Who owns Mars?
Did you hear that China intends to land on the Moon and to have a base there by 2020? That’s only 4 years’ time. Your freshman kids won’t even have finished college by then….. And of course, SpaceX intends to have a settlement on Mars by 2024. Maybe the explosion of its rocket recently will put a dampener on […]
The end of the wheel – wheel-less cars the next humongous growth driver
Hmmm, no car drivers these days, so why not no wheels too? You can’t open any paper, blog or tweet these days without hearing about self-driving cars. Frankly I’m getting bored. How about something new for once? How about wheels? Wheels are terribly old-fashioned. They weigh a lot, cost a lot, need a heavy car […]
Labor still beats capital in leadership development
As is my wont I was recently idly surfing the net checking out stuff about leadership. I ran across the latest issue of Entrepreneur magazine, a very good publication I am sure. Here were its three top headlines on the leadership page: I’m sure these are all good articles. And they are definitely representative of the […]
How do negative interest rates impact leadership and risk globally?
It just came out that the Bank of Ireland and RBS bank have introduced negative interest rates on large deposits. Germany and Japan both have banks with negative interest rates, as well as some of the Scandinavians. That’s got to qualify as a megatrend. It looks like negative interest rates are spreading fast. We are in uncharted […]
Is organizational culture over-hyped?
If you’re in HR, or you’re the CEO of an organization, chances are that you talk a lot about your “unique” organizational culture. It’s also a favorite of academics. Definitely politically correct. But even the promoters of organizational culture don’t exactly know what it means – see for example this article, direct from the PC […]
Noah’s Ark on a stick is how we get to the stars – soon
I guess you saw that the latest in the Star Trek movie series (Star Trek Beyond) has just come out? It’s a hardy perennial, even though everybody knows that the travel to the stars isn’t possible for us humans because it would take so long to get there. When the first Trekkie came out, that […]
The Difference between Agile and Supple Leadership
So where did I get “supple leadership” from? I made it up of course! Actually I was reflecting on the now widespread use of the term “agile leadership”. It’s in use by many companies and there are even assessments for it now such as one from Korn/Ferry. Even I have been guilty of using the term […]
Should we deliberately slow down innovation?
Did you notice that Alvin Toffler, author of “Future Shock” just passed away? His book was published in 1970. That was well before the Internet, Twitter, Facebook and even photocopiers and hand-held electronic calculators. Think what he would say today? Clearly the pace of change has accelerated dramatically since Toffler alerted us to the problem. Essentially […]
A New and Practical Pathway to Immortality?
Well here’s an intriguing piece of research. It turns out that at least some genes in both animals and humans are still alive even after the animal itself is dead. So far it looks like they can remain active for up to 48 hours after their host has given up the ghost. (New Scientist, “Hundreds […]
Could you purposely redesign your personality with a pill?
Another apparently useless piece of information, courtesy of researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts medical School. It looks like particular chemicals in your immune system cause you to be social. Specifically it’s a molecule called gamma interferon. Who would have thunk it? For some reason, the immune system governs whether you […]