Category: Uncategorized
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How Data Won the Premier League
In 2015, Liverpool Football Club hired Jürgen Klopp as their new manager. It was a decision that was met with scepticism by many pundits. During Klopp’s last season at Borussia Dortmund the side had dropped to the bottom of the Bundesliga. But Liverpool had seen something that the pundits had missed. Dr Ian Graham, the…
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When efficiency is not enough
I suspect that this point of view may be somewhat against the current zeitgeist towards AI-driven productivity, but I do believe that there is such a thing as too much efficiency. A good example of this happened in 2011 when the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated parts of Japan, and Toyota’s supply chain was hit…
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Using AI to transform client relationships
A couple of weeks ago I ran the first IPA Advanced AI for Account Handlers course and alongside all the more obvious automations and efficiency gains from AI there were some specific techniques we focused on that have much wider application. For strategists, consultants, and anyone interested in how AI can transform managing clients and…
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Why is Corporate AI Innovation so Hard?
One of the themes I keep coming back to in my workshops on AI, emerging technology and managing change is the risk of looking at the new through the lens of the old. Of getting stuck in optimising existing systems or ways of thinking, and neglecting the opportunity that comes from reinventing and rethinking at a more…
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Why good ideas die and how to save them
This week I was running a three day workshop with a group of leaders from an education foundation on the topic of connecting strategy through to execution. We got on to the topic of innovation and began discussing Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The talented group of engineers, computer programmers and scientists that came…
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Complexity bias in AI application
For 17 years, scientists at Australia’s Parkes Radio Telescope were chasing mysterious radio blips, nicknamed perytons, that stubbornly defied explanation. First detected in 1998, these fleeting signals closely resembled fast radio bursts (FRBs), which some excitedly speculated were astrophysical in origin. But they didn’t behave like anything out in space. They appeared only during the…
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On the value of ignorance
I loved listening to Rory Stewart’s podcast series on the long history of ignorance. It’s a wonderfully thought-provoking and counter-intuitive premise for an intellectual exploration and Stewart delivers it well. In the series he makes the argument for how we should embrace ignorance as a fundamental aspect of human existence, and why exploring what we don’t…
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On DeepSeek and hiring experience
There was an interesting detail in Ian Leslie’s latest newsletter about DeepSeek: ‘DeepSeek explicitly hires inexperienced programmers. They’ve said their ideal employee has 3-5 years of experience and that if you have 8 or more they won’t even consider you. In industries that exist at a frontier of rapid innovation, experience is a burden, knowledge…
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Do social media algorithms flatten culture?
It’s a good question. Years ago I wrote about different types of content curation, positing that there were three main types – algorithmic (we see stuff because of algorithms), professional (people who are paid to curate such as editors and commissioners) and social (we see stuff because friends/people we follow think it’s worth sharing). I added…
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The Six Types of Wealth
I have a sticky note on the wall in my office which lists the six types of wealth: Money, Time, Relationships, Health, Knowledge, and Experiences. I put it there as a constant reminder that there are different types of wellbeing and wealth, not just financial. It’s a deceptively simple but powerful way to think about…