Too often people think about things happening to them, rather than thinking about how they make things happen. Agency is important, and we must never forget that we have the capacity to act. You can see the results people can have in the current events in Tunisia and Egypt. Agency is a critical part of […]
The best response to a bad idea is to make it better. When I work with people from government agencies, and also those from many large corporations, they often talk about their risk-averse culture. One of the problems with risk aversion is that if someone tries out a new idea and it doesn’t work, they […]
Here is a quote from Why The West Rules – For Now by Ian Morris – explaining some of the issues with the inter-disciplinary approach he has taken in writing the book: This courts all kinds of dangers (superficiality, disciplinary bias, and just general error). I will never have the same subtle grasp of Chinese […]
Most of the economy now is based on information. Even physical things are embodied information. Consequently, the scarce resource that is being competed for now is our time. Here is how Richard Lanham talks about it in an interview discussing his book The Economics of Attention: The basic argument is simple enough. We’re told that […]
One of the critical parts of the innovation process is getting our great ideas to spread. Diffusion is often the stumbling block for innovative new ideas. There is a section towards the end of Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky that provides some interesting insights into how to attack this problem. Belsky describes a storytelling […]
Innovation is about more than just having great ideas – a point we’ve made here repeatedly. To innovate, you also have to execute ideas relentlessly. For many people, this is actually the hard part. I’m currently reading Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, and it has some of the most sensible advice on this topic […]
Almost every single time you are offered a black or white choice, the real answer is grey. This is inconvenient, because we like things to either white or black, right or wrong, easy or hard, incremental or radical. But the simple fact is that all of these are false dichotomies. Nearly everything that is presented […]
Innovation is more than just generating ideas. Most organisations have more than enough ideas. They might need better ones, but usually they need to get better at selecting ideas, executing ideas, and diffusing ideas. The irony of this situation is that there are a lot of techniques around (and consultants that use them!) designed to […]
