the future worth living in, i.e. helping spearhead the future evolution of these changes in a number of key areas. It's a kind of virtual think tank on knowledge and storytelling, which would bring together people who are doing, or planning to do, or thinking about doing, interesting things in these areas. Among the fields of interest would be the following. 
        One area is to promote understanding of the dynamics of the 21st Century organization organization that is emerging at knowledge-sharing organizations like the World Bank, Royal Dutch Shell and GE, where the organization is linked to knowledge-sharing communities of practice in ways that are not only more productive for the organization for more satisfying for the individuals that work in them. This new kind of organization is already emerging but its emergence could be accelerated. 
      A second area would be international development, particularly one of transforming the process of development from one of transferring financial resources and advice from the north to the south, into a process of communities and networks all around the world, learning to learn faster, facilitated by financial flows where appropriate. 
        A third area would be using knowledge to enhance education. Education systems spend so much time teaching that they often spend little time learning how to improve their own performance. The lessons of quality management and knowledge sharing have yet to be applied systematically across education systems. And education curricula at all levels are typically expressed in abstract language, without taking advantage of the power of narrative. 
        A fourth area is environment, and particularly the idea of having a permanently sustainable planet, with "cradle to cradle" manufacturing, rather than the current "cradle to grave" manufacturing, with inevitable massive waste materials that pollute the environment. The idea is to design things well, from the start. Being less bad isn't the same as being good! Most
environmental progress has been focussed on doing the same thing but with less harm. Suppose we design things that are good from the start! See http://www.mbdc.com/overview.htm: 
        A fifth area is health, and might bring together people interested in putting healing back into health systems, not merely the more efficient administration of industrial-type methods. One line of exploration would be accelerating the growing role of storytelling in health organizations. 
       A sixth area would be the role of knowledge-sharing in government, including (a) the provision of existing governmental services electronically; (b) the role of government in bridging the knowledge divide; and (c) enabling government to transform itself into new and more productive forms of organization. 
        Finally, there are contributions towards getting a better balance between individuals and technology, where the technology is the slave of human beings, rather than human beings being -- as now --  often the slaves of their technology, with the lives becoming ever more hectic and less pleasant. 
        These are the areas of where knowledge-international is interested or active.  If you would be like to follow up with me, and participate in some way in an effort to create a century worth living in, then please feel free to share your thoughts with me and send me an email at steve@stevedenning.com , so that we could discuss it further. 

                                Steve Denning