I just read Michael Lewis’ latest book Boomerang, where he so brilliantly recounts some of the most outrageous apparently true stories of businesses and economic systems gone terribly wrong before the global financial crash.

He doesn’t say this in so many words, but the sense I’m left with is that this is a “remember our history so we don’t repeat it,” kind of tale — this is what happens when you leave people in the dark on their own with a whole pile of money to do with what they will.

Last week I had the privilege of interviewing David Cooperrider, an academic who has become a globally respected figure for a new way of effecting transformation.

What a contrast.

David shared his dream of designing a new Nobel-like prize for businesses that are agents of world benefit.

As he writes in a paper he subsequently put together in response to our questions, David is seeing that this prize and the whole search process around it could be a new form of collective learning, that is, anticipatory learning, which he suggests could be the solution to our world’s most pressing challenges.

He talks of the prize “surfacing the most exciting possibilities on the planet, with a rich web of solutions from which we might glimpse the patterns of a new world.”

I personally think there’s a place and time for stories like Michael is telling, stories that leave you cold, a little anxious, sometimes disgusted and maybe even thinking, where could I be in that story?

I also agree David’s approach steps us into a vast new frontier of possibilities for our world that we would be remiss not to put megawatts of energy into exploring, that may in fact, be the golden key to unlock a future far better than our past.

We’ve published David’s account of how this dream for the prize came to life in a conversation 25 years ago and what kinds of stories about businesses have kept it alive since. He also talks about the ideology behind this idea that compels him to believe so passionately it can indeed propel our world past sustainability to a “North Star” destination of sustainability plus flourishing — that is, the possibility that humanity and nature can flourish on this planet together.

Click here to read the full interview with David.

You can also read a recent news article on the first stages underway in the design of this business recognition process, which is a crowd-sourcing challenge.

Or jump straight to the crowd-sourcing platform to add your inspiration.