Two of the greatest economists who ever lived, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, thought they could predict the future and make a killing on the stock market. Both of them failed to see the Wall Street crash, the greatest financial disaster of the age -...
A British Lord wanted to build the best airship in the world - and so he had two rival design teams battle it out to win the juicy government contract. Competition is supposed to bring the best out of people, but run in the wrong way it can cause people (and the...
Galileo tried to teach us that when we add more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster, those layers of complexity may eventually be what causes the catastrophe. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the...
Exciting news - I have a new podcast series ready to burst out upon an unsuspecting world. It's called Cautionary Tales - true stories of catastrophe and fiasco, sparkling with top acting talent, with the aim of making you wiser with every word. I'm writing...
What I've been reading... Steven Johnson's Farsighted. I'm a Steven Johnson fan and enjoyed this book a lot - sufficiently to read it in an afternoon in the library, then head to my local bookshoop and pay full retail. Given the number of books I get sent on spec,...
Perhaps it's the holiday feeling, but I've been looking at books with lots of pictures recently. First, Randall Munroe's marvelous How To. It's in much the same style as What If? and just as funny and informative. I loved it, then my twelve year old daughter stole it...
Over the past couple of week's I've been enjoying David Epstein’s Range – about the value of being a generalist. As I may have mentioned it's in sympathy with my latest TED talk, which cites Epstein. I had the pleasure of seeing Epstein dig up a lot of interesting new...
I've been reading James Wallman's Time And How To Spend It - which, intriguingly, he described to me as "How to Kondo Time", which I don't think it is. I've learned a few things worth knowing, though. Wallman recommends seven rules for spending your time wisely: Story...
I was on the TED Radio Hour this week; they were kind enough to give me both the first and the last word on the subject of kickstarting creativity. If you'd like to read more on the subject I would - of course - recommend my book, Messy, which gave me the research...