One of my crowning moments of glory in business was when I trusted the wrong person and ended up penniless with two kids and an extraordinarily angry wife. I say…
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Plato wrote about a paradox that some call “Meno’s Problem” in which Socrates and Meno are engaged in a conversation about the nature of virtue. Meno offers a series of…
The Eleatics were an interesting bunch. They were a pre-Socratic school of philosophy founded by a guy called Parmenides in the early fifth century BC in the ancient town of…
In my book ‘Powered By Change‘ I reference a fascinating piece of research that was conducted by the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors. The Association calculated that, out of…
Back in 2011, Stephanie Rosenbloom wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “Got Twitter? What’s Your Influence Score?”. Here is the opening text: “Imagine a world in which…
A thought on using human enhancement and augmentation in sport. Super Olympics is a really simple concept. Basically, competitors can incorporate any type of modification to their bodies, up until…
In all the busyness of my life, traveling all over the world, one of the most important things I do is to stop and sit quietly. There are many techniques…
It seems like every day there is a new example of a marketing campaign that “went wrong”. At the time of writing this chapter in 2013, the examples included the…
It’s all kicking off on my social media channels. One contact of mine has unfriended “dozens of people” and another has posted a vitriolic video full of venom. A school…
Sometime around 500AD, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite asked whether it was possible for God to “deny himself”. The question was arguably the first emergence of what is called ‘The Omnipotence Paradox’…
The year is 1931 and a man called Michael Unterguggenberger has just been elected mayor of a small Austrian town named Wörgl. The events of the coming two years will…
On November 16th 2010 an article appeared in Harvard Business Review (HBR), written by James Allworth, about Google’s strategy. The gist of the piece can be gained from these two…
I’m fascinated by the way our brains actually operate, generating thoughts that generate our framework of what we call reality. I first became interested with the way we think when…
The fact is, we can’t breathe underwater, unaided. We can’t fly either. In fact, there are a number of things we simply cannot do. However, I suspect that most of…
A thought on how we are affected by the volume of meaningless noise. This is an unusual paragraph. I’m curious as to how quickly you can find out what is…
A thought on prioritising effort alongside other standard business metrics. In the 1995 publication by John Kotter entitled “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail”*, his research from over 10 years…
Bill Gates once said: “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” I’ve learned the hard way that this statement is true. Of the…
In law, a class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively brings a claim to court and/or in which…
Have you ever been on public transport and seen someone eating a really pungent snack that made the entire area smell? Recently I sat opposite a guy who had a…
We are living in a world where our trust can only come from respect of citizen privacy (preceded with credibility, authenticity, consistency and positive interactions). Many companies, Facebook being a…
A while ago, Fast Company published an article relating to a new study from Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, claiming that “Facebook will lose 80% of users by…
This post was re-published shortly after the news of a U.S. air strike, and a day after the attacks in Paris. I published the original piece in 2011. —– Here…
During the year 1814 over 96,000 people visited Bethlam Royal Hospital (also known as Bedlam), to laugh at the mental patients. The visitors felt justified in doing so as the…
Everything is getting so augmented and virtual nowadays – soon we will be able to live much of our lives in a totally unreal place, commanding experiences at the touch…
Over time I have published a number of ideas that, one day, may come to life – with or without my personal involvement. These were my ideas that I have…
In 1992, Gerald Tesauro created a programmeme called TD-Gammon at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Centre. The TD part stands for Temporal Difference (which is a type of learning system),…
When I was younger, the ‘cool’ stuff was created by large, faceless organisations with brilliant logos and jingles. I imagined they sat in massive offices, smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and…
I remember once walking off stage in Kiev where I had spoken in some detail about the necessity of courage when attempting to succeed. Someone approached me and asked whether…
The Nike Fuelband was just one of many examples within a movement known as ‘Quantified Self’. In simple terms this is basically a process of being aware of what we…
A long time ago when I started helping companies interpret how to use the Internet I was met with a significant level of negativity. During my tenure as the Chairman…
The more I look for it, the more I seem to find instances of people stating, with absolute certainty, what will or won’t ‘ever’ happen. Look at TV companies stating…
In 1996, World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov was undoubtedly the most famous chess player in the world. On February 10th of the same year, in Philadelphia, following many months of…
Have you ever wished there were more hours in the day to get things done? Have you ever wondered where you will find the time to read the books that…
Over the last few decades in business I’ve seen many companies come and go. I’ve been on the frontline of hugely disruptive innovations and also the founder of several innovative…
Recently I was having lunch in a hotel restaurant, at a table next to a family of four who were only noticeable because they sat in absolute silence. The parents…
Everything is constructed of atoms. If you looked at the composition of an atom up close, you would see a tiny vortex containing quarks and photons. If you zoom in…
Over the years of speaking to audiences all over the world about what’s changing, what this means and how to maximise opportunities, I’ve witnessed a spectrum of responses that range…
In 1966, a scientist called Stephenson ran an experiment named “Cultural Acquisition of a Specific Learned Response Among Rhesus Monkeys”*. Over time, other tests have been carried out and the…
Have you ever met someone who seems really content with his or her life? Not just relatively happy but annoyingly happy? Happy to a point where you start wishing you…