The triple meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in March 2012 and the release of radioactive material that ensued left a good part of Northern Japan contaminated with unknown amount of radioactivity. A lack of transparency from both the government and the power utility then resulted in a near total lack of information […]

Image Credit: NASA President Richard M. Nixon and the Apollo 13 crew salute U.S. flag during the post-mission ceremonies at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. Earlier, the astronauts John Swigert, Jim Lovell and Fred W. Haise were presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the Chief Executive. Apollo 13, launched on April 11, 1970, was […]

A few words from Kiyoshi Kurokawa – chairman of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission – to sum up the insights derived from his inquiry: “for all the extensive detail it provides, what this report cannot fully convey – especially to a global audience – is the mindset that supported the negligence behind this […]

Chris Bolton, via  Euan Semple and Peter Fryer, has recently introduced me to the notion of trojan mice – the idea that multiple, small, inconspicuous, safe-to-fail projects are more likely to succeed than the big launch, beer mats and key rings, single idea, easy to spot coming over the horizon, trojan horse. The video below, from Dave Snowden of […]

Here are the opening ten minutes or so of A shift of opinion the finest management training film produced – ever! Apart from the black and white recording, the smoking, the blackboard and chalks, and one or two dinosaur-esque behaviours the issues in the story – creating change with people in organisations – are as […]

Last week two gurus of change and innovation arranged a five day working session to meditate on the meaning of life and the universe and how best to move the leading edge of consulting forward. In a generous act of openness and sharing our two gurus arranged to have their conversations recorded and we reproduce […]

Flickr don’t employ librarians to categorise photos – instead they are tagged by users which means there is no need to employ a “professional class” to do the job. Could this be, by any chance, a sign that we have reached the beginning of the end of getting things done where the default choice is […]

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you’ll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.

An animation showing edits to the www.OpenStreetMap.org project during 2008. OpenStreetMap is a wiki-style map of the world and this animation displays a white flash each time a way is entered or updated. Some edits are a result of a physical local survey by a contributor with a GPS unit and taking notes, other edits […]

There’s an internal debate raging in Castleton at the moment as to whether we should switch to Mac as our platform of choice. I’m hoping this will convince the skeptics – it’s a bit old but still worth a view…