Category: Culture

  • Are You Better Off…

    …than you were 97 days ago? Ronald Reagan’s 1980 question revisited. Last Monday, I posted “Are you better off than you were 91 days ago?” The vast majority of the friends who engaged said no. Today it is 97 days since Trump’s second inauguration. You have to be of a certain age or a U.S.…

  • Adapt-amnesia, and Why it Matters

    We’re the most adaptable species on the planet, but then we forget that we adapted. That’s bad news for incumbent businesses today.  2025 Prolog: I’m still on the road, so this week I’m sharing a piece I wrote for the Center back in November of 2017. It’s where I first articulated one of my key ideas: Adapt-amnesia. What is adapt-amnesia?…

  • The Flip

    In today’s world of limitless information, stores, experts, and brands need to find new functions in order to avoid irrelevance. I’m traveling for business, so I hope you’ll indulge me and let me share a piece I wrote for The Center back in November of 2019 that I think holds up. I’ve updated links and fussily changed…

  • Agentic AI Will Change Everything

    How realistic is the idea that AI-powered agents will change the way we work, play, and live? The answer: it’s already happening. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called Piercing the AI Wall about an executive who had surrounded himself with a barrier of Agentic AIs that prevented…

  • Liquid Behavior

    Companies launching new products and services would be wise to focus on their target customers existing behaviors and moving them. PROLOGUE, 2025: I wrote the article that follows back in 2017. It was the first time that I dug into something that I believe strongly: businesses and organizations focus too much on their products and not enough…

  • When Strategy Devours Culture

    When Strategy Devours Culture

    In 2004, I had an inside view of a company facing irrelevance and also making bad choices. Peter Drucker famously observed that in business “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” meaning that an organization can have a perfect strategic plan and still fail if the corporate culture doesn’t align around that strategy. The reverse is also…

  • Gen AI and the Future of Entertainment

    Will algorithms take over Hollywood and make personalized video the dominant way people entertain themselves? Like me, my friend Shelly Palmer is in the futurist business—peering into trends, technologies, and tea leaves to make sense of what’s coming. Last week, Shelly published, “Hollywood’s AI Blind Spot: The Fatal Mistake That Will Kill the Industry,” which…

  • Attentuon

    What if we’ve been thinking about attention the wrong way? Perhaps the single most famous sentence about attention comes from William James in his 1918 book The Principles of Psychology: “My experience is what I agree to attend to” (page 401). It’s surprising that such a short, nine-word sentence contains two ideas that have not aged…

  • When Great Artists Are Bad People

    Artists can have dark sides, some alleged and some convicted. Should evil actions by artists change how we experience and judge the art? Let’s start with two thought experiments. #1. How would things be different today if newly uncovered evidence revealed that William Shakespeare was a pedophile who assaulted the boy actors in his company?…

  • Today’s Wildfires, Yesterday’s Memories

    There’s only one story on my mind this week: the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. The last few days tore my attention to shreds and patches. I was in Vegas for CES when the Palisades Fire exploded in my hometown of Los Angeles. I flip-flopped between thoughtful business meetings and anxious refreshes of the Cal…