Reaching from the newest soil erupting from Tavurvur in Papua New Guinea, to the Ecuadorian Amazon, to the oldest and largest known empire on Earth in Mongolia, the Heritable Innovation Trust is diversifying and growing. On this, its first anniversary, the Heritable Innovation Trust framework has already linked people in unprecedented ways and is providing evidence that reciprocal knowledge networks can create perpetual benefit to whole communities and ecosystems.

The Heritable Innovation Trust (or “HIT”) is based on the values expressed in Integral Accounting through:

• Commodity – those elements present in communities which, through cultivation, production or value-add, can be used to generate means of social or commercial engagement;
• Custom & Culture – practices and expressions of individual or community held values and traditions which create a context for social interaction;
• Knowledge – information and experiential awareness which can be transmitted through language, art, or other expressions;
• Money – modes of transmitting and recognizing value exchange using physical and virtual surrogates including currency, systems of credit and barter;
• Technology – the artifacts or schemes by which value-added experiences and production can be effectuated; and,
• Well-being – the capacity for any person or ecosystem to function at their optimal level.

During the 2010 HIT Internship programs in Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, and Mongolia, the Trust stewardship expanded both in size and scope. In 2009, the Qaqet communities contributed the first trust items to the world by means of the HIT. Their debut on the world stage was disseminated around the world reaching Parliaments in Europe and Asia, was studied by policy-makers in South America and Africa, and served to coalesce economic engagement conversations from New York to Auckland. Over twenty items were included in the first Trust.

It is worth demonstrating an example of the global consequence of the HIT framework evidenced in this year’s experience. Christmas Maradei, a member of the Anesmetki village near Raunsepna added a cooking method to the 2009 HIT. In her teaching, she described the process of taking stones (usually river-rounded volcanic stones about the size of a softball), heating them in a wood fire and then layering them with uncooked vegetables and meats. The stones and food are sealed under leaves and cloths to steam
cook the food (Heritable Innovation Trust – East New Britain – Summer 2009, pages 40-41). This year, Enkhbayar, a nomadic horse herder in Arkhanghai Province in Mongolia (at 47º 30’ N; 101º 54’ E) demonstrated the same process. Identical stones were heated in a wood fire, placed with fresh food and sealed – this time in an aluminum pressure cooker pot rather than a leaf and burlap covered mumu. During the teaching in Mongolia, we immediately shared the similarity in processes between the two communities’ approaches. However, after the food was cooked, we learned about an additional Trust item (which we shared with the Papua New Guinea communities one week later). The heated stones were removed from the cooking pot and handed – still scalding – to each guest who, for 30 seconds, tossed the stones from hand to hand to disinfect hands before eating. This simple example shows how the knowledge to knowledge exchange opened a dimension that facilitated a transfer of well-being to the Papua New Guinea community from Mongolia.

Isolation, in most instances, is created by opacity in awareness and information. People can perceive themselves to be “alone” in dealing with challenges. This perception leads to considerable inefficiencies. Both challenges and opportunities are seen as individual. This, in turn, presents the basis for an illusion of innovation. Many “discoveries” or “inventions” are neither new nor novel. In fact, they are simply efforts, in a new context, aiming to solve the same problem that was manifest elsewhere. While one can argue that this redundancy in research, analysis and problem solving helps communities evolve, in a market-based proprietary world, it feeds an illusion of ideas becoming property. However, in the example above it is clear that communities separated by over 5,000 miles and millennia both found that the same volcanic river stones were ideal for cooking. They found that super-heating stones in a wood fire until the stones take on the same color is the perfect temperature with which to cook raw food. They found that food, prepared in this fashion, is best steamed. It would be illogical to ascribe “ownership” of these ideas to one community at the express ignorance of the other. In the HIT, the ability to link Trust items by their borderless similarity actually creates improbable linkages which can serve as immediate connections for collaboration. Over the longer horizon, these observations can serve to aggregate like-minded communities to collaborate on new challenges as behavioral patterns evidence a cultural and contextual similarity.

As you review this year’s Heritable Innovation Trust - 2010, you are immediately receiving an Integrally Accounted investment. The communities of Ecuador, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea have decided that you are a person or community into which they would like to invest some of their knowledge. Pursuant to the Trust, you are obliged to communicate knowledge back to build the first step of the fortuitous cycle. However, this is not the end but rather just the beginning. From this first step of knowledge exchange, the diversity of engagement can move – as it did in Mongolia – to well-being. You may have technology, custom, or money that you can bring to bear to make an engagement grow. On one level, you are being invited to participate. On a deeper level, something more profound is possible. That is you are entering an accountable obligation to engage in a more thoughtful manner where by virtue of your participation, you are evidencing a new form of social consciousness. You are playing your part in manifesting
a system that strives to reciprocate network exchanges that benefit all stakeholders on a human and ecosystem level.

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