What price success? (a note on corporate ethics)

Last week I spoke at FOM12, and the closing question was a proper BOOM. The questioner asked whether I think it’s inherently wrong for businesses to use personal data to target products, ads and content. I found myself saying, “It comes down to ethics.” It felt a little weird to say that, although I was gratified to see a few …

The hero with a thousand faces (thanks, Joe Campbell)

[I’ve recently been re-reading some of the work of my hero Joseph Campbell, which inspired my talk on Monday at Next Service Design in Berlin, which you can watch here. Below is (more or less) what I talked about…] What is the soundtrack to your life? Even if you don’t have an answer, you understand the question – because every …

The heart of the system

I spend a fair amount of time at events and in meetings where people talk about innovation – theirs and others – and try to uncover new ideas for business and technology. One of the questions that’s asked rather a lot is, “Where do the best ideas come from?” There’s a preconceived notion, it seems, that these things come as …

Me and my (data) shadow

I’ve been on a bit of a speaking tour the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been growing more vested in and impassioned by my current topic every time I talk about it. What I’ve been talking about is how we can become more human, better at being human, using all the richness of data and technology that we are …