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Awakening the better angelsPart 1: Life as an entanglement of mutual obligation by Nicholas Gruen at Web Directions Next 2024

Web Directions Next may be a brand-new event from us, but its DNA goes back to our earliest days.

Imagine a super concentrated day of our most engaging keynotes and talks. Opportunities to connect meaningfully with others who get excited about this stuff as much as you do.

That’s Next which will help you chart what’s next in product, design and strategy and it features amazing talks like this.

Awakening the better angels
Part 1: Life as an entanglement of mutual obligation

1. Life as an entanglement of mutual obligation
Human institutions (whether they’re formal organisations or just cultural expectations) entangle us in mutual obligations. We’re happy and prosperous when we we’re doing our bit for others and they’re doing theirs for us. When they don’t work so well, it’s usually because private interests have colonised our institutions to turn social expectations to their own advantage.

About Nicholas Gruen

Lateral Economics’ CEO Nicholas Gruen is a widely published policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator. He has advised Cabinet Ministers, sat on Australia’s Productivity Commission and founded Lateral Economics and Peach Financial.

He is Visiting Professor at Kings College London and Adjunct Professor at UTS. He chairs the Open Knowledge Foundation (Australian Chapter) and is Patron of the Australian Digital Alliance, which brings together Australia’s libraries, universities, and major providers of digital infrastructure such as Google and Yahoo. He is a member of the Council of the National Library of Australia.

He was Chair of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation until 2016 and Chair of the Australian Government’s principal innovation advisory body, Innovation Australia, until 2014.

He was second shareholder and Chairman of successful San Francisco based startup, data analytics crowdsourcing platform Kaggle, subsequently acquired by Google in March 2017. He is an angel investor in various other Australian and international startups including Breezedocs, Slant.co, HealthKit and Lendable.

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