Three things to not think about

The advantage of doing nothing

Neuroscientists say our brain can only handle about half a dozen things at a time. That’s why our best thinking does not happen at the office. At work, there’s too much going on.

You don’t need science to tell you that. Vedic mystics picked up on it a thousand years ago and you have probably worked it out yourself.

Click to read more ...

What's in the garage?

Ways to do more with what you’ve got.

We were about age nine when my neighbour and I decided to explore the local creek. This required a boat.

Using scraps of discarded material, we fashioned a marine structure with wooden bow and stern. We hammered corrugated iron around it, puttied up the cracks and made a trailer out of garden stakes and pram wheels to haul it to the creek.

It capsized on launch and sank within seconds.

We promptly scheduled a product review. We added outriggers buoyed by old petrol cans and lashed them across the beam. They sort of worked. With a bit of tweaking they held the canoe upright, preventing our early death by drowning.

It all seems a bit Tom Sawyerish now but I was reminded of it by this example of retro-innovation in Steve Johnson’s book, Where Ideas Come From.

Click to read more ...

Three rules to stress test your great idea

Someone is already doing it.

Annoying but true. Whenever you come up with a truly great idea, it’s a 99% certainty that someone, somewhere got there before you.

Good ideas get around pretty quickly these days. At the same time, it’s easy to research them. Even a modest internet search will unearth something similar in a few minutes.

There are three reasons why this is good news.

Click to read more ...

Reframe your business thinking

The lever you need to press is attitude.

We often think we are letting go of old ideas when in reality we are just adjusting our grip. Our lateral notion of change turns out to be cosmetic, not fundamental.

We sometimes see change only in physical terms, like an actual product or an operational process.

Those things are an outcome of change, not a driver of it. What needs to shift first is attitude.

Exactly what is a lateral idea in business?

Click to read more ...

Timing and luck

Are successful people right, lucky or both?

In the mid-1980s, I listened to Nobel prize-winning finance professor, William Sharpe, address the Hong Kong Society of Securities Analysts.

Sharpe was one of our heroes, having developed the Capital Asset Pricing Model, or CAPM. (We don’t need to go into that here but for investment geeks CAPM is up there with sex).

Then the professor told us it was impossible to consistently beat the market.

Click to read more ...