Innovation resulting from
unique connections
Why don’t dogs grow to be as large as horses? As we’ll see, the answer to the question is pertinent to more than just pet lovers and eccentrics. It has relevance for entrepreneurs, corporate strategists, social scientists, epidemiologists, and others interested in understanding how things grow — and why they stop growing. In a recent … Read more
Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist, has discovered some remarkable scaling laws that turn out to be useful in many domains, including biology, urban planning, economics, and corporate strategy. West researched the food consumption of animals (including humans) and found that larger animals use energy more efficiently than smaller ones. For instance, imagine a woman … Read more
This week someone posed the question, “If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?” My first thought was to choose the most unconventional person possible. I mean, the purpose of this hypothetical dinner would be to capture some new perspectives on the world, and so I … Read more
Claude Shannon really enjoyed thinking about problems and tinkering with mechanical devices, but he was not a big fan of publishing papers. Throughout his life, he kept copious notes, sketches, and personal journals related to his work and ideas, mathematical lemmas, theoretical problems, and musings about wide-ranging topics, from juggling to robotics to music to … Read more