I have previously written about/drawn cartoons about  the evolution of work-life attitudes. I also drilled down into the issue within the Gen X framing of ‘balance’ using the surfing, juggling and spinning plates metaphors. Let’s now try and visualize the ‘work-life blending’ framing. Blending inevitably involves very frequent context switching, so we need metaphors for [...]

Posted in Culture, Thinking 5 Comments »

This article is an introduction to an idea — outsider innovation — whose time has come. I’ll present the idea, and along the way include short reviews of three fun books about innovation (Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko, Make us More Innovative by Jeffery Phillips, and Awake at the Wheel by Mitch Ditkoff) that belong [...]

Posted in Book Reviews, Economics, Technology, Thinking 8 Comments »

If you’ve ever used phrases like, “that’s serious food for thought” or “I need to digest that” or “there’s no meat on that argument,” you’ve used the FOOD IS THOUGHT (FIT) conceptual metaphor. In this piece, I hope to convince you that there is no such thing as information overload — it is an imaginary [...]

Posted in Thinking 2 Comments »

Most people think of only one notion relating work and life: the work-life balance notion. You and I of course, are smarter, and we know that the relationship has been evolving over time.  Here’s a picture of this evolution. I’ll leave it for you to figure out how to correlate this to generational attitudes and [...]

Posted in Business, Culture, Economics, Technology, Thinking 12 Comments »

Conversations about ‘what is art?’ bore me. Conversations about ‘what is art for?’ on the other hand, I find arresting. I have a simple answer that works for me: in the ‘food for thought’ metaphor, art is the vitamin A. It is what enables your mind to see. This is not an original take on [...]

Posted in Thinking 4 Comments »

A few days ago, in the course of some routine correspondence at work with a colleague at another company, I noticed his email signature: “Win Over Others | Communication | Strategic | Analytical | Activator.” In my reply, I included a postscript, “p.s.: I’d be Intellection| Strategic | Input | Context | Ideation.” If this [...]

Posted in Business, Thinking 6 Comments »

Dan Pink, whose work I’ve written about before, is releasing a new book next week that will likely bring to a conclusion a powerful line of thinking about the nature of work, that’s been gathering momentum for about a decade. In doing so, this new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, will likely spark [...]

Posted in Book Reviews, Business, Culture, Economics, Thinking 4 Comments »

At the straw market in Nassau, in the Bahamas, — famous for stuff like the straw handbags below — I recently encountered a distinctive culture of bargaining that made me stop and ponder the subject (on a beach, aided by rum). The pondering resulted in a neat little flash of insight that allowed me to [...]

Posted in Business, Economics, Thinking 2 Comments »

Imagine that there is a mystery closed curve about the origin. Allow two parallel lines to approach the origin from diametrically opposed directions, and have them stop where they first become tangent to the mystery curve. Suppose you do this from all pairs of directions from (0,π) to (π,0), and find that the lines stop [...]

Posted in Philosophy, Science-Math, Thinking 4 Comments »

I have had this little picture-story in my mind for several months now. It is the sort of thing that gets less clear the more you say about it, so here it is, with no further explanation.

If you liked this post, buy me a cappuccino!

Posted in Philosophy, Thinking 2 Comments »