Category Archives: Skills
Creative learning gets you high

When you are involved in a pleasurable social learning experience, your brain is stimulated by a series of natural chemicals – dopamine, adrenalin and endorphins – often associated with the high experienced using drugs such as cocaine. Human beings ….»
Practical wisdom

I’m inspired by a presentation at the 2009 TED Conference from Barry Schwartz on the increasing need and value of what he calls ‘practical wisdom.’ He actually mentions Aristotle and the Greek values understood as the ‘virtues’ at one point, ….»
Persistence

A number of Edgeware presenters, and writers on entrepreneurship generally, emphasise the value of persistence, of constant striving and application to your business goals. But if you feel you’re not strongly inclined this way, how might you develop this core ….»
Optical illusions

What is this? We often use optical illusions in Edgeware presentations. They break the ice, and they are a good leader into our position that *the way we see the world is the way the world becomes*. There’s ….»
Nouns & verbs

Things are fast and getting faster. Whole industry groups, whole professions, are disappearing from view. Who would have thought 10 years ago that General Motors and Chrysler would go broke? What’s missing, and where’s the opportunity? It’s not a ….»
Cash flow

If I’m a business educator and I’m trying to convince you that an MBA is worth two years of your life and AUD60,000, it’s in my interest for you to understand business as complex, difficult and arcane, isn’t it? The ….»
Happiness comes from experiences, not things

From the blog Neuronarrative Not only are people happier experiencing than possessing, but they are also happier having the experience of thinking about possessing something than actually getting it. Understanding that bit of knowledge about ourselves goes a long ….»
Thinking/doing good

“Doing good makes us feel good. Altruism enhances our self-esteem. It gets our eyes off ourselves, makes us less self-preoccupied, gets us closer to the unself-consciousness that characterizes the flow state” (1). In other words, caring for others creates a ….»
3D business plans

At Edgeware’s first Upload Young Entrepreneurs Camp (Jan 12-16, 2009) we tried out our first 3D Business Plan. Everyone selected materials and objects which represented elements of their plan, then arranged and connected these to indicate the dynamics of ….»
Positive psychology

Positive Psychology has three central concerns: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Understanding positive emotions entails the study of contentment with the past, happiness in the present, and hope for the future. Understanding positive individual traits ….»
Networks, niches, hives, tribes

Maybe you’ve seen the formulaic scroller websites that harvest your email address in order to receive something ‘free’ and go on to sell you strategies for making a million on the internet. Pretty lowest common denominator stuff, and it works. ….»
Edgeware’s Build Your Business

Edgeware’s Build Your Business program is an alternative to business education for new entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs who want to re-imagine or grow their businesses. Each time it runs, it changes, because the needs of participants and the dynamics ….»
Education-zen

“The problem of the steady change of ideas (or the perpetual need to imagine new ideas) also demolishes the notion that the essence of education consists in mastering certain contents or materials. You are not little birdies sitting in the ….»
Not-Design

Sitting last week in a workshop on the theme of ‘design’ I found myself uncomfortable with the tone and tenor of the offering. I realized eventually that the source of this discomfort was the assumption on the part ….»
Coaches as Uncles and Aunts

Putting together a coaching bureau is an interesting challenge. I’ve been working on this for some months, gathering together half a dozen friends and colleagues with coaching experience in a group I hope will make a very wide range ….»
Coach as Cartographer

Everyone is coaching or being coached; there are life coaches, career coaches, personal coaches, fitness coaches, executive coaches, coaches for getting out of bed in the morning and coaches for getting to sleep at night. Why do we need coaches ….»
Speaking at the Brisbane Ideas Festival
I was invited to convene a session at the Brisbane Ideas Festival in March 2009, a panel on the topic of Creative Entrepreneurs: The Artists of Commerce. I selected a group of Edgies from a variety of businesses and a ….»
What a Coach Does

I think a coach does four things: 1. Mentoring – a coach should have the capacity to empathise, and to relate the coaching experience to his or her own mind-set, world view and direct experience of analogous situations and contexts. ….»
360 Degrees

I’ve noticed that I’ll often use optical illusions or some kind of perceptual trick in my presentations, to indicate not only how easy it is to trick the eye or the brain, but that the way see the world is ….»
Physician, heal thyself

A working hypothesis: every coach needs a coach. Like every shrink needs a shrink. Something about keeping yourself honest, setting up a sounding board for reflection on the practice, shrugging off the Mantle of the Expert (something I learned from ….»
Dancing About Architecture

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Laurie Anderson In 1994 we stayed for a couple of nights with our friend Klaus Maier, Director of Theater von Menschen für Menschen in Nürnberg. Not a terribly gloomy place – I ….»