-
Net Zero and The Law of Horse Manure
Catastrophic predictions that spell dark days for humanity are nothing new. The Times predicted in 1894 that in 50 years time, every street in London would be buried under nine feet of horse manure. It was the crisis of all crises. There was, to be fair, some evidence for this. As urban populations rapidly increased… Read more
-
The Gravitational Pull Of Business As Usual
The interior secrets of black holes are guarded by a one-way light-trapping boundary called the event horizon. This horizon is the point, according to NASA, that the gravitational influence of the black hole becomes so intense that not even light is fast enough to escape it. A very different horizon exists in many organisations, except Read more
-
Autonomy Only Happens By Design
Most of us accept that bureaucracy squashes initiative, risk-taking, and creativity, but it doesn’t just stop there. Read more
-
Agile Isn’t Everything and Everything Isn’t Agile
A friend of mine was recently invited on a two-day training course to teach/indoctrinate them in the ways of agile. It was accompanied by a 500-slide PowerPoint, no doubt explaining terms like ‘scrum of scrums’, ‘time boxing’, ‘epics’, ‘niko niko planning’ and the other 101 flavours of corporate bullshit that are contained in the agile… Read more
-
Disruption-Proof: How Entire Sectors Avoid Transformation
There used to be a question posed when Amazon first began eating into entire sectors – such as cloud computing, groceries, streaming video, and healthcare. Where won’t Amazon go? Is any sector Amazon-proof? Today’s question is where won’t disruption go? Is any sector disruption-proof? Certainly, some sectors seem less exposed to disruption than others. In Read more
-
Community Is The Only Unit of Sustainable Change
The basic unit of sustained innovation is not a creative individual, nor even a team, but a creative community with a cause. Charles Leadbetter I’m just off the back of a first round of workshops, or rather conversations, about the importance of place with residents. I say conversations because we simply don’t talk enough about Read more
-
How Do You Change A System That Doesn’t Want To Change?
There were two recurring P words throughout the New Local ‘Stronger Things’ event in London’s Guildhall. Permission: give it. Power: share it. The Guildhall was built in the 15th century to demonstrate the continuing power of the merchants of the City of London who regulated trade, and to ensure they preserved that same power. A Read more
-
Technology Is Not Innovation.
For all the talk of technology, let’s remember we are human businesses and we exist to help other humans do better in life. It’s our only real purpose. So let’s think how we can use technology to leverage the huge talents and skills lying within our communities. Putting it directly in their hands will yield… Read more
Paul Taylor 