In July 2012, Paul Omerod spoke at the RSA on network effects. He described this as positive linking – but not because the effects of networks are all positive. His contention is that – especially in economics – we tend to be subject to (but over look) network effects. Better attention to this trend could lead to a revolution in our…
Roman Krznaric is a cultural thinker and writer on the art of living. He is a founding faculty member of The School of Life in London, which offers instruction and inspiration on the important questions of everyday life, and advises organisations including Oxfam and the United Nations on using empathy and conversation to create social change. He has developed the concept of outrospection – the…
In the Skilled Facilitator Field Book, there is a discussion of a ‘unilateral control model’ which describes a default position in the process of learning – where a growing sense of being outside one’s ‘comfort zone’ leads to defaulting to a set of strategies which are sub-optimal (in creating the conditions for learning) but optimal in maintaining control of a…
Iain McGilchrist in his The Master and His Emissary links together neuroscience and brain functioning with the qualities of ‘attention’. I am not going to try and do justice to his arguments, here, but it seems to me clear that he is describing – from a very different point of view – aspects of what we are exploring. He describes the…
Matt Ridley has a talk on TED in which he discusses the hyper-connectivity of the current world, facilitated by digital technology (especially platform technologies). Buy implication the relative ease of world travel and the related population flows must be a factor, too. He uses biological metaphors to bring this idea alive – he talks about ‘ideas having sex’; he dwells…
On a walk round a forest garden on the Dartington Estate, Devon (November 2008). The guide paused for the groups to catch up – leant down and picked up a log with which he hit the end of another fallen log, hard – several times. Some asked, ‘what are you doing?’ he explained – the rotting log has mushroom spores…
I have been inspired by various things from Edward de Bono – but especially the experience of using the ‘six thinking hats’ with groups of people thinking about a complex problem, on which there are mutually unintelligible points of view. The six hats express ‘attitudes’ or ‘points of view’ to a situation, in ways that can be adopted as a…
In a meeting of minds (RSA Journal Summer issue 2009) Steven Johnson exploring link between openness of association and exchange of ideas in 18th century and explosion of innovation and scientific discovery. Argues that industrial age (characterised by IP and protection of ideas) is a historical anomaly. Implies idea of withholding information for personal gain was unimaginable. Implies that vitality…
In an article on neuro creativity (RSA Journal article Summer issue 2009) Adam Zeman, Professor of Cognitive & Behavioural Psychology, Peninsula Medical School links innovation to humans in community, mirror neurons, introversion and creativity, the literal power of imagination (how an image summoned up with your eyes closed has more neural impact than an image generated through sight of the…
Are innovators a ‘nuisance’? Is innovation a kind of ‘nuisance’? We tend to re-describe ‘nuisance’ as something more benign – virtuous, even – in talk of ‘challenge’, ‘grit in the pearl’, ‘tenacity’ etc But when someone is a nuisance, they are also a pain in the neck. This quality of being-a-nuisance is often described (in ways which defuse the emotion…
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