From the inimitable Wake Up Tiger:

The great affliction of our age is not the axis of evil — it’s the axis of mediocrity. We are far more likely to die from a lack of passion than from some great evil.

The BIG [elephant in the room] question then is: “So what the heck am I passionate about?”

– a note on PASSION

What …

Most businesses and brands are boring. Doing social media is really an attempt at unboringfication.

Most businesses have spent most of their time not developing a rich, deep, authentic and approachable personality. Let alone one that behaves congruently with clearly stated values and beliefs. They tell themselves they are the expert in everything. They strive to be everyone’s BFF. They are fearful and paranoid. In some cases, they are …

Right now, social media is boring. Just like normal media is boring.

Most human chatter IS boring most of the time. Try and listen in on conversations at cafes and restaurants. Keep your ears open at functions and family events. Social media is primarily a giant gossip pit. Very human. Just as we have been for millennia. It is gossip and fluff. See the screengrab here. …

This is a quick snip snip of the choicest bits, the bits that stood out for me as I was reading this article, “Nice and nasty does it: Shirky the ‘net guru’ on what the future holds” by Decca Aitkenhead in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“And to put it in one bleak sentence, no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds.”

The business model of the traditional …

The amount of fear and worry in our daily lives directly affect our ability to be creative. No one has time and energy to play “what if” games when there are threats (real or imagined) to fight off.

To enable a more innovative society, we thus need to remove or reduce the amount of daily fear and worry. From the background stuff like safe sidewalks to bigger things …

Rules make life easier. But they also impede the awareness and development of alternatives and new perspectives.

We love rules, routine and “norms” because we can just do what everyone else does/expects us to do and not think about things too much.

But rules, routine and “norms” also lull us into unquestioning complacency – a dangerous state of being in the age of constant disruptive change.

There is a constant …

This post is a follow on from my previous post Office 2007 Ribbon follow-up.

Hypothesis: The tools we use everyday should not change radically or frequently. Doing so will negatively affect the usefulness of that tool.

Consider the controls of your car, the layout of your keyboard, the configuration of traffic lights, the direction of a wall switch when turned on or off, the placements of hot and cold …

Does cute culture retard visual literacy?

When a culture is completely immersed in and panders to a specific and limiting definition of cute, does it condemn entire generations to thinking within a tiny pink box with bows?

If the majority only wants cute, then the producers will be more inclined to deliver that cute. New products are more likely to simply be extensions of the same cure formula. Creativity …

If you give a damn about anything, this is a must-watch: The Age of Stupid. You owe it to yourself, your children and your species.

I saw this at a screening this week put on by the UK High Commission in Singapore and WWF Singapore. It put a lot of things into stark perspective for me.

It is time to sharpen the …

Someone in one of my MBA classes (years ago now) once asked me if I freely give away all my ideas and thoughts to each client, suggesting thus that holding back may be more beneficial financially in the long run.

I said yes. Every idea that comes is shared. He was not convinced of the prudence of that action. That question was raised again recently …