Is Apple Duplicitous?

This little mini rant has been brewing for a while. What tipped it was watching the movie Jobs, which wasn’t very good, and took too many liberties. One in particular is a scene in which Steve Jobs, played by Ashton Kutcher, supposedly and suddenly discovers that Microsoft has a graphical interface. Jobs calls Bill Gates, […]
Gladwell On David & Goliath

This TEDSalon video just up: Malcolm Gladwell on the REAL story of David and Goliath. [ted id=1831]
The Innovator’s Temptations

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is, “How can we unleash innovation all across our company?” Through the course of working with dozens of different organizations and teams, I’ve noticed four common traps that are all too easy to fall into, and nearly always get in the way of building a culture […]
Spotlight On Artistry At Work

Writing about artistry at work without real world examples runs the risk of becoming too conceptual and abstract. And it’s a far too easy target to look at those in fields we traditionally think of as artistic: painters, sculptors, writers, photographers, designers, the performing arts, and athletics. The vast majority of this blog’s audience, though, […]
Clint Eastwood, Artistry, and Law #3

A few weeks ago, MGM ran the “man with no name” Western trilogy in hi-def. You know the ones: Clint Eastwood as the drifter gunman in black jeans and green pancho, a man of few words but never without a cigar. Starting with “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964, followed by “For a Few Dollars […]
The Art of Connecting the Dots

(Note: this article appeared first in Fast Company Design.) What do the Mona Lisa smile and the Wall Street Journal have in common? They both employ a design principle related to subtraction and minimalism. By limiting information, they engage the imagination. In the case of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci purposefully blurred smile lines […]