I’ve started an experiment to try and measure the speed of a meme. You can read more about it here. And if you want to link to it too, that would be great. Just remember to link to the most recent blog posting the site (and not on this site).

Haven’t heard of him? Taleb is applied statistician and derivatives trader-turned-philosopher. No, it didn’t mean much to me either, until I started reading an article he wrote in Forbes. He’s in Forbes because his book called “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” is selling like hotcakes.

After reading his article his book is now on my reading list. Why? Because it talks about the importance of accidental discovery on the fringes among other things :

The technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them. Even academics are starting to realize that a considerable component of medical discovery comes from the fringes, where people find what they are not exactly looking for.

[…]

Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research.

There’s also some podcasts around that feature him, here and here.

Last week I presented at an internal innovation conference of a very large Australian financial services company. I focussed on the innovation that occurs when you leverage the fringes and look at the edges of a sector. The message was well received, even though I included a skateboarding video at the start to wake everyone up (early morning and after lunch presentations require those little extra wake-up calls).

Now, back in the office – fresh after the presentation – I’m thinking about the fringes even more so than usual. Which prompted me to blog this post from John Hagel. It’s an old post, but one that bears reading if you have not already done so.

Edges often provide the most significant shaping opportunities. This is one more reason to seek out, rather than avoiding, the edges on the business landscape.

The full post is here.

While I have always been aware of the Long Now Foundation, for some reason it gradually dropped off my radar (would Alanis Morisette call this ironic?)

It turns out that they have podcasts of all their seminars, and they make for damn interesting listening. One of the most interesting ones is by Philip Tetlock where he discusses the results of his longitudinal study about how accurate experts are at predicting the future.

He categorises them into two camps : foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes have many tricks (i.e. experts that cover broad areas) while a hedgehog has but one trick (i.e. a deep subject matter expert).

Tetlock examines the accuracy of these two groups across a range of different criteria. It’s fascinating, and especially relevant for my work on the Technology Futures programme.

We’ve found that the mix of foxes and hedgehogs in any one large group can dramatically alter the buzz of an event.

As a sidenote Tetlock has been quite clever in selecting the two animals use as illustrations. The imagery behind the choice is strong, and you could conceivably label someone a hedgehog without incurring their wrath. After all, rolling into a spiky ball is quite clever. You could not really say the same if you labeled someone a slug, a flatworm or a hagfish (despite the fact that a hagfish has a couple of neat tricks too)…

Thanks Jan for the pointer.