#MindCandy: Green signal

You can’t predict the future. You can build the fitness to respond to it. #MindCandy is fuel for strategic conversation about what’s next. Send this to your leadership team in your organisation — or start the conversation yourself.

Abundance and circularity

Solar broke the model in Spain. So much clean power flooded the grid that prices went negative — producers paying customers to take electricity nobody could sell. Investors are furious. Solar parks are up for sale at steep discounts. Not because renewables failed. Because they worked too well for a business built on scarcity.

The same break is happening on materials. A Texas recycler just pulled rare earth oxides at record purity from e-waste, not mined ore — cracking a refining chokehold China has held for years. The scarcity there was never geological. It was structural.

Different assets, same mechanism: value built on artificial scarcity is being priced out from underneath it. I made the same argument recently from the liability side — profits subsidised by unpriced externalities don’t survive the day nature goes on the books either.

The leadership question

Where is your business still designed for a world of cheap nature, cheap waste and profitable scarcity?

The future fitness move

Map where your margins depend on scarcity, waste, underpriced nature or vulnerable materials. Then identify one place where surplus can become value, waste can become feedstock, or circularity can become strategic control.

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Books

12 free books on strategy, innovation, intrapreneurship, AI, future trends and leadership. Each one distils the best thinking from dozens of business books into a single, actionable read. Every book is also available as a BookBuzz session, board briefing or keynote.

China plans space-based solar plant that could beam power over span of 22,369 miles

For years, scientists and engineers have highlighted the potential of space-based solar power for addressing terrestrial energy shortages. Now, researchers are developing new technologies to harvest solar energy in space and transmit it wirelessly to Earth.

https://interestingengineering.com/space/china-space-based-solar-plant

The symbiotic enterprise

The symbiotic enterprise, in which humans, AI agents, and intelligent robots each contribute according to their respective strengths within flatter organizations and under a new economic model, with technology becoming a primary cost driver.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-symbiotic-enterprise

Six Reasons Claude Mythos Is an Inflection Point for AI—and Global Security

Rather than release Mythos, the most advanced AI model in history, Anthropic has created an elite and limited commercial consortium of dozens of entities to use a variant of the technology, called Claude Mythos Preview, to preemptively identify and defend zero-day vulnerabilities at scale. The consortium, named Project Glasswing, includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Cisco, CrowdStrike, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and Nvidia, among other leading firms. The consortium conspicuously excludes Anthropic’s fierce rival OpenAI

https://www.cfr.org/articles/six-reasons-claude-mythos-is-an-inflection-point-for-ai-and-global-security

The Green Algorithm: How AI Can Help Save the Planet (Or Destroy It)

Many organizations today face a dual imperative: to fulfill ambitious sustainability commitments while harnessing the transformative potential of emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence.

https://time.com/branded-content/project-management-institute/the-green-algorithm-how-ai-can-help-save-the-planet-or-destroy-it/

Venture Capitalists Disgusted by Solar Power Because It’s Generating Too Much Clean Electricity to Be Grossly Profitable

https://futurism.com/science-energy/venture-capitalists-solar-power-too-much

The consequence of abundance.

This DNA Switch Could Control Molecular Machines

Scientists have long dreamed of developing nanoscale machines, but building reliable mechanical components at the molecular scale has proved challenging. Researchers have now developed a DNA-based switch that can rapidly and repeatedly snap between two stable states, much like the components that underpin everyday electronics.

https://singularityhub.com/2026/06/30/this-dna-switch-could-control-molecular-machines/

In Case You Haven’t Seen It, Here’s The Slide Getting Traction At Cannes

Brand is actually going to be more important in an AI era, not less (they would say that).

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/416048/in-case-you-havent-seen-it-heres-the-slide-gett.html

Visions Episode 16: What if data could predict trends two years ahead?

Heuritech can predict, with 92% accuracy and up to 24 months in advance,

https://www.premierevision.com/en/articles/a1b86c31-5b71-f111-ac9a-000d3a39bd37/visions-episode-16-et-si-les-donnees-voyaient-deux-ans-plus-loin-

Ron-Immink.jpg

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