Richard Hames

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Richard David Hames is a corporate philosopher, author and knowledge designer. Working at the interface between organisations and society, he is widely considered to be among the world's most influential intellectuals and strategic futurists.

An Australian citizen, educated in Europe and domiciled in Thailand, Richard has been honoured with numerous awards including a French Government Scholarship, a Leverhulme European Fellowship, the Mondadori Professorial Fellowship and the inaugural Lord Attlee Fellowship.

Richard is Founder and Honorary President of The Hames Group (a globally distributed think-tank and strategic design laboratory); Director of Thoughtpost Edge; and Distinguished Professor and founding Director of the Asian Foresight Institute at Dhurakij Pundit University in Bangkok.

After early careers in academia and the arts, Richard was appointed Group Chief Executive to AMI, a position that was to earn him an enviable reputation as a charismatic and highly effective leader of change through the transformation of an almost bankrupt business into one of Europe's most successful and dynamic media corporations.

His early international experience in the field of Total Quality Management was inspired by a close professional friendship with the legendary Dr W Edwards Deming. In 1993 Richard co-founded Global Business Network Australia (GBNA) and established ABN Learning - GBNA's innovative consulting division. Today, Richard works as a strategic adviser to institutions and multinational corporations in the USA, Europe, UK, China, Japan, India, South Africa, Dubai, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand and advises governments on issues as diverse as whole system change, ecologically intelligent urban development, governance, security and alternative energy. Richard is a member of various Advisory Boards including Merryck & Co; Singapore Power; and the Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University and is personal mentor to Presidents, Heads of State, and some of the world's most innovative CEOs.

Richard is best known for pioneering deep design - a groundbreaking approach to whole system change based on the integral nature of complexity science and living systems. He is also admired for his passionate advocacy of real-time cybernetic and humanitarian models of governance. Richard's methodologies, including Strategic Navigation and Transformational Narrative, all apply generative learning principles to the strategic management of organizations and communities in dynamically complex environments. As a foresight practitioner Richard has examined topics ranging from the future of conflict to microtechnology in everyday life, financial services, transport, urban development, terrorism, taxation, health care, social networks, political systems, energy, natural resource management and learning. A compelling public speaker and celebrated writer, Richard is author of the best-selling book, The Management Myth: Exploring the Essence of Future Organizations. His second book, Burying the 20th Century - New Paths to New Futures, was published in 1997. Richard contributed a chapter entitled, Requiem for the Nation State in Reforming the Public Sector (ed. C. Clark and D. Corbett, Allen & Unwin, 1999) and was a key contributor to Rewiring Organizations for the Connected Economy (Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, Los Angeles, US. 2002). Richard's latest book, The Five Literacies of Global Leadership (John Wiley & Son, London, 2007) is the result of ten years of research and argues a case for jettisoning many of today's leadership orthodoxies in order to liberate collective wisdom. His next book, Entangled Freedom - The Art and Practice of Strategic Navigation, will be available in 2008 and is a practical guide for organizations wishing to implement a 'real-time intelligence' approach to strategic management.

As an entrepreneur and knowledge designer, Richard has focused on projects ranging across all sectors of the community, business and government, focusing particularly on rethinking a number of the key concepts underpinning 250 years of industrial economism. An authority on the design of strategically relevant yet viable 'whole system' solutions for business and government in the knowledge society, Richard has built an enviable reputation with a range of clients spanning the globe and in all sectors of the economy

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