Patent of the Month – Piezoelectric-Based Solar Cells

Darrell Mann

Patent of the month this month takes us to a duo of inventors at the University of South Florida. US9,911,540 was granted on 6 March… an apparently good day for inventions since we had half a dozen good … Read More

Biology – Parrot Fish

Darrell Mann

Viewers of Blue Planet 2 were treated to the spectacle of parrotfish eating stony coral, only for it to emerge the other end as sand. Through this process, a single parrotfish can produce around 400 kilograms of sand … Read More

Generational Cycles – No Logo

Darrell Mann

How do you write a manifesto for a no-manifesto, how-dare-you-tell-me-what-to-think, alienated, Nomad generation? Well, the first part of the answer inevitably involves the expression, ‘another Nomad’. Enter Naomi Klein – born in 1970, right in the middle of … Read More

Case Study: Rethinking Healthcare

Darrell Mann

I picked up my newspaper today and found the word ‘crisis’ written over 40 times. Six of them as part of a headline. Debt crisis, NHS budget crisis, obesity crisis, KFC crisis, Brexit crisis, weather crisis, plastic crisis. … Read More

ValuesMatch – First Principle Mapping Of Enterprise & Individual Values

Darrell Mann

How do you know if new job candidates will fit with the values of your enterprise? How do you know that current employees do the same? That they are authentically ‘talking the talk’? Especially since, looking at the … Read More

Biology – Hummingbird

Darrell Mann

The sight of a tiny hummingbird hovering in front of a flower and then darting to another with lightning speed amazes and delights. But it also leaves watchers with a persistent question: How do they do it?

Now, … Read More

Use of Principle #10: Non-stick Silicone Egg Boiler

Vairaj Arjune

Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi – 110067, India. vairajune@gmail.com – varjune24@gmail.com

Principle # 10: Preliminary Action

It is always a hassle to make the perfect or almost perfect boil eggs … Read More

Promise Point

Darrell Mann

Compare and contrast. Think about Steve Jobs’ masterful launch of the iPad. Then think about how Google launched Glass. Downstream of the launch, of course, the iPad was a world-changing success, while Google Glass rapidly turned into something … Read More

Generational Cycles – Distribution Curves & Contradictions

Darrell Mann

There are two kinds of people in the world Part #335. There are the people that see everything as black or white. And there are people who understand distribution curves. For some reason the generation-cycles work of Strauss … Read More

Re-Thinking Physical Contradictions #2: Business Problems

Darrell Mann

It feels like a long time ago, because – embarrassingly – it was a long time ago. April 2017 to be precise, and Issue 181 of this ezine, was the place where we started our re-think of the … Read More

Definitely Not Funny – A Food Contradiction

Darrell Mann

Once upon a time, a clever person in the coffee industry realized there was a problem. ‘How come’, they said to themselves, ‘all coffee tastes pretty much the same? Why can’t we make it taste better?’ And the … Read More

Patent of the Month – Anisotropic Metamaterials

Darrell Mann

Our patent of the month this month takes us to the University of Texas in one of my favourite cities, Austin. US9,893,432 was granted to a pair of inventors on February 13. I have to admit it nearly … Read More

A Crash Course In Complexity

Darrell Mann

“If a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of … Read More

Big Data Quintessence: Measuring Equality

Darrell Mann

The state of the art when it comes to measuring things like gender equality is that the powers that be conduct ethnographic research and identify simple correlating factors. Hence we will typically find things like the number of … Read More

Biology – Jewel Wasp

Darrell Mann

Female parastic wasp injects venom in fly pupa host

Amid the incredible diversity of living things on our planet, there is a common theme. Organisms need to acquire new genes, or change the functions of existing … Read More

Evolving The Creativity Scan

Darrell Mann

Our fifteen-year programme of research into ‘effective creativity’ (also known as ‘innovation’) has revealed a number of critical insights into the creative process. From that research we saw a need to separate two important aspects of intelligence: firstly … Read More

ABC-M Landscapes

Darrell Mann

In Case Study: B2B Intangibles, we introduced the idea that, when it comes to the intangible aspects of any innovation attempt, the main success criteria involved making our ABC-M (Autonomy-Belonging-Competence-Meaning) tetrad ‘get better for each stakeholder at each … Read More

First Principles First

Darrell Mann

“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to … Read More

Hurricanes, Pop-Tarts & Optimization Versus Innovation

Darrell Mann

“HURRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided … Read More

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There

Darrell Mann

These days, I fairly frequently end innovation workshops by heading back into the generic world of Continuous Improvement and the specific world of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. My aim being to compare the original theory – that each of … Read More