Thanks to Phil Dourado for this question:
What do the elements of this list have in common?
Anesthesia
Cellophane
cholesterol lowering drugs
cornflakes
dynamite
the ice cream soda
Ivory soap
artificial sweeteners
nylon
Penicillin
photography
Rayon
PVC
Smallpox vaccine
stainless steel
Teflon
Answer: all discovered by accident. Hmm. I wonder how many organisations that claim to want innovation have thought about how they react to accidents?
I went down to Surrey on Friday for long walk and pub lunch with Neil Perkin. We’d originally planned to run a workshop about agile
Antonio Dias offers a fascinating description of what goes wrong when drowning: What separates a swimmer from someone drowning is the way a swimmer acknowledges
Viv picks out some nice ideas from Phelim McDermott on the subject of leadership. “We love the security of the illusion that someone is in
I’ve been thinking about the urge to scale things lately – see here and here. I understand the concern with being able to effect big
In moving house, I radically downsized my collection of books which I can highly recommend. I used to think I’d one day find a reason
I really enjoy Chris Rodgers’ views on leadership. He argues against the assumption that it takes great leadership for organisations to succeed. He suggests that
Thanks to my Improvisation friend Kelsey Flynn I rambled into a letter cited in Margaret Cho’s Blog (go to Letter #1): Lately it seems like
I wanted to share this email doing the rounds this morning… AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE After every flight Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe
A quick ramble on the nature of paradox, inspired by a blog on the value of both fear of the new and curiosity
Well now you need wonder no more. A friend told me about this (no, seriously… my Feedster feed on improvisation turned it up). Is it
Next month in Dublin I’m running a workshop with Kay Scorah. We’ve called it our Day of Noticing and it’s on April 3rd. Here’s the blurb (pdf) Among other things
Chris Argyris’s work on single- versus double-loop learning gets cited a lot by folks trying to get organisations working better. Here’s a classic article (pdf) in which Argyris explains his thinking.
Down under in Melbourne Tony Goodson asks, why do monopolies advertise?: Why are Connex advertising on the TV with an advert that has all the passengers on the morning train
I got back from New Zealand yesterday morning and am struggling to get to grips with jet lag and with very short cold days as well as a pile of
