I am, however I look at it, getting quite old. I'm old enough to remember the 1970s and the Christmas present I received, a CBM Electronic Calculator. I was amazed by how I could enter numbers and symbols, and the machine would return correct calculations. I'm old enough to remember the first experience at home … Continue reading Technonovelty
Tag: innovation
I've observed something over the years that I've started calling "regression to form". It's the depressing inevitability that if you give people something that looks even vaguely like a form, they will treat it as a form. As a result, the objective shifts from thinking to form-filling. From conversation to completion. From understanding to box-ticking.Take … Continue reading Regression to form
(An experiment in stakeholder management, creativity and vibe coding) Some months ago, I came into the possession of a bag of 10 small rubber ducks. The reasons why are on a need-to-know basis, and you probably don't need to know. I thought about turning them into art. Originally, I was going to glue them to … Continue reading Ducks in a Row
For many years I've held true to a concept that goes as follows: You can exponentially scale transactions. You can change interactions into transactions and then exponentially scale those transactions, but you lose social and cultural meaning along the way. You cannot exponentially scale interactions. They only scale in a linear fashion. My go-to metaphor … Continue reading Simulating interactions
I had a fascinating chat with Mark Earls yesterday in the vague sun of Holborn. Towards the end of our broad conversation we got onto the subject of Behavioural Economics, and Mark's frustration that the entire field seems to be dominated by a meme that describes our human ability to shortcut processing (effectively Kahneman's System … Continue reading Cognitive strengths, not bias bugs
As I talk with people across a range of organisations about innovation and disruption, a common theme emerges - that of how we need to be able to become more accepting of failure. Failure is how we learn. We need to fail fast and fail often. It strikes me that, whilst the sentiment is … Continue reading Banning failure
So here is a scenario that is playing out in a number of technology (and non-technology) companies the world over. You've found a bit of success. You want to scale your business. You go from loosely organised, small, and working all hours to something with a bit more structure. You want to become bigger as … Continue reading Three ways to kill innovation
A couple of weekends ago I spent a very enjoyable Sunday with my wife, kids, and their aunties, at the Buckinghamshire Steam Railway centre just outside of Aylesbury. As a way to keep a three and a four year old entertained for a few hours, these places are great (and this one is one of … Continue reading Steam diesel
I'm presenting tomorrow morning to an audience of which I've been advised that one of the main people "doesn't like Powerpoint". The theme of the presentation is disruption. In a spirit of self-disruption I've decided to present without slides. I might do an odd bit of the old flip chart, but no pictures. I don't regard myself … Continue reading Flying without slides…
OK - brace yourself. Bit of a long post coming up here... "Innovation". Many people talking about it. Not that many people understand it (I include myself there). Hard to do. Easy to talk about and so let's add to the kerfuffle... Let's start with the etymology: So, innovation - doing new things, or doing … Continue reading Five modes of innovation
mmitII 