Spotted elsewhere
Stuff I noticed and want to share, updated randomly
Photo by myself, village in deep Provence
Jungle challenges the way we think about the world - and ourselves
From The Guardian review of Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World – and Us by Patrick Roberts and to be published July 1st.
I will definitely read this when it comes out.
A quote from a pre-publication blurb:
“We see that the relationship between humankind and 'jungles' is deep-rooted, that we are all connected to their destruction, and that we must all act to save them. Urgent, clear-sighted and original, Jungle challenges the way we think about the world - and ourselves.”
Edward de Bono, a pioneer no longer with us
From the obituary in The Guardian, 10 June 2021
Author, doctor and inventor of the term lateral thinking who wrote more than 60 books on his original and unorthodox theories…
…It is lateral thinking that creates new ideas – Einstein and Darwin, according to De Bono, were lateral thinkers. ‘Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas. Logic will never change emotion or perception….
… De Bono claimed that business leaders came to him “because they recognized the importance of what I was talking about”.
‘It upsets people when I say business is more interested in thinking than universities, but it’s true.’
Why Nobel Prizes Fail 21st-Century Science
...But many now question this deification of scientists and believe Nobel prizes are dangerously out of kilter with the processes of modern research. By stressing individual achievements, they say, Nobels encourage competition at the expense of cooperation. They want the system to be changed. Full article in The Guardian.
Improvisation, essential for organizations today
A definitive feature of the way we go about our day-to-day activities
I put myself through college teaching piano, and even played jazz piano in a nightclub one weekend. Loved the experience! So studying improvisation as part of organizational behavior caught my attention immediately. And it certainly fits into my research about the gig mindset inside organizations.
"We believe that improvisation is a central feature of organizational reality and indeed a definitive feature of the way we go about our day-to-day activities....Organizational improvisation is still in its earlier stages of development and much remains to be done before the full contribution of this research paradigm to organization science can be fully appreciated. It is with this in mind that we offer this volume of some of the most salient contributions to this emergent field."
(Authors Ken Kamoche, Miguel Pina e Cunha and Joao Vieira da Cunha, )
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Identity
Existence in 2 worlds: Insider-Outsider
I had the chance to see the mind-blowing exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat in Paris during its final days near the end of 2019. "What is my identity?" is a thought that comes to mind when seeing many of his pieces. The best example to share this with you is via the Guggenheim Bilbao website:
... "Basquiat is often said to have existed in two worlds—as an “insider-outsider.” For the artist, however, the notion of duality was complex, related not just to his own identity but also to social systems of wealth and class...... By combining disparate elements in a single work of art, Basquiat also suggests that opposing forces can be united to create a whole."
Outstanding presentation on the Guggenheim Bilbao website.
‘Deep’ Job Platforms and How to Build Them
From shallow to deep: four tactics
Job platforms have gone from light to layered; from simply matching potential candidates with open roles to adding additional value to the employers, the job seekers, or in some cases, both. Just as the gig economy and product marketplaces evolved from listings to managed marketplaces, jobs marketplaces are entering a new phase: the deep platform era.
By D’Arcy Coolican and Jeff Jordan, published on Future from a16z.
See what the value is, who’s doing it and how.
Read the full article to see the evolution from shallow to deep job platforms as well as 4 tactics from Andreessen Horowitz to succeed. a16z is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California, that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology.
Are business cases still useful for learning?
Forget best practices? Explore scenarios?
I found this article in the FT very useful for rethinking how business students learn.
"Students love the classroom buzz and collaborative approach, but critics are circling."
In fact, the critics are saying that learning through exploring scenarios, as is the growing practice at Yale, is more relevant today. Business cases, used heavily at Harvard according to the article, are based on the past. This makes sense to me. Best practices may be helpful, but they too are based on the past. Take a look at the article and let me know what you think.
One of the points I develop in my book on the gig mindset inside organizations is that senior managers today depend too much on best practices, especially those of their peers, and miss seeing what is happening around them on a broader scale.
Wikipedia at 20
Last gasp of an internet vision, or a beacon to a better future?
The Guardian, 15 Jan 2021, Alex Hern.
The collaborative encyclopaedia still has many barriers to overcome, from an ever-present funding crisis, only partially solved by its donation-driven revenue model, to its undesired role as a silent battlefield for professionally run influence campaigns to rehabilitate reputations, or excise controversy from the internet. And it still faces the same pressures that more conventional reference sources do, as it struggles to represent the history of the world with less of a focus on the white, male wealthy figures who make up so much of recorded history.
Work without jobs
MITSloan (paywall or sign-in) 6 Jan 2021, Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau, link to article
We need a new operating system…
…built on deconstructed jobs and organizational agility....Organizations are held back by the obsolescence and stubborn inertia of a traditional work operating system that was built for the Second Industrial Revolution, with work defined as “jobs” and workers defined as “job-holding employees.”
24 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2021
Editor Scott Olster at LinkedIn, 9 Dec 2020, link to article
One example among many: The shift from employee to entrepreneur has already begun.
With scores of restaurants and retailers permanently shuttered without a viable comeback, frontline workers are launching traveling hair salons and virtual workout classes. New business applications, which would-be entrepreneurs must file for tax purposes, have skyrocketed, growing 38% year-over-year as of mid-November, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
This entrepreneurial spike may be largely isolated to countries that did not offer robust economic stimulus programs to keep workers employed. In Europe, where governments have helped companies offset costs while workers stayed home, the unemployment rate is far lower than in the U.S. Those economies have not seen the same dramatic uptick in new business formation.