This article is a good one, and not just because it’s well considered. It walks through why we should be worried about running out of food in developed nations.

Or, more importantly, why we may run out of water. And yet, for every challenge mentioned in the piece I could think of a handful of struggling entrepreneurs who were working on a solution. Some are wacky, some imminently impractical, but some have a very real shot at changing the world for the better.

That’s a big part of what we hope Hacking Work will encourage people to do – innovate us all into a better place. It’s readily apparent that an individual can react more flexibly, act more courageously, and leverage their resources more effectively than a big company. At the same time, that same individual can benefit more directly from their contributions.

We may be facing a perfect storm of food and water shortages, but with a little luck and hard work, a perfect storm of innovation will be there to counter it.

Yet another reason our children will be laughing at us. Srsly, if you wanted to blow up a plane, you can. As much as it’s scarier to think about dying in a plane wreck than in an car accident (despite statistically being hugely much more likely to suffer the latter) it’s not USEFUL to do so.

I’d love to hack the airport security system by implementing a reverse-pricing scheme on the airlines. If I could pay them based on their performance rather than on their monopoly I feel like I’d save a bundle and enjoy flying a lot more.

I am sitting in a hotel room in Parma, Italy. CNN is on in the background, talking about Finland legislating mandatory Internet access for all its citizens. 1 Mb broadband Net access is a citizen’s RIGHT! Access to 21st century tools is now becoming as critical to one’s health and welfare as running water and electricity, sez friend of HW, social media consultant Deanna Zandt, during the CNN interview. Net access is becoming critical to all of us in the industrialized world. Which leads right into all that Josh and I are writing about in Hacking Work…

One of the key practices that single-handedly can build or destroy an organization and its people: Access to the best and right tools to do the job, to understand the job, the goals, the strategy and others and to communicate to others. Are user-centered tools (the user being the worker) a most basic and fundamental right of every corporate citizen?

With the right tools anybody can do anything and everything. Without the right tools, we are all hampered, diminished, and our ability to succeed is greatly reduced. Without the right tools, all work is harder and little of it is smarter. With the right tools, anything is possible. What do you think? Are the right tools to do one’s best a right?

CHINA: “Angry migrant workers use new tools — the Internet and 787 million mobile phones”…”Every worker is a labor lawyer by himself. They know their rights better than my HR officer.” Pull quotes from a BusinessWeek article on the birth of a new labor movement in China. Whoa.

Now, kids, hacking work is kinda like marijuana’s role in the drug world. We all know that hacking one’s work is a gateway experience — a stepping stone for bigger, harder hacks. Like that 600 million workers might begin standing up for their rights.

(…At least on TV): Tube tells us hacking is the only way to get things done. Sergeant Bilko (50s); Sergeant Rizzo/M*A*S*H (’70s-’80s); Captain Rabb/JAG (’90s-’00s); Special Agent McGee, Retired Agent Franks/NCIS (’03-). Quiz for old farts: What spy-hacker did NCIS’s “Ducky” play in the ’60s?

Josh and Bill discuss how all babies were born to hack — discovering innovation and creativity by taking things apart and putting them together again. HBR blogger Rasika Welankiwar writes how we were so much smarter as babies…with built-in protections to keep us learning. Unfortunately, we all grew up and learned the “right way” to learn is to sit in neat little rows and follow an authority figure. Hacking, bad. Tsk, tsk. Follow the leader, good. Gold star!

Wal-Mart executives’ 2009 retirement plans GREW 6.6% while their millions of employees’ plans LOST 18%! This disparity is not unique. According to multiple studies, this is happening to most employees and executives. Why hack? Because risk is not distributed evenly or fairly. You are probably bearing lots of marketplace risks while your boss’s boss is cushioned from those same risks.

Bill and Josh are promoting benevolent hacking — bypassing stupid rules for the good of your company, your team and your customers.

There’s also malicious hacking. Bad people doing bad things. Unfortunately, it’s also easy for them to hack — as evidenced by Iranian-backed insurgents that just breached $billions of U.S. drone-based military operations with $29.95 worth of off the shelf software, and by the Russian cyber gang suspected of stealing tens of millions from Citibank.

Let’s be sure we use the power of hacking for good, not evil!

The top leaders in business called for big changes in how work gets done at the annual World Business Forum, October 6-7. Management guru Gary Hamel outlined business’s top three challenges:

1. How do we build an organization that can change as fast as change itself?
2. How do we build an organization where innovation is everyone’s job?
3. How do we build an organization that actually inspires extraordinary accomplishment?

Guess what powerfully answers those three questions?!