Below is a short Remote Associates Test, or RAT, which is used to measure a person’s ability to see relationships between seemingly remote ideas and is an important part of the creative thinking process. For each set of three words, find a word that is related to all three. For example, if the words were…
Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you sit on, we were all surprised by the outcome of the EU referendum and Trump’s election as US president. Since then, there has been plenty of dinner table and pub conversation about both outcomes and extensive economic analysis but what does it tell…
We are social animals. We have hunted and gathered in teams for most of our history. Beside the benefits of sharing the burden of survival and gaining insight, learning and knowledge, we also seek out teams for affection, affiliation, acknowledgement and personal self-worth. Even today, banishment or shunning is an important form of punishment in…
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said; Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. The 25th of October will be the 164th anniversary of one of the most famous (infamous?)…
“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill.” Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. In warfare, business, and life in general we…
The literature on contemporary leadership and management is brimming with exhortations to learn and adapt. Laudable as this approach is, however, it is often flawed. First, in both business and public service, it is often based on an oversimplified understanding of learning, which confuses learning with training, ignoring the distinct value of education. Second, education…
Platform business models like Airbnb, Uber, and eBay are upending our conceptions of business, challenging the traditional linear business model as the only the only way of creating value. Today, how a business, public service or charity connects matters just as much as what it produces or provides. It’s imperative to remember that a platform is…
Two seemingly unrelated stories have struck me over the past month: the continuing saga of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal and the publication of the report into the Grenfell Fire commissioned by Muslim Aid. For me, the thread connecting them is the threat and the opportunity posed to hierarchies in an increasingly complex and…
As our website makes clear, we are guided by an understanding that we live in a hyper connected world and that neural networks are like social networks. While brain activity is made possible through connecting neurons (brain cells), social activity is made possible through connecting individuals. Both are stimulated by new ideas and perspectives, which…
One of the hottest political issues is how ‘open versus closed’ has transcended ‘left versus right’ as the key political division. Those who are ‘open’, so the argument goes, are in favour of immigration and free trade, and those who are ‘closed’ are in favour of tighter border controls and protection for domestic industries. Alternatively,…