The end of the world - again

Posted by Philip Smith on 4 October 2017
Artificial Intelligence will destroy our jobs ! - Really ? The AI ( artificial intelligence ) debate is reminiscent of the paperless office debate, where all manner of wild claims are made without any context and the eventual results are far removed from the predictions. No doubt there will be applications for AI into the future but it is worth a reminder that AI is not new. I did my first course in AI way back in 1986, so please tell me what the current angst is all about. Rec...
Posted in:Innovation  

When objectives are lies

Posted by Philip Smith on 3 September 2017
What we can learn from Governments about clarity of purpose. The government runs TV advertising campaigns proclaiming "Every K over is a killer" and for now let us assume they have the best intentions in the world. Clearly it has to be a good thing to reduce accidents and their human impact assuming this is in fact the objective. The simplest measure is to evaluate their actions and when we do that, it is clear that they have alternative objectives. To find the answe...
Posted in:Management  

Who are we ?

Posted by Philip Smith on 7 August 2017
Be Remarkable                 .....or Be the Same as everybody else... To be successful in business today, requires many skills and even though they are all important, we believe the most important single underlying element, to be Imagination. No Innovation is possible without imagination and it has been said that imagination is more important than knowledge. With Imagination, one can acquire knowledge, bu...
Posted in:Performance  

Time to Maybe say NO

Posted by Philip Smith on 2 July 2017
Clarity contributes to Sanity, I think. A recent newspaper article had this headline " Female anger is on the rise as time-stretched women struggle to keep up with hectic schedules" Even allowing for some "artistic license", we have to acknowledge some truth in this headline and it raises the question as to what can be done to alleviate this challenge.  Having cogitated, deliberated and ruminated on this problem I suspect I might have found one positive...
Posted in:Lessons  

Ups and Downs

Posted by Philip Smith on 12 June 2017
Level Flight As we work and grow, we learn. We learn many new things and in the process we tend to forget some of the lessons learnt and, at times, we have to learn the same lesson many times before it "sticks" in our mind. When our lives get busy and we are driving as hard as we can, we can miss some of the lessons in front of our noses. Recently I was reminiscing with some friends, about the many years I owned and flew hot air balloons, when one of them asked about ...
Posted in:Lessons