Purposeful play

The recent launch of Cambridge’s Raspberry Pi, a £15 credit card sized computer, designed to encourage beginners to have fun programming, reminded me of the days when I was a student at Churchill College. Most of my male friends seemed to spend most of their time utterly absorbed in playing around with computers, electronics and software. Continue reading Purposeful play

You can’t eat consultants

A friend emailed me the other day about an awards event he’d been at for innovative early stage social enterprises. As seems to be increasingly fashionable these days, the “prize” was “support” rather than money, and in his closing address, Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society glibly said “Innovation doesn’t flourish when there’s money about.” The audience wasn’t impressed. Continue reading You can’t eat consultants

crisis creativity

As I write this, it’s been a rough month.

First an obscure Icelandic volcano grounded all European air travel. Then three young bankers were burnt to death by rioters in Athens, while Greece’s debt levels suddenly looked like bringing down the Euro. Finally a blowout in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico turned BP’s exploratory well into a financial and environmental nightmare. Continue reading crisis creativity