I think there is evidence that partnerships – I am sure not exclusively, but pretty consistently – achieve something of strategic significance (the what) because of the way they work (their processes, or the ‘how’). And there are many instances of ‘how’ – we have mentioned ‘visioning’, as a prominent one – but I would like to consider how they…
Soft Innovation: Towards a more complete picture of innovative change (NESTA research report July 2009). In this report, economist, Paul Stoneman, uncovers a picture of rapid innovative change which depends on changes in aesthetics, rather than technology. He calls this ‘soft innovation’. Soft innovation mainly concerns product innovation and differentiation. The report covers ground more fully considered in Paul Stoneman’s book,…
In Side Effects, Adam Phillips writes about the disctinction between revolution and rebellion. He describes a tension between conservation and renovation. Phillips writes, quoting Sartre: ‘‘The rebel’, Sartre says in his book on Baudelaire, ‘is careful to preserve the abuses from which he suffers so that he can go on rebelling against them’. The revolutionary changes the world. The rebel,…
From Wikipedia, accessed April 2012 Bid‘ah (Arabic: بدعة) refers to innovations in Islam. Linguistically the term means “innovation, novelty, heretical doctrine, heresy”. In contrast to the English term “innovation”, in Arabic, the word bid’ah generally carries a negative connotation, however it can also have positive implications. It has also been used in classical Arabic literature (adab) as a form of praise for outstanding compositions of prose…
Some thoughts on governance: Software is a set of digital rules that govern relationships Bloggers involved in the ‘Occupy’ movement in 2012 discussed how they wanted to be ‘their own government’ – they did not want to be ‘governed by the forces of world finance’ A colleague of mine, David Welbourn, (CASS Business School) describes governance in terms of the…
Slingshot