Books have always been popular Christmas presents. But just like other presents, many givers can completely misread the needs and likes of the recipients. We often fall into the trap of giving the most popular or most heavily promoted books. And it turns out we rarely read them. Many people have asked me recently for recommendations Full Article
In Break From The Pack – How To Compete In A Copycat Economy, Oren Harari challenges businesses to dominate some area of their market. And if they don’t, they should leave that market. He claims that companies that declare they intend to dominate everything wind up dominating nothing. This makes a lot of sense to me. Yet, Full Article
One of the advantages of living in a free society is that we have many choices available to us. Very few aspects of our lives are mandatory, even if some of us tend to lose sight of this at times. High value is placed on having multiple options. The more choices we have the better. The Full Article
In 2009, dozens of business people in the Cork region have come together to find an antidote to recessionary thinking. They want to be different, to be remarkable, to break from the pack. They have found fresh ideas for their business in the company of a supportive group of like-minded business people. This September, you can join them. Smarter Full Article
As you read this, do you think you know what’s likely to happen in the months and years ahead? Can you predict your own future with confidence? It seems that many have perfected the science of prediction. If you read the papers, listen to the radio or watch TV, you will find a steady stream of Full Article
Imagine how different your childhood would have been if your mother was totally blind. Imagine how different your everyday routine would have been. Imagine how you would have communicated with her. This was the dilemma facing Andy Bounds as he grew up. He recalls how as a child, he sat on his mother’s knee and asked Full Article
In challenging economic times, we all have choices as to how we respond. We can choose to resign ourselves to surviving, curtailing our ambitions and revising what we believe is achievable. Or we can take a risk. We can put ourselves out there, on the line, and try something completely new. One fine example of innovation Full Article
One of the pleasures of working in the area of facilitated learning is the exposure to some fantastic insights from the latest thought-provoking business books. One such book, What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis is packed with ideas on how to prosper in the post-Google world. He introduces a number of ‘laws’, which, as he Full Article
There are many experiences in life where there’s a big difference between talking or thinking about it versus actually experiencing it. It just happens that a facilitated learning session is exactly the same! This is why I’m delighted to run special open taster sessions every now and again to give curious enthusiasts the opportunity to Full Article
What?! You already have a Top 10 books list after two weeks of 2009? Not really. In fact, I have managed to finish just one book so far this year. It was a Christmas present and a pleasant read: Carole Coleman’s personal account of covering the US Presidential Election. Obama literature understandably has popped up everywhere. Full Article
