Sunday 21 March 2010

i know which came first

The chicken and egg thing has always driven me crazy, since it's obviously the egg (I am assuming you are an evolutionist). So, following on from yesterday, here is an example of how to be a business guru*:

HOW TO TURN YOUR BUSINESS INTO A CHICKEN
(a story about the eternal verity of thinking outside the box told via the illustrative metaphor of the chicken and the egg)

1. Understand that it's the egg. This shows you have seen through the cluttering fog of a timeless trope into the fact that there is a clear and simple answer to what people think is an insoluble problem

2. Since you need a new kind of egg before you can get the magic thing it will turn into, you need to know how to produce new eggs. There are two ways. One is cross-breeding, which means taking ideas from different areas and reapplying them; the other is mutation, which is looking at present systems and working out which changes will produce something that is beneficially different from what currently exists

One day I will not turn this insight into an actual book.


* The reason I am focusing on being a business guru is that I'm reading a New Yorker essay on McKinseys in the nineties and a book about Henry Ford. You will hear more about both of these things. Be still your beating hearts.

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