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

  • 12 Months of Failure: Lessons Learned in Year One of Bromford Lab

    Guest post by Tom Hartland One year ago the Bromford Lab was established as a way of accelerating new ideas, driving innovation in the business and building our external networks. ‘Failing fast’ was a founding principle, any idea was a good idea and our 12 week window to complete work was the target to aim Read more

  • Five Questions for Prospective Digital Leaders

    Engaged leadership in the digital era means not chasing the latest apps and gadgets. Being an engaged leader in the digital era means knowing what your goals are and what tools to use to achieve them. It also means being brave and bold enough to step into the fray: listen to followers, share yourself with Read more

  • Lessons From a Year Spent on a Two Pizza Team

    Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team – Steve Wozniak In the early years of Amazon , as the company was in transition from fledgling startup to world-eating behemoth , managers held a corporate Read more

  • Three Ways Organisations Kill Ideas (And How You Can Remove Them)

     Many organisations , without realising it , act as inhibitors of innovation. 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 do things around here’ – that either promote creativity or quell it. Our employees generate Read more

  • Why Great Customer Experience Requires Great Design

    Note to reader: This post was written on a smartphone over 14 days sitting on a beach. It was completed at an altitude of 35,000 feet after several white wines. I’ve chosen to publish it unedited to retain a tropical , stream of consciousness vibe. Subsequently it’s a bit more disjointed and a lot longer Read more

  • How to Make Innovation Part of Everyone’s Job

    The average colleague has seven ideas per day about how they could improve where they work.  For our company that’s 9000 ideas per day. Or 3 million every year. But most of those ideas never catch fire. – Bromford Lab Tokyo, Japan 1936 – Kiyoshi Ichimura , the son of a poor farming family , has an Read more