Beautiful presentation by Lawrence Lessig at TED

With interesting examples extracted from his book "Free culture", Lessig makes a powerful case for the need to have a more flexible framework of managing intellectual property rights if we are to empower, not stiffle, creativity and innovation. His points are particularly important when one considers how scientific knowledge grew in the Ancient worlds (China, Mesopotamia, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans), in the Islamic Golden Age or after the Age of Enlightenment: innovation relied on the sharing and reuse (remixing Lessig would say) of previous advances.

Of course we must ackowledge the relevance of some form of protection of intellectual property acquired after substantial investment of time, money and energy. So it is essentially a matter of balance that I believe Lessig's beautiful creation (the Creative Commons system) provides. Quite clearly,

• the mass adoption of tools for producing, processing and distributing (sharing) digital content,



• the read / write or remix culture ,



• the empowerment of creative masses



• the challenge to established empires of content (organized as guilds whether they are called RIAA or MPAA or otherwise),

all have huge implications for the media industries and all the marketing, PR and communications models. Something that is definitely worth taking into account in businesses like Vanksen or BuzzParadise.

OECD's "Education at a Glance"

Well, it takes more than a mere glance to exploit the data in the OECD report, but if you are in the business of education or e-learning like one of my customers in Luxembourg then it's well worth poring over this document.
Download 2007_OECD_EducationAtAGlance.pdf

Something I found quite interesting is the break-down between capital expenditure and current expenditure in primary and secondary education in a bunch of countries studied by the OECD (click on chart for details). Interestingly the US, Norway, Greece, South Korea, Luxembourg and Turkey are allocating significantly over 9% (about the OECD average) of their spending in capital expenditure. I wonder whether that means that these countries are investing more seriously in computing and networking equipment for educational purposes, which I would find great. Now of course the question remains whether these countries have a strategy for national education and R&D and I think Singapore is a great role model for that. If you want to get a feel for the clarity and thrust of their plans regarding education, this page of Singapore's Ministry of Finance is quite interesting to read. Probably an example to follow for several European governments.

Quote of the day

"Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you  cannot visit,

Not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,

For life goes not backwards, nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children, like living arrows, are sent forth.

The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer's hands be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

The Ethical Mind

There's an interesting interview of Psychologist Howard Gardner in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, in which he gives a couple of perspectives on the ethical mind. Gardner sees the human mind as a set of cognitive capabilities that can be grouped in five classes he calls the five human minds (disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful and ethical). Here are a few interesting quotes from an article definitely worth reading:

"A person with an ethical mind asks herself, "What kind of a person, worker and citizen do I want to be? If all the workers in my profession adopted the mindset I have, or if everyone did what I don what would the world be like?"

"A study we published in 2004 found that although young professionals declared an understanding of an a desire to do good work, they felt that they had to succeed by whatever means; When they had made their mark, they told us, they would then become exemplary workers."

"We live in a time of intense pressure on individuals and organizations to cut corners, pursue their own interests, and forget about the effect of their behavior on others. Additionally many businesspeople have internalized Milton Friedman's belief that if we let people pursue their interests and allo the processes of the marketplace to operate freely, positive moral and ethical consequences will magically follow."

"When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends." - Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks

The world is shaped in the blink of an eye

I just finished reading a fascinating book called Blink. Malcolm Gladwell, the author does a great job at showing how the human mind has an ability to sort and process very rapidly relevant information in the blink of an eye to reach conclusions, make decisions and take action. Blink is about "the power of thinking without thinking" as Gladwell says, that incredible capability in of our unconscious mind that helps us steer our course in this universe for the best and for the worse. The book contains some very interesting case studies from a variety of fields from marital counseling to marketing to military and art. I was struck by the work done by Harvard to show the unconscious biases into which our education and social contexts conditions us: try it for yourself at this site or here (if the first link does not work as was reported by a reader).

One of the most interesting case studies deals with a war game of the Pentagon which took an unexpected turn as the bad guy was able to inflict severe losses to US forces in the simulation simply by organizing his side as a loose system instead of trying to capture huge amounts of data to make decisions in the heat of the battle. In a way it reminded me of modern management where there is a drive in many companies to capture all sorts of data about a business in a futile attempt to control the future, whereas it is often far more productive to hire the right people and give them the freedom to perform.

Man's quests in the information age

Will machines dominate mankind? How will business quests look like in an era of artificial rationality? Yes, I think it is about rationality and not intelligence: machines don't understand nor manipulate concepts, they don't invent, they don't paint and they don't weave relationships... not yet at least. Welcome to the dawn of the information age.

As the latest edition of a man-machine chess game shows, it's increasingly difficult for man to beat machines in the field of pure rationality. Chess master Kramnik lost against Deep Fritz a mighty machine that is capable of calculating 8 to 10 million chessboard combinations per second. Artificial rationality is here to stay and will become more and more present in our lives (if we don't blow the planet before that). The rise of artificial rationality and some day of artificial intelligence, will radically transform our universe. It will either multiply our capabilities or subject us to a terrible form of totalitarianism. Assuming AI multiplies our capabilities, what are the implications in terms of business quests? Machines are already vital in many professions like for instance traders. What is the role of man is such contexts? Could we imagine a world of almost totally automated markets? Perhaps machines will take care of activities that are either repetitive or can be assessed in probabilistic terms and people will specialize in activities requiring intuition, creativity and artistic talent? What if all those activities (writer, artist, singer, painter, sculptor, dancer, actor...) often considered as decadent in conservative societies of the industrial era were to become our main focus in the coming decades? What if the current rise of the social dimension of the web and the adoption of technological enablers for human relationships were only the first steps in the direction? What if a creative class was to rise?

Many science fiction writers imagined future worlds characterized by ubiquitous computing and a permanent contest between humans and machines, sometimes leading to wars (Hyperion, Endymion, Foundation, Robots, Matrix, Legends of Dune) and the rise of post-machine worlds (Dune). Sometimes science fiction describes political systems (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), environmental degradation (The Precipice, Earth) and fictional business quests (Moonrise). I think science fiction is a good source of inspiration aside from being a great way to take some rest.

No asshole

Some business people (conservative types) tend to look at non-standard ways of doing as suspicious and sometimes well worth their disdain. My professional path being fairly non-standard, I occasionally face disdainful arrogance, which I use as means to work on my equanimity... Now I have a very official and quite academic way of characterizing this type of behaviour as being only a manifestation of what Stanford Professor Bob Sutton calls "the asshole rule".

Guy Kawasaki provides quite a few very interesting comments on the book and on the necessity to resist asshole behavior both as a victim and as a perpetrator of such behavior...

Are we all pronetarians?

I recently read a book outlining the impacts of technologies adopted in the early Information Age (now). Now, many books exist on the topic, each with an inspired vision about our future and how technologies are transforming about every area of modern life. This one is particularly powerful, both because of the combination of skills the authors brought together to make it happen and because it provides a good synthesis of phenomena often described without reference to the big picture. The book was written by renowned French scientist and humanist Joël de Rosnay with the help of an intriguing entrepreneur called Carlo Revelli.  Worth reading if you speak French. If you don't, an adapted version in the English language is in the works, which I am pleased to work on. The original authors and I expect to have it finalized around September and it will be published under a Creative Commons license.

Potential within

A little over a month ago I read the latest book written by a most interesting Belgian doctor in medicine called Thierry Janssen. The book is called "La solution interieure" and makes the case that a substantial number of factors necessary to human well-being and health are actually to be found within each one of us. I think that has enormous implications for the way we run our businesses, our societies, our planet...

While extremely committed to scientific discipline, the author gives an account of his research in and study of various forms of the art of taking care of human well-being. The book deals with a whole range of disciplines amongst which is our western medical science and convincingly makes the case that it is time to broaden the scope of our thinking when it comes to health and well-being, while it also argues in favour of preserving a scientific approach / discipline to guarantee the quality of "service" to people. Full of common sense and characterized by true scientific curiosity, this book is the kind I really enjoy because it is devoid of "certainties" and "truths", focusing rather on questions that are worth asking and aswering (an you know how much I enjoy questions). Of course, some of the questions may not be comfortable to answer for the pharmaceutical industry at least in the short run...

It is definitely worth reading and I hope translated versions become available soon.

The Little Prince: 60th anniversary of the French version

French magazine Lire has an exceptional issue dedicated to The Little Prince, a book I personally consider as a wonderful creation that is full of resources for a wide variety of contexts (education, personal development, business, politics...) and for all stages of human life. It's well worth getting it if you speak the language.
I found it interesting to learn how New York welcomed Saint-Exupéry as an acknowledged writer when the French literary circles of Paris in the thirties were quite disdainful of him because he was seen as an airpilot who would occasionally write, i.e. not a "real" writer. He was not "pure" enough in short. Perhaps a proof that the quest for "purity" was not exclusively an attribute of nazis and fascists... Also an interesting perspective on the rigidities of France which are by not means new and had already caused the country to be in deep decline right after WWII.

If only The Little Prince was to inspire the Prince in our countries and organizations...

Transcend and include!

I am deeply convinced that open business and the economics of the
information age are very much influenced by the psychology of
participating individuals as individuals gain access to functions previously regarded as not within their sphere of influence. The debate about the European Constitution in France has been a manifestation of the impact of individuals on larger groups (tremendous participation of simple citizens to the process in my view regardless of the result for which I felt sorry), pretty much like social bookmarking or the current debate about peer-to-peer aand copyright. Another example would be the contribution of the EFF (which I support) to the hearings of the US Congress after the decision of the Supreme Court in the MGM vs Grokster case. Are we moving towards more participation of citizens instead of less participation as some analysts claim when looking at the figures of polls on the image of traditional politicians? Interesting question. Perhaps the dynamics of politics are changing and the whole system becomes more chaotic in nature...

Perhaps the importance of psychology in economic evolution is massively underestimated as we all tend to focus so much on technology. Open business is first and foremost about people and talent. In fact, traditional ways of doing business are also increasingly dependent on people (which is perhaps why there is such a massive endeavour of big corporations to built information systems that can fully take over from people). Human psychology is a key, yet often neglected,  parameter to consider in business and economics: for
example, I do not believe that financial markets are purely rational
like famous professors fo finance claim. Perfection of financial markets is, to a certain extent, a fiction that is
very dear to the western civilisation (the myth that rationality
should and indeed does govern every aspect of our lives). The is more than rationality in the way participants behave...

Actually
Carl Gustav Jung has some extremely interesting insights on the
eternal conflict between rationality and intuition, between
functionality and aesthetics, between thinking and feeling. I
recently read his
analysis of the The
Secret of the Golden Flower ; I have tried to show his analysis graphically (please click on the picture to sse it in full size). In his comment Jung shares his understanding
of this old Chinese book of life. He shows how the
western civilization has developed a cult of rationality based on the
principle of causality, i.e. that a phenomenon can (always) results
from one or more other phenomena, whereas eastern civilization's
development has its roots in a more intuitive understanding of the
world based on the principle of synchronicity, i.e. that a set of
phenomena occurring in parallel without any apparent ties of
causality are nevertheless connected and happen simultaneously. In
his analysis, Jung shows how these two patterns of thinking although
apparently contradictory  necessarily coexist in our psyche as
individuals and in humanity as a whole, which is of course linked to
his concept of collective unconscious. Jung also asserts (and I subscribe to this view) that we westerners, sometimes disgusted with the extremism of the most rationalists in our midst, can be tempted to embrace the eastern philosophies and to reject our western tradition; in fact, such a behaviour would be quite improductive and even destructive because our patterns of thinking are indeed those of the West and repressing such an important dimension of the Self would lead to crippling inner conflict. true to his inclusive philosophy Jung shows the benefits of building an understanding of the East without shedding the strengths inherited from Ancient Greece, the Persian world and the Arab civilization. So much for the infamous "clash of civilizations"...

Transcend and include is the message and I think it makes a hell of a lot of sense as we see the effects of rejection, repression and violent submission of foreign lands to the rule of today's great and mighty. Now of course, if we are to follow Jung (which I am quite happy to do), then the way people like Dr Edward De Bono position their findings limits the value of these new tools: for example the "Six Thinking Hats" method (which I have been trained to use and find great in many respects) does not need to be positioned as an outright rejection of the achievements of Ancient Greek thinkers Aristotle, Socrates and Plato...

From the standpoint of economics "transcend and include" means that microeconomics
becomes more relevant than ever. Indeed, thanks to new information technologies the dynamics of economic phenomena are increasingly emergent in nature: it is more and more bottom-up rather than top-down (a typical mecanism of the industrial era). Hence microeconomics, chaos theory, complex adaptive systems seem to be excellent tools to understand what is going on as it becomes more and more
difficult to capture behaviour and added value as aggregate
dimensions usually present in macroeconomic analyses. In short we are
indeed and at long last moving towards an economy in which
individuals can make a heck of a difference and away from the logic
of masses that prevailed during the industrial age (although to a certain extent industrial age standardization and logic of mass still applies and should therefore not be rejected out of hand). As a consequence,
there are currently important tensions and even wars between the
methods of the industrial age and the approaches of the information
age. From the way individuals contribute to projects and businesses,
to the advent of eco-entrepreneurship (socially and ecologically
responsible business initiatives), to the emergence of new consumer
behaviours, to the challenges the traditional media and entertainment
channels face, to new ways of engaging into political action, to
innovative ways of handling intellectual property like Creative
Commons (which I support)... Examples are countless in almost every
field of human activity. Again, after careful consideration and having myself fallen several times into the trap of blaming, repression and rejection, it seems to me that transcendence and inclusion is a good way to go, even though it requires some reform of the individual items that are to be transcended and included into a higher level of evolution as Ken Wilber argues.

These are exciting times and what is going on is absolutely
fascinating!

Pragmatic durable development

Just got back from a few days off in the Vosges, France. Lovely place, great break, clean air (by the way do you think smoking is a lot worse than what we breathe in our cities?).. Lots of thoughts. And great inspiration from a refreshing book written by two Frenchmen who spent 15 months tavelling and studying over 100 economically viable and socially & ecologically durable operations selected out of an initial sample of over 500 initiatives.

This book shows in a great way how focusing on people and carrying out local pragmatic actions can yield fantastic results that are also economically viable. It will tell you about an Indian eye clinic in which 2/3 of patients do not pay to get world-calls surgery and the clinic is profitable. It will give you an account of micro-credit and its inventor Muhammad Ynus. And also how there are other ways to wash your clothes that do not require you to pollute the environment with all the waste contained in P&G's or Henkel's (or another big brand's) washing products...

Overall it is a really refreshing set of stories that will show you that the often crazy rule of venture capital and Wall Street are not the only avenues to grow businesses. It also asserts that businesses can be far more than financial black-boxes worth the net present value of their hypothetical and "perpetual" future cash-flows. There are other ways to create and to grow.

Simplicity & design: food for thought

Nature is a good inspiration for simplicity, functionality and good design. Flowers are one manifestation of good natural design, at the same time beautiful and functional (flowers are in fact the reproductive organs of a plant, so they do have a very vital function).

Now, I personally consider design to be a wide or transversal discipline that is not solely confined to the way physical items look. Design is also how a service is being performed and there is a particular area that I like to call business design, which involves deliberate thought about the identity, the values, the capabilities and the operating mode of a business in an endeavour to make the whole harmonious.

There is a very interesting article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, which deals with business design and complexity; the title of the article is "Innovation versus Complexity: What is Too Much of a Good Thing". The article makes a good job in showing how business end up stacking new components, services, options, products, alliances... in a more or less random way. A bit like Lego parts assembled together in a totally haphazard manner or at least in a way that reflect the history of the organization but not necessarily the necessities of the present situation. Taking that point into account, it is interesting to combine it with lines of thought of innovation theory that claim the imperative to combine creation and destruction or even suggest to tear down a part of something in order to create a new form better suited to current realities.

Extremely interesting, because then what immediately follows from this is the question of HOW an organization can actually perform that and change, which brings us to the post of a couple of weeks ago on change management. And in an essentially chaotic world, in which organization is often an emergent phenomenon, the tools need to be chosen carefully and applied skillfully  to include all aspects of business starting with the human factor.

Funky business

This is definitely an interesting book to read. The authors convincingly outline the dynamics of today's economy as it edges closer to a market driven, knowledge hungry space shaped by the combined forces of cooperation and smart competition, where you and I are freelance agents, autonomous companies, brands. Me Inc. as the authors like Tom Peters claim. And Me Inc. has to be a brand that generates powerful positive emotions. Me Inc. must be an experience customers love.

On the negative side of the book: the extremism of the authors in making their case of a society of individuals who are fully in charge of their fate and who "are what they do", who "are their projects", who "are their contracts".  It does make sense to question the ways in which labour relations, contracts, business deals, employer-employee dynamics were organized for the industrial age. However, that does not necessarily mean that welfare systems should disappear or that as a society we should stop caring for those of us who are impaired temporarily or permanently to take care of their interests alone. In addition to that, as an NLP practitioner I have hard time accepting that people can ever be what they do. A projet, a professional activity, human behaviour are not tantamount to identity. And while I agree that our jobs will be more and more project based, temporary, uncertain, changing and defined by the benefits they bring to the customer, I think there is a way to be passionate, committed, valuable to a project, loved by the customer and to have tons of fun without necessarily reducing the extreme and unique beauty of the individual to that individual's activity.

There are a few other things in the book I feel skeptical about, like for example the assertion that the role of Government is more or less irrelevant, that the nation state's ability to influence events is more or less negligible and the creation of an elusive factor called "the forces of funk" to justify phenomena that would be worth studying.

Overall though it is an excellent read and good food for thought that should be a good introduction to the Information Age and the knowledge economy.

Everything!

In one of my very first posts on this blog, I wrote about this Brussels based lawyer who does not believe the Internet changed or will change anything to distribution of content, products and services.

Every single thing that was predicted in the late nineties about the effects of the Internet will happen if it has not already happened.

Everything. And more. Period!

If you are interested in a good projection of how the world could look like in terms of uses of technology (digital cameras, wireless telephony, content distribution over the Internet and overinformation), and also in terms of ecology, you should read Earth by David Brin. It's brilliant because it's science fiction with a time horizon that many of us will hopefully live, just 60-80 years in the future. Earth was written in the early nineties and it speaks of a world in which just about any individual has a digital camera and is able to trasmit images anywhere on the globe; it tells of a world in which there are thousands of different sources of information which are ranked by its users for credibility. Earth is about a word in which people are aware of the fact that no news can be taken for true without some sort of verification. A world in which Fox and Murdoch cannot manipulate a nation of 200 million souls without being punished. A world in which the potential for a million small manipulators of information is present. And that triggers the creation of a process of permanent review. Very interesting...

Succeeding by design

Many factors influence successful endeavours. Few do so as much as design. Succeeding by design is a way of doing things that does not leave essential aspects of a product, a service or an experience to chance.

Realising the importance of design is a key to achieving more better results in your endeavours, the enabler to getting more satisfaction from projects. Becoming conscious of the criticality of design is the single most important factor to create your happiness and your success day after day.

Good design is about harmony and style.

Succeeding by design requires attitude and discipline because there are a few universal rules that actually underpin successful design of anything you can think of from...

• hit products like the iMac, a Cartier fountain pen or a BMW,



• to excellent service like Amazon,



• to awesome experience like a show of Maurice Béjart.

This is a book I purchased a few months ago that summarizes all these principles of design; it deals with the 80/20 rule, the way people perceive colors, how metaphors and archetypes work to convey meaning, applications of the normal curve, the golden ratio and many many other principles, all presented in a fabulous manner.
It is a goldmine if you are interested in design and a powerful source of inspiration about things you can do to enhance your experience on the planet. Of course there are a few other things you ought to be informed of, but that will be for a future post on this blog :-)

Know Thyself

A couple of months ago I posted a quote on this blog; it dealt with knowledge of the past and of the future and somebody asked me "what if you want to know who you are now?". Well, that's a bloody good question; one of those questions humans have been working on for ages and quite frankly I don't know whether there is only one way to do this, nor indeed whether this target is achievable in "just" one lifetime.
The oracle of Delphi has been known to provide wise insights to Ancient Greeks on a range of matters of interest to them. At the entrance of the temple of Delphi, there was an invitation and perhaps a warning for visitors: "know thyself". That sentence can be interpreted in many different ways:

1. the oracle was willing to handle all sorts of questions except those dealing with the bottomless pit of the (sometimes troubled) human soul, perhaps a warning to psychologists, analysts and psychotherapists of our times



2. knowledge of oneself was considered a basic prerequisite for visitors to be able to deal with the impacts of the revelations made by the oracle, perhaps a warning to those of us who are on a quest to accumulate knowledge, expertise and experience (evolution may also stem from shedding knowledge, habits, fears, "truths", values, rules, obligations...)



3. the endeavour was considered as the boldest that a mortal could undertake, definitely an interesting insight for all those who think of walking their personal path and perhaps living their own personal legend as Coelho might put it

The challenge of self-knowledge is huge both because in our universe change is the only constant (and that applies to our souls, minds and bodies) and because there is a large chunk of who we are that can actually escapes the span of attention of our conscient selves. Carl Gustav Jung left an invaluable legacy of wisdom with his work on the self, the inconscious, the social ego and the shadow, which I am currently studying as part of my personal R&D.
I personally used some of the concepts Jung studied and in particular methods presented by Jean Monbourquette in a great book I recommend to anyone interested in the discovery of herself. I must warn you though: if you do it properly the results may rock you a bit, so make sure you have someone to guide you or to support you in case of weakness. And there is no shame in weakness; in fact strength lies within weakness, a wisdom present in the words and thoughts of many great thinkers.
Now to use my NLP skills a bit, let me see whether the goal of achieving self-knwoledge is a "good objective" to pursue for me, that is an objective that is compliant with the conditions of proper formulation of objectives:

1. positive formulation: "I want to know who I am now" - that will do it



2. under my control: I feel it is, even though I know I will not achieve it in one day



3. can be tested: by drawing a diagram showing the different aspects of myself and listing the attributes of my social self as well as those of my shadowy side I will be able to test my current knowledge of myself



4. in context: here and now, all contexts of my life



5. ecology: I don't see any disadvantage in achieving this goal, but to be frank there is no way I can know whether there is any; it's a leap of faith.



6. ultimate objective: harmony, evolution, growth



7. price to pay: I will spend time to investigate, invest energy in facing my fears (see the prayer of the Bene Gesserit of Dune) and devote attention to the subtle messages of my unconscious part



8. coherence for me: knowledge of myself is definitely in line with who I want to be in the life



9. does the achievement of the goal eliminate the problem? - what was the problem agin? No, just kidding. For me it definitely does and I don't see any other more suitable, elegant or short way to do it: I don't want to spend the rest of my life with someone I don't know, and who I am spending most time with but my self?

So, yes, this is an objective for me. Actually I think it is a fundamental prerequisite for just about every single aspect of my life, whether it is dealing with people at work, hopefully someday raising children, perhaps coaching individuals to the achievement of their full personal potential, writing, painting, meditating or "simply" being a citizen of the universe. And I do think it is a path to personal harmony, even though there may be a few quite intense moments of unexpected discovery... But then again, if everything that happens was to fall in the "expected" category, life would not be quite as exciting to live. Enjoy your path, whatever you choose to let it be.

Good questions and well-being at work

I am a big believer in the power of (good) questions. Actually I have not really come across "bad" questions so far. Yes, there are questions that bother me or questions I cannot answer or questions that are indiscrete... however that does not make them "bad" questions. Let alone that the sheer fact of dividing the world in "good" and "bad" is seldom a source of harmony in my opinion, for there is always one within the other in our world. Of course, the question begs: why should there be peace and harmony in one's life and especially their professional life? Let me renew a promise I made onthis blog: I will write something about the importance of harmony (even in business), as soon as I feel ready to do it.

Anyway, here are three questions asked by Ricardo Semler, a highly successful business manager in Latin America. He shares his experience in Maverick! and The Seven Day Weekend and I think both are worth reading. Now the questions:

1. Why do we think that the future is in God's hands and
then pre-plan every moment of it?

2. Why do we think intuition is so valuable and unique - and find no
place for it as an official business instrument?

3. Why do we agree that living well is living every moment, without
reinforcing past of future - but then spend most of our work lives
dealing with historical data and future budgets?

It's interesting food for thought and I realise that the more I read, think and write about those aspects of business that I experience, the more I come to ask questions that cannot be restricted to business life.

So perhaps after all life is One and the distinction between principles that would be applicable to my business life and principles that I choose to apply to my private life, is essentially artificial. Perhaps it is even detrimental to an individual's well being. Perhaps it is fragmenting that which is One, ie an individual's higher self. Perhaps thinking, saying and doing something about the well being of people at work is substantially more powerful as a means to improve the odds for a business than rigid procedures, ill-formatted templates and cost cutting programmes.

But of course, we may feel uncomfortable considering a different path from the obvious and established one. Do we feel uncomfortable doing something for its own sake and because we (not other people) feel it's the right thing to do?

Closework!

Benoit, a good friend of mine was kind enough to send me a book he said would provide food for thought. The title is Closework and I found it incredibly engaging and definitely interesting. It's a business book that is woven into a novel or perhaps the opposite. The authors wanted to write a different business book that would not be "damn academic". Well, this one is not and it certainly feels like very practical stuff from the real world out there.
The authors argue that what ultimately makes a difference in business is the willingness to be in the field with the people who actually do the work and to facilitate their activity. What Closework is about is the absolute opposite of what big strategy consulting houses do for a living, i.e. engaging with Boards and senior management on consulting projects based on apparently flawless thinking. Flawless but not necessarily right in the real world out there, because at the end of the day it is people actually doing the work who hold the keys to sustainable competitive advantage.

Well, I kind of like that! I believe in the importance of people as key contributors to lasting success. And you know what? The places and "big names" for which one decides to work (or not) are not good predictors of one's ability to contribute. So much for old-world criteria for selecting talent.

I agree with most of what Closework asserts and I can say that working with people in the field has been the common characteristic of every single successful endeavor of mine. At the same time,  I feel it is important to keep watching the world, to keep learning (and unlearning) "theoretical stuff" and see how they can be actually applied and to be building actionable visions of the future. The combination of sound thinking and effective action is a key to lasting success in business in my opinion. I have not found my ideal mix yet, but I am working on it... in field conditions!

All you need to know to build a high-tech start up

John Nesheim's High Tech Start Up is a great book for anyone interested in setting-up and/or growing a company whose business involves advanced technology. Now, let's be clear: in my opinion, there is no such thing as a low-tech company. There are mature businesses that may not feel the competitive heat that would motivate them or justify innovation, but that does not mean they are low-tech businesses. In that sense John Nesheim's book is very interesting, even though it mainly provides the US perspective. In any event, for anyone interested in innovating with a new or with an existing business this book is a must read; it will not provide all the answers but will make the picture a hell of a lot clearer.