Letters Remain

  • Top Intellectuals: A Round-Up

    The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll, Thinkers 50, and Accenture’s Top 50 Business Intellectuals. Only one person has appeared on all three lists: Kenichi Ohmae.

    Twenty-four people (including Ohmae) appear on two of the lists. These people are:

    • Bill Gates
    • C. K. Prahalad
    • Charles Handy
    • Chris Argyris
    • Clayton Christensen
    • Edward De Bono
    • Gary Hamel
    • Henry Mintzberg
    • Howard Gardner
    • Jack Welch
    • Kenichi Ohmae
    • Michael Porter
    • Naomi Klein
    • Nelson Mandela
    • Paul Krugman
    • Peter Senge
    • Philip Kotler
    • Richard Branson
    • Robert Kaplan
    • Rosabeth Moss Kanter
    • Stephen Covey
    • Thomas Friedman
    • Tom Peters
    • Warren Bennis

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Thinkers 50 – More Influential Thinkers

    Thinkers 50 is a biennial poll to find the 50 most influential business and management thinkers in the world. The following factors are used to rank the short-list:

    • Originality of Ideas
    • Practicality of Ideas
    • Presentation Style
    • Written Communication
    • Loyalty of Followers
    • Business Sense
    • International Outlook
    • Rigour of Research
    • Impact of Ideas
    • Guru Factor

    Since its inception, 32 people have consistently appeared in the list.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • World’s Best Presentation Contest

    In 2007 it was Shift Happens, closely followed by Meet Henry and The Sustainable Food Lab.

    What will win The World’s Best Presentation Contest of 2008?

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Chinese Dietary ‘Secrets’

    As The Independent points out, Chinese food has a bad reputation in the UK. But understood and prepared properly, it is healthy, fulfilling, and one of my favourite types of cuisine. These Chinese dietary ‘secrets’ have rejuvenated my fervour for Eastern cooking.

    Stop counting calories
    Think of vegetables as dishes
    Fill up on staple foods
    Eat until you are full
    Take liquid food
    Bring yin and yang into your kitchen
    Raw power? not necessarily
    Use food to keep fit
    Drink green tea
    Take restorative exercise

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Top 50 Business Intellectuals

    A list of the top 50 business intellectuals, as compiled by Accenture in 2002. Initially a list of 300, the top 50 were found using the following rankings:

    • Google hits
    • The LexisNexis media databases to 1997
    • Citations found in the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index to 1997

    The top 5:

    1. Michael E. Porter
    2. Tom Peters
    3. Robert Reich
    4. Peter Drucker
    5. Peter Senge

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The World is Flat – Audiobook Giveaway

    The Other Side of Outsourcing is a Discovery Channel documentary by Thomas Friedman on high-tech outsourcing to India. In it Friedman visits a call centre in Bangalore to interview the young Indians working there, and then travels to an impoverished rural part of India where he debates the pros and cons of globalization with locals.

    This spawned his eventual best-selling book, The World is Flat, which is now being given away as an audiobook.

    Annoyingly you have to sign up for a newsletter which will send it to you in 3 parts, but if it’s as good as The Lexus and the Olive Tree or Longitudes and Attitudes, this is a good way to get the book legitimately.

    Edit: No need to sign up; the serialised book is on this ‘hidden’ page.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Losing Your Sense of Smell

    Three years ago Elizabeth Zierah caught a cold; a few weeks later she was back to normal… except that she had lost her sense of smell. In Slate, she writes about the miseries of losing the sense of smell (and in the process, taste).

    I lost normal function on the left side of my body from a stroke when I was 30, and although I’ve had a strong recovery, I still have limited fine-motor control in my left hand, I walk with a limp, and I can’t feel much on my affected side. Yet without hesitation I can say that losing my sense of smell has been more traumatic than adapting to the disabling effects of the stroke. As the scentless and flavorless days passed, I felt trapped inside my own head, a kind of bodily claustrophobia, disassociated. It was as though I were watching a movie of my own life. When we see actors in a love scene, we accept that we can’t smell the sweat; when they take a sip of wine, we don’t expect to taste the grapes. That’s how I felt, like an observer watching the character of me.

    via Mind Hacks

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Umami: The Fifth Taste

    Sweet, bitter, sour, salt… and umami. The fifth taste.

    Psychophysicists have long suggested the existence of four taste ‘primaries’, referred to as the basic tastes. Umami is now accepted as the fifth basic taste, exemplified by the non-salty sensations evoked by some free amino acids such as monosodium glutamate.

    Umami is a Japanese word meaning savory, a “deliciousness” factor deriving specifically from detection of the natural amino acid, glutamic acid, or glutamates common in meats, cheese, broth, stock, and other protein-heavy foods. The action of umami receptors explains why foods treated with monosodium glutamate (MSG) often taste “heartier”.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Barackbook

    Republican site Barackbook mocks Obama’s Facebook support.

    With ‘his’ status set as “Barack is hoping to settle on an Iraq policy before November”, Barackbook attempts to highlight some of Obama’s “more controversial real life ‘friends,’ while cheerfully mocking his much-hailed online sheen”.

    In all, the site is a shockingly clever 21st century twist on the age-old political tactic of guilt-by-association. It capitalizes on some of the key attributes of successful communication on the web: Brevity, graphics, and a subtle sense of humor. A related Facebook application even lets people become “fans” of Barackbook, and post comments.

    Most of the comments on Tuesday were in support of Obama.

    I’m always amazed at how ‘dirty’ American elections are. Amazed. If similar smear campaigns and personal attacks happened in the UK there would be uproar. Barackbook is still a bit much for me, but it’s a step in the right direction.

    via Threat Level

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Secrets of Book Publishing

    The author of Bit Literacy (one of the Startup Bibles) on the secrets of book publishing that they wish they had known:

    • The publishers are not doing it for the love of books; they want something that sells.
    • If your book will sell, it doesn’t matter what you’re writing about.
    • Your main job – practically your only job – is to explain very clearly why the book is going to sell.
    • “Original” means “risky,” which means “it might not sell”.
    • You write the book, you promote the book – in other words, you create the product and sell it. The best way is if you have a following online – via a blog or newsletter – that you can sell the book to.
    • Don’t write a book for the money.
    • Distribution is not the same as sales.
    • The good news is that there are other options than finding a publisher.

    Lloyd Morgan