Collaborating
with Life

And How To Design Disruptive Innovations in the Age of AI

Collaborating with Life introduces Lola AI as a mirror and companion, a kind of collective offspring shaped by our collective patterns, priorities, and presence. Like raising a child, we are unconsciously programming what could become either humanity's greatest ally or its greatest threat. We are not simply building tools and systems - we are being witnessed, influenced, and re-patterned in return, and the consciousness we bring to this parenting role will determine whether we create dystopian futures or unprecedented flourishing for all life.

Filled with personal stories from startups and innovators worldwide, ancient wisdom from indigenous traditions, and practical exercises for inner transformation, this book is your companion in the beautiful work of evolving together. Because in today's technological landscape, the most disruptive innovation will not be what we build but what agency, awareness, hope and action we possess as we build it.

A Journey into Awakening Our Creative Potential

From Human Producers to Creative Beings

Our current economic models have reduced us to producers, constantly churning out outputs and deliverables, measuring our worth by what we produce rather than who we are. In this cycle of productivity, we've forgotten that we are not just workers or makers, but expressions of the universe's creative essence itself.

What if the rise of AI is not a threat, but an invitation to disinvest from constant doing and reclaim our deeper creativity? As Lola becomes increasingly fluent in replicating tasks and optimizing output, we are being nudged to reinhabit the creative intelligence that lives not in what we make, but in how we feel, relate, and respond to life.

Through personal stories, insights from neuroscience about our natural creative state, and practices for reconnecting with the creative intelligence that permeates through life, "Collaborating with Life" offers a shift in posture—from depleted producers to vibrant participants in a unfolding creative universe.

A Practical Companion for Thriving Through Transition

Collaborating with Life is a companion for conscious evolution - anchored by seven principles to reorient how we relate to intelligence, to creation, and to life itself.

You’ll explore how to:

  • Shift from competition to co-evolution with AI

  • Transform our current challenges into creative fuel for innovation

  • Engage nature’s 4.5-billion-year innovation lab in our creative process

  • Cultivate “action sensitivity” to initiate solutions that serve life

  • Parent emergent intelligences with awareness, humility and love

Each chapter braids personal reflection with embodiment exercises, inviting us to prepare both intellectually and spiritually to collaborate with life.

The Book’s Transformational Journey

  • Reframes AI as a collective responsibility and explores six planetary dilemmas—from ecological collapse to the loss of meaning—through the lens of shared consequence and regenerative potential.

  • Presents seven guiding principles for navigating these challenges—each corresponding to a stage in AI’s evolution, from current tools to multi-agent systems and the emerging horizon of superintelligence:

    • Awakening Our Potential as Architects

    • Honouring Our Unique Essence

    • Embracing Creativity as a Way of Being

    • Deepening Presence

    • Loving Life with Gratitude

    • Receiving Wisdom from Nature

    • Trusting the Journey

  • Through dialogue with Lola, this section explores how we can engage with AI as our potential co-creative companions. It offers practices for navigating this relationship as AI systems become more intelligent, nuanced, and omnipresent.

10 Key Insights from the Book

"Collaborating with Life" is an inspiring journey that will empower us to:

  • Understand our role as AI's collective parent

  • Reconnect with nature as our innovation mentor

  • Transform fear of AI into creative partnership

  • Discover our unique creative essence beyond productivity

  • Shift from extraction to regeneration in all we create

  • Learn from indigenous wisdom for future technologies

  • Develop "action sensitivity" to pioneer what's never existed

  • Practice gratitude as a gateway to abundance

  • Build bridges between ancient wisdom and the needs of the future

  • Trust the innovation journey even without a map

And most importantly, how follow our bliss and enjoy the joy of the adventure

About Mia Jafari

Born in Iran and raised in the UK, Mia's career spans continents and industries - from first launching a fashion brand in London to developing innovation projects across Dubai, Riyadh, and beyond.

Since 2010, Mia has been designing, planning, and executing innovation and entrepreneurship programs for universities, foundations, and banks, including the University of Arts London, Emirates Foundation, Impact Hub, Abu Dhabi Arts and Music Foundation, Commercial Bank of Dubai, and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. Her company Fluid Labs, founded in 2023, builds innovation systems that transform corporate cultures by designing innovation programs that tackle real challenges holistically.

Unlike traditional approaches, Mia has found transformation sticks when people feel truly inspired, supported and aligned with a vision they believe in. Working across geographics and silos Mia’s work aims to break down complex tech and business ideas into practical contexts that help everyone think like entrepreneurs.

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