Take a look at these two passages. The first written recently by a couple of anime fan/bloggers, Kiki and Lala, and the second written by the physicist/philosopher, Fritjof Capra, in his book The Tao of Physics, first published in 1975. The human experience has many faces, is described from many perspectives, in many languages, but [...]
Read More...Kiki, Lala and Fritjof
March 10th, 2010The One Corey
March 10th, 2010True story: The Two Coreys was a reality series idea I gave Feldman, whom I’d known for years and who had acted in a film I directed. He introduced me to Haim. Later, Feldman and Haim, in classic Hollywood style, sold The Two Coreys to A&E as their own idea. It WAS their own [...]
Read More...Blind Vision
March 8th, 2010When I was a student at Notre Dame, Marc Maurer (pronounced MAU-er) walked the campus faster than anyone else I knew, and I don’t just mean faster than any other blind person. I mean faster than anyone, period. Like twice as fast as the next fastest person. His cane, which he used to sweep the [...]
Read More...Power and Powerlessness
March 5th, 2010This is from a blog post by our friend, Nilofer Merchant, author of the new book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy:
The challenge with people feeling powerless is this: we don’t see how we can contribute to solve problems. We believe it is “someone else’s” to own rather than something any of [...]
Story Yourself
March 1st, 2010Not long ago, thanks to a series of events set in motion by our mutual friend, Michelle James, I had the good fortune to connect with Michael Margolis, the founder of GetStoried.com and the author of Believe Me — “a storytelling manifesto for change-makers and innovators.”
There’s a natural affinity whenever professional storytellers get together. Everything [...]
Over Under Sideways Down
February 23rd, 2010One of the characteristics of networks is their flexibility. What our communication channels looked like yesterday may not be what they look like today. This, of course, can be an asset or a liability. The net that allows us to build new relationships, discover markets and expand our potential for taking productive [...]
Read More...Work Your Way to the Bottom
February 15th, 2010Thanks to our friend, Nilofer Merchant, founder of Rubicon Consulting in San Francisco and author of the insightful new book, The New How, for fanning this New York Times interview with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies. HCL is a 54,000-person IT services company based outside Delhi with 2009 revenues of $2.3 billion.
Nayar’s ‘employees first, [...]
Cyberhouse Rules
February 8th, 2010I speak occasionally to Steven Lisberger, who directed the landmark motion picture, TRON. Naturally enough, the conversation usually comes around to cyberspace and how, as Steven puts it, “TRON came true.” Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about the role of story and storytellers in the networked world. Steven has a way of boiling things [...]
Read More...Quantum Narrative
February 4th, 2010We create and share stories as a way of understanding the world. Our ’sense of narrative’ guides us through life. Narratives are the basis of community. They inform our relationships. Characterize our business decisions. Color our music. They affect everything from our spiritual beliefs, to the schools we attend, to the products we patronize.
Storytelling [...]
‘The President’s Question Time’ Scene
January 30th, 2010There’s a great tradition in British government that, if you’ve never seen it, you ought to. It’s called The Prime Minister’s Question Time, and it is wonderful political theater. Watch some of this.
And then compare this.
Quite a difference.
The first is improvised.
The second is scripted.
Improvisation is active. It is alive. Members of Parliament are energetically engaged [...]