Here is some of what I have been reading since July 12th:

• How Reframers Unleash Innovation in Their Companies (And Beyond) – Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, Prasad Kaipa, Simone Ahuja – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review
  "A select group of smart leaders are reframing their mental models — i.e., radically shifting their perception of the world — to conjure up disruptive business model innovations that could rewrite the rules of the game in your industry."
• The Neuroscience of Leadership
  Interesting article from Strategy+Business magazine
• Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens – Well Blog – NYTimes.com
  Yikes, too close to home. "The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting."
• When it comes to research, we live in interesting times
  "Those of us who tell ourselves we are curious about the world are actually swimming in 'evidence' that has been filtered again and again in favour of interestingness."
• The Tenacious Buzz of Malaria
  Innovative mosquitos & their malarial parasites, and our own underestimating have made malaria responsible for 1/2 of human deaths in history

Here is some of what I have been reading since June 22nd:

• Why Canada needs a Great Reset
  Richard Florida makes a great case for why and how "Canada should be taking advantage of its enviable economic condition — its stable banks, rising housing prices, great cities, high levels of education and abundant natural resources — to lay the groundwork for an improved economic future."
• The dark side of the new theories of success
  "Maybe we don't have to become magnitudes more frenetic than we already are—just a whole lot more focused…"
• In Praise of Tough Criticism
  I prefer receiving it myself, but not everyone does…"We need to grow thicker critical skin. Why? Because critical behavior that always results in a chorus of affirmation is nothing more than conformity; because allowing views to persist that need to be challenged is nothing less than critical mediocrity; and because failure to tell our colleagues what we truly think about their work is simple dishonesty."
• Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?
  Have "a simple, clear, succinct strategy statement that everyone can internalize and use as a guiding light for making difficult choices."
• Profitable sweet spot
  A sublime use of overlapping circles

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
  "In the 1990s, Paul Romer revolutionized economics. In the aughts, he became rich as a software entrepreneur. Now he’s trying to help the poorest countries grow rich – by convincing them to establish foreign-run 'charter cities' within their borders."
• The Blame Game: Will Maths Apologize to Finance?
  French mathematicians defend themselves: “The models worked perfectly well, even during the heart of the 2008 crisis. Each morning they predicted the amount that we would be losing during the day with great accuracy."
• Why We're So Bad at Managing Risk
  " the oil industry would do well to take two lessons from the aeronautics community. First: anything mechanical can and will break — and that includes back-up systems. Count on it. Second: expect the unexpected. And plan accordingly."
• Twitter in 1935
• Recession 2.0 – Why Canada Won't Escape This Time
  Government debt-to-GDP is at 82.5% and we have "the most overextended households among the top 20 developed nations"
• The Problem with Derivatives, Quants, and Risk Management Today
  An interesting interview with the man who trains more quants than anyone else on the planet, Paul Wilmott

• The Regulation Crisis
  Surowiecki: "…acceptance of a law’s legitimacy is the key factor in getting people to obey it. So reforming the system isn’t about writing a host of new rules; it’s about elevating the status of regulation and regulators."
• Your Brain on Computers: Attached to Technology and Paying a Price
  "These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement – a dopamine squirt – that researchers say can be addictive…Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room."
• Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research
  The always brilliant Mary Meeker's most recent presentation – June 7th, 2010.
• In most forms a waste of time
  "14 compulsory forms demand 270 separate pieces of information. Each of those items of information has to be supplied, on average, 2.7 times. For each PhD student, academics lose 580 minutes of precious time on form-filling…for just one faculty, the value of this time would have funded about 11 full-time PhD students to completion, or paid for a professor for two years."
• Riding the Dragon
  Former Morgan Stanley analyst: "Powerful interest groups have paralyzed China’s macro-economic policy, with ominous long-term consequences. Local governments consider high land prices their lifeline…China’s macro policies have been reduced to psychotherapy, relying on sound bites and small technical moves to scare speculators. In the meantime, inflation continues to pick up momentum."
• Transistor merges man and machine
  "…embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells."

Here is some of what I have been reading since May 4th:

• STCI hosting $25k Boston startup competition
  A little about what we have been up to lately at Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations (STCI)
• China Doesn’t Need Us Anymore?
  Niall Ferguson says "they see this as a marriage on the rocks and they are actively looking, if not for another partner, then certainly for a divorce from this somewhat unreliable and spendthrift American spouse"
• Have we forgotten how to concentrate?
  A little story on Continuous partial attention, low-information diets and how to increase concentration
• The Levy flight
  How attention in people is similar to animal foraging behavior
• How the city hurts your brain