Latest Posts


  • Understanding Spreadability in Innovation

    Guerrilla gardening, a movement born in New York City, spread globally as a way to reclaim neglected spaces. The movement gained momentum through word-of-mouth and grassroots activism. It emphasized clandestine planting and direct action. Will Lilley, from NHS England, highlighted… Continue reading

    Understanding Spreadability in Innovation
  • LinkedIn Vs Twitter: Which Is Best?

    The older I have become the more I have realised that the best things that have happened in my life have had little to do with judgement, planning and forethought – and everything to do with random chance and connection.… Continue reading

    LinkedIn Vs Twitter: Which Is Best?
  • Techno-admin, Microtransactions and Designing For Humanity

    Techno-admin: a pervasive phenomenon, whereby we customers are forced into infuriating, confusing, absurdly time-consuming and bleakly unrewarding tasks by a machine We are all techno-administrators today. The average person has about 100 passwords to keep track of, a spiralling number of emails… Continue reading

    Techno-admin, Microtransactions and Designing For Humanity
  • The Law of Propinquity And The Work From Home Dilemma

    In our post-internet, post-social media, post-covid world, does physical proximity still have value, particularly when it comes to creativity, innovation and discovery? The law of propinquity states that the greater physical (or psychological) proximity between people, the greater the chance that they… Continue reading

    The Law of Propinquity And The Work From Home Dilemma
  • The Growing Bureaucratisation Of Life

    Many organisations , without realising it , act as inhibitors of creativity. Rules and protocols are put in place – often for very good reasons – that preserve the status quo.  Over time, organisations develop a set of social norms – ‘the way we… Continue reading

    The Growing Bureaucratisation Of Life
  • Are You A Positive Deviant, A Negative Deviant, Or Just Plain Boring?

    Even if your customer satisfaction scores are upper quartile. Even if you’re a favourite with your regulator. A crisis can be waiting around the corner for any organisation. You can’t regulate a toxic culture and you don’t build trust with… Continue reading

    Are You A Positive Deviant, A Negative Deviant, Or Just Plain Boring?
  • Fix The System Problem, Not The People Problem

    The phrase ‘shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic’ is believed to have been first used in 1969. It featured in a Time Magazine article that quoted a priest decrying petty internal changes at a time when the Catholic church should… Continue reading

    Fix The System Problem, Not The People Problem
  • Designing For Connection Rather Than Transaction

    Health is not made in health systems, it’s made in homes, in communities, in workplaces. So unless we can build horizontal bonds between communities and the kind of expertise and resource in health systems, we can’t really make change. Hilary… Continue reading

    Designing For Connection Rather Than Transaction
  • The Importance of Connectors

    “The point about connectors is that by having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together.” ― Malcolm Gladwell If you want to change something or spread ideas you need to mobilise people… Continue reading

    The Importance of Connectors
  • We Should All Delete More Work

    At my organisation, during a cyber incident which meant no access to any computer system for several weeks, some teams reported becoming more effective not less. Many other people noticed this at the beginning of the 2020 lockdowns. Deprived of… Continue reading

    We Should All Delete More Work