I'm looking forward to Monday's gig at NESTA, Innovation and Networks of Influence. It seems to have sold out, which is pretty cool for something we organised at less than two weeks' notice. And the idea for doing it arose accidentally, from the cancellation of an event we were booked to speak at. I kinda like that, as one of the themes for me will be that life is not as predictable or controllable as it seems.

It's of course another accident that Amazon today emailed me recommending Philip Tetlock's new book on the reassuring failure of experts to make accurate predctions (reviewed by Mark earlier this month.) These are the folks on whom you might rely for identifying the mysterious levers by which you exert influence over things.

I also appreciated Keith Sawyer's pushback against the fixation with Steve Jobs as the centrepiece of the Apple story... and against our general fashion for identifying supposedly pivotal heroes instead of seeing the more complex patterns at work in success.