Paul Taylor

Latest Writing

  • Net Zero and The Law of Horse Manure

    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 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

  • We Need Less Talk of Innovation and More Evidence of Impact

    In my last post I looked at why change fails and how most corporate programmes are destined for failure. Year on year, huge resources are invested in them. Yet we somehow hope for a different outcome.  The biggest reason change fails is employee resistance. Indeed – it’s the downfall of nearly 40% of programmes. However, Read more

  • Why Change Fails: Four Ways To Hack Your Culture

    All over the the world our organisations are experiencing profound change. The most common way to react to that is the corporate change programme. Every year businesses will embark on a series of reports , meetings, visioning sessions , training events and communication strategies. In almost every case the goal will be the same: to Read more

  • Nine Things On Customer Experience And Innovation From Indonesia

    I have a thing for travel. For me it’s as much about productivity as pleasure. I operate best in the four weeks before I go on leave and the four weeks on returning. In an ideal world I’d have a break every 10 weeks or so – but we don’t yet live in the world of Read more

  • How Connected Citizens Are Mobilising Social Movements

    This post is long overdue and has been sitting in my “must edit” file for a couple of months. The prompt to finish it has come from events in the past few days where online campaigns and watershed moments in the media (traditional and social) have again found our politicians wanting.  In June I was on Read more

  • Our Next Innovation Challenge: Stop Talking To Ourselves

    “Wicked problems”—ranging from malaria to dwindling water supplies—are being reframed as “wicked opportunities” and tackled by networks of non-governmental organisations, social entrepreneurs, governments, and big businesses. The challenge is connecting the players and closing the gaps. – William Eggars Global Public Sector Research Director at Deloitte, speaking at Lab Works 2015 I had one huge takeaway Read more

  • We need to encourage organisations to seek risk – and forgive failure

    “I’ve focused on the idea of failure being the engine for innovation. Not being afraid of failure but seeing it as a learning opportunity, and the value of getting out into the world and testing things earlier rather than later.” – Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, Google X Risk is still a toxic word across much Read more