Wise Economy Workshop

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Wise Economy Workshop

Consulting, training and tools to support communities in building long-term economic health and resilience. wiseeconomy.com.

You can learn more about the Wise Economy Workshop at www. You can also subscribe to our blog and listen to our podcast there, and you can download white papers as well. We also produce a monthly newsletter called The Wise Fool, which you can subscribe to via the web site.

02/16/2026

The Innovation Machine Is Spluttering.

And no, more tech won’t save us by itself.

We love to talk about innovation—AI, software, shiny tools—but the breakthroughs that actually change communities, teams, and lives?
👉 They rarely come from where we expect.

That’s why Everybody Innovates Here is back.

This book asks the uncomfortable questions:

- Why do so many innovation ecosystems fail?
- Why does “innovation” feel exhausting instead of energizing?
- And what’s really blocking progress? (Hint: it’s our own paradigms.)

📘 Relaunching now after COVID buried its first run—this time with momentum, community, and teeth.

💡 Change Maker subscribers to Future Here Now get:

-A hefty discount on the book 📚
-Discounts on workshops & speaking engagements 🎤
- And real tools for breaking out of stuck thinking

⏰ Limited-time deal:
Sign up before July 18 and get 25% off the Change Maker subscription. Blink and it’s gone.

✨ If innovation feels stuck…
✨ If “we’ve always done it this way” makes you itch…
✨ If you’re ready to build what actually works…

👉 Buy the book
👉 Subscribe to Future Here Now
👉 Contact us for talks & workshops that dismantle bad assumptions and rebuild better ones

Innovation doesn’t need more noise.
It needs a paradigm shift.
Let’s get out of our own way. 🚀📖

02/13/2026

The barriers to learning are crumbling.

Not long ago, becoming an “expert” required classrooms, credentials, and permission.

Today? Almost anyone can learn almost anything—anytime, anywhere.

So we’re left with a big question:

If the learning is accessible, why do we still reward the paper?
🎓 Credentials are being challenged.
🧠 Experience is gaining value.
🚀 Education is evolving beyond the classroom.

The future of learning isn’t coming.

It’s already here.

👉 Swipe through. Save this. Share if it made you think.

What do you think matters more today—credentials or competence?

02/12/2026

Future Here Now: the Crumbling Barriers to Entry

In this issue:

Can you start a school? No biggie.

Too much free speech might prevent you from hearing important stuff

Should school be shorter?

My kid knew every known thing about jumping spiders by the time he was 12. He could have taught an undergraduate course on the genus fittipus.

He’s not a genius. He had YouTube.

One of the huge sea changes that we have not gotten our heads around, at all, is the ease with which almost anyone can become an expert in almost anything. In the not too distant past, access to information, to knowledge, depended on access to teachers, librarians,places to learn, classrooms, books. Becoming an expert in anything required privilege – the right connections, skills, permissions, credentials. Without those, all the doors slammed shut.

What happens to credentials and expertise when virtually all the knowledge you could ever want is available in a relatively cheap consumer product in your pocket?

My hunch is that kids my son’s age and younger are already asking that question, which is why we’re seeing privileged kids for whom college would have been a given pre-COVID questioning the value of debt-fuelled further education. If I can learn it online, why would I pay money to sit in another classroom and get a piece of paper?

Of course, we still treat the paper, not the learning itself, as the qualification. And there are surely things that you can’t learn through a video screen. So most still feel compelled to get some manner of formal education, complete with paper. But if the learning can come without the cost and the paper, how long can those now-artificial barriers to access stand? How soon does near-frictionless access to information transform what it means to know, to be qualified?

Years ago, the then-director of the University of Michigan MBA program said on a podcast that experiential learning would become the future of education. I think that’s true – I learned about the power of direct experience years ago as an education undergrad, and built my approach to public engagement around the power of grappling directly with new information.

But that’s a profoundly different type of teaching - and learning - than what we’ve all experienced. It means that the teacher isn’t just unlocking access to received wisdom. It means that the teacher guides the student through the messy and overwhelming world of near-infinite, immediate information.

And that means that the classroom, the credential, the diploma and the information itself, change as profoundly as it did from Plato’s Socratic method to the printing press.
And we’ve just barely begun.

If we now have near-frictionless access to almost all information, how does that force us to change our public meetings? Our real estate negotiations? Our hiring practices? Our management systems?

02/09/2026

Future Here Now: Cultivating Talented Minds

Post - 2013, I led a team that developed a plan for a Power Plant (a community-driven, diversity-powered innovation center) in a midwestern city. One of the community leaders’ primary motivations in supporting this work was to increase their Talent supply. They had tried recruiting, which hadn’t generated much, and now the call was to help the city’s residents, especially its growing number of young, non-white residents, to become long-term employees of the community’s businesses.

In preparing the strategy, I interviewed an HR manager at the city’s biggest and oldest employer, a company that’s a household name. We talked for about 10 minutes about how important innovation was for this company, how central “innovation” was to their business plan. Encouraged, I started to explore ways that the proposed Power Plant could support their goals -- the training, the unique experiences, all of the ways that we could accelerate innovation inside and outside this company.

To which she responded, “Oh! We can’t have them take work time to do training and innovation. Who would run the lines?”

And I crash-landed back in the Industrial Era.

Expecting this crucial new Talent to come to us perfectly formed, fully equipped, dropped into a role with a minimum of training is like asking my son when he was five to do algebra. He hadn’t learned that yet. But it’s also like asking my son at 18 to amuse himself with a wooden train. It’s not just a matter of skills, it’s a matter of mindset.

If we have been talking about, yelling about, crowing about “Innovation” for the last however many years, and then we put people who have been raised with that message in sit-down-and-do-what-you’re-told environments, it’s no wonder that so many are disaffected, pessimistic, unwilling to commit to the effort to buy into your offerings, whether it’s a job or a public meeting. They believe, reasonably so, that all your big talk has nothing behind it. And in their guts, the most talented know that it’s not worth their energy.

It’s time to build Fusion Era businesses and organizations that can capitalize on Fusion Era Talent.

02/09/2026

Future Here Now: Cultivating Talented Minds

Why Talent Isn’t the Problem — Mindset Is

In 2013, I helped design a community-driven innovation center to grow local talent. Leaders said they needed innovation.

But when asked to invest time in training and experimentation, the response was:

“Who would run the lines?”

⚙️ That’s Industrial Era thinking — trying to build Fusion Era talent.

You can’t demand innovation while trapping people in sit-down-and-do-what-you’re-told systems.

The most talented see the mismatch.
And they walk away.

✨ Talent isn’t missing. Alignment is.

It’s time to build Fusion Era organizations that truly support innovation, learning, and growth.

📘 Go deeper → Buy the Future Here Now books
📬 Stay ahead → Subscribe to the Future Here Now Substack
🎤 Build with us → Contact us for speaking, strategy sessions, & hands-on workshops

👉 Let’s stop talking about innovation — and start designing for it.

02/09/2026

Future Here Now: Cultivating Talented Minds

Why Talent Isn’t the Problem — Mindset Is

In 2013, I helped design a community-driven innovation center to grow local talent. Leaders said they needed innovation.

But when asked to invest time in training and experimentation, the response was:

“Who would run the lines?”

⚙️ That’s Industrial Era thinking — trying to build Fusion Era talent.

You can’t demand innovation while trapping people in sit-down-and-do-what-you’re-told systems.
The most talented see the mismatch.
And they walk away.

✨ Talent isn’t missing. Alignment is.
It’s time to build Fusion Era organizations that truly support innovation, learning, and growth.

📘 Go deeper → Buy the Future Here Now books
📬 Stay ahead → Subscribe to the Future Here Now Substack
🎤 Build with us → Contact us for speaking, strategy sessions, & hands-on workshops

👉 Let’s stop talking about innovation — and start designing for it.

02/05/2026

This content explores how innovation thrives when diverse people are supported by clear structures, strong processes, and inclusive systems that unlock everyone’s potential.

02/04/2026

What We Learned About Unexpected Innovators

Innovation doesn’t come from a select few.
It comes from diverse people, supported by strong structure, working together.

In our work at Econogy, we discovered that when people—young adults, community members, entrepreneurs, students, and seniors—are placed in diverse teams, guided by clear processes, and challenged with real problems, they consistently outperform expectations.

💡 The big insight?
Innovators across tech, Main Street, nonprofits, universities, and neighborhoods are more similar than different.

They all need:
✔ Structure
✔ Support
✔ New perspectives
✔ Freedom to escape old paradigms

This idea is explored further in our upcoming book:
📘 Everybody Innovates Here

👉 Learn more & get updates
👉 Subscribe to Future Here Now on Substack https://www.substack.com/
👉 Contact us about speaking engagements, workshops, and innovation system design http://wiseeconomy.com/

Let’s build innovation systems that work for everyone.
🔗 Buy the book | 📩 Subscribe | 🤝 Partner with us

01/30/2026

Future Here Now: Why I Do This

I grew up in a small Rust Belt town outside Cleveland, watching a family manufacturing business collapse as the old economy began to unravel. I saw—up close—what economic disruption does to families, dignity, and community life.

That experience shaped everything that followed.

Since then, I’ve worked across journalism, teaching, community planning, economic development, and public engagement. My career path looks more like cooked spaghetti than a ladder 🍝—but the throughline has always been the same:

👉 Helping communities adapt, rebuild, and thrive in a future that will look nothing like the past.

Over the last decade, I’ve learned a few big things:

- National solutions are uncertain. Local action matters more than ever.
- Real change is harder—and slower—than most of us expect.
- Inclusion isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s a strategic advantage.
- Crowdsourcing wisdom from diverse voices isn’t charity—it’s survival.

That’s why I write.
That’s why I research.
That’s why I publish Future Here Now.

Because the future is arriving whether we’re ready or not—and communities that learn, adapt, and innovate together will be the ones that win.

📘 Buy the book: The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived
http://localeconomyrevolutionbook.com/
📩 Subscribe: Future Here Now (2–4 weekly downloads of insights, tools, and analysis)
🎤 Work with us: Speaking, workshops, and community strategy
🤝 Let’s talk: If you’re serious about building a stronger local economy

➡️ Get your copy
➡️ Message me to explore collaborations

Let’s get on with it. 💥

01/28/2026

Whose Streets Are Really Open?

A recent article in Future Here Now highlights something many of us suspected: pandemic-era “Open Streets” programs—closing streets to cars so people could walk, bike, and gather—mostly benefited high-income neighborhoods. Meanwhile, pedestrian and cyclist safety in other communities continued to decline. ⚠️

The piece also reminds us of a deeper inequity: public spaces in non-white neighborhoods were often heavily policed, even as streets in wealthier areas got new amenities.

Simply making streets “pretty” isn’t enough. True equity and inclusion are essential for Future-Ready communities—because creativity, innovation, and diverse perspectives are what help communities thrive. 🌱

📚 Dive deeper: The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived & First Principles of the LER show how equity, access, and innovation intersect.

💡 Take action today:

- Subscribe to Future Here Now for weekly insights: [link]
- Explore our books and guides to spark local innovation: [link]
- Contact us to host workshops or speaking sessions in your community: https://www.substack.com/

Your streets, your community—let’s make them open for everyone. ✨

01/26/2026

Reflections on Tony Hsieh and What It Means to Have a Vision for Your Community

I never met Tony Hsieh. That was on purpose.

But the Downtown Project changed how I understand community—forever.

This new essay revisits an earlier piece I wrote and adds a necessary coda, asking harder questions about:

❤️ What real connectedness looks like
🧠 Mental health in entrepreneurship
🏙️ Why places don’t create community—people do
🔥 And why no great place is built by one “Great Man”

The most important insight?

Tony wasn’t the vision.
The people were.

Hundreds of individuals shaped the Downtown Project through their actions, relationships, and care for each other. That’s how real community is born.

👉 Read the full essay here: {Read the rest of that essay here}
https://dellarucker.medium.com/reflections-and-gratitude-for-tony-hsieh-vision-and-persistence-c7fcc2836625

If this resonates:
📚 Check out my books
📩 Subscribe to Future Here Now on Substack
🎤 Reach out to explore speaking, workshops, and collaborations

Let’s stop chasing icons.
Let’s start building connected communities.

💬 What does “connectedness” mean to you?

01/24/2026

Don’t settle if you can help it. And don’t do it alone.

I was just interviewed by One Source Direct (a B2B platform + Trep House supplier), and some of my own answers surprised me—especially around entrepreneurship, failure, and why women deserve to think bigger.

✨ A few highlights:

I didn’t plan to be an entrepreneur—I fell into it (more than once).
The right tools matter: Motion, Canva, and Business Model Generation still shape how I work today.
My biggest failure? A partnership that taught me hard lessons about trust.
My biggest advice for women in business: don’t shrink the vision—and don’t try to carry it alone.

💡 If you’ve ever thought about building something bigger than just replacing your old job, this one’s for you.

📖 Want more?
👉 Buy the books
👉 Subscribe to Future Here Now on Substack
👉 Reach out to explore speaking engagements, workshops, or strategic conversations

Let’s build businesses that work better—for women, for communities, and for the future.

📩 DM me or drop a comment to connect
🔗 Link in comments

🎯📚✨

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Website

http://www.wiseeconomy.com/

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