“What the numbers clearly show … is that when people come together they become much more productive per capita.  They exchange more ideas and generate more innovations.  What’s amazing is how predictable this is.  It happens automatically in city after city.”*

Geoffrey West has calculated just how the size of a city directly relates to its capacity to deliver innovation.

What intrigues me is how goodness and love and service might become creative with these automatic mechanisms found in a city, leading to more possibilities for people to flourish and thrive – especially those the powerbrokers deem to be worthless and unimportant.

That people can become is the most important thing of all.  So what would cities be like to live in which aimed to enable its residents to become.

Though it may look as though people who connect more with others in their cities are being given something, a closer look shows that what is really happening is the opportunity for people to bring and develop their genius through combining theirs with the genius of others.**  It’s why I’m a member of transformative space shaping group called Cities That Listen.^

You may not live in a city, but knowing that more happens when people get together means you can create your own cities of genius.

(*Geoffrey West, quoted in Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine.)
(**There is homework to be done, though.  Once we know what we are capable of, we develop this on our own and connect with others – then something astonishing happens.)
(^Cities That Listen lives and breathes a way of listening and encouraging and activating innovative thinking, relating, and behaving.  We’d love to share and spread the stories and processes we’ve been employing, so they can be used in more places.  Get in touch to find out more.)