Thought for the day is from Rob Campbell, Head of Planning at Wieden + Kennedy in Shanghai:
“Behind every what is a why”.
BTW, interesting set of pictures of Liam Fox (MP) caught in an embrace with an adult film actress in the papers this morning. Now why would these pictures have suddenly appeared I wonder? Why indeed.
Off to France for the day to speak about the shift of power eastwards among other things, so this is somewhat appropriate.
“Ici repose un géant endormi, laissez le dormir, car quand il séveillera, il étonnéra le mondé.” ( “Here lies a sleeping giant, let him sleep, for when he wakes up, he will shock the world”).
Napoleon, speaking about China in 1803.
BTW, chapter one of Future Files in French (for free) here.
“We will all be failures, but at least be a magnificent, noble failure’.
Advice given to Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, by a teacher at Harrow School of Art.
” If the young men are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth.”
African proverb
There’s a new book out called I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. Sounds pretty dull, but there is a quote from an engineer that
I rather like: “Brand is what’s left over when you stop moving forward.”
“Impossible to see the future is” – Yoda (StarWars)
I was struggling with The Future of the Internet last night (it’s a book) so I returned to Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters by Jonathan Nossiter. The start of this is tedious, but once he gets going it’s great. I especially like the thought that Robert Parker (The American wine critic) has replaced one kind of tyranny with another in Bordeaux. What matters now is sweet, alcoholic, overly ripe and generally infantile wines.
Anyway, point of this is he has a nice line in the book, which relates to innovation and scenario planning (keep with me on this it’s worth it). He says that: “No idea exists until it is verbalized. If an idea is badly verbalized it continues not to exist.”
That’s why how people describe new products, services or scenarios is so vitally important. Indeed this is why the naming of a scenario is so critical.
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
– Joseph Stalin.
“In the digital age, live art is where it’s at” – Bono
“People have lost their trust in what they are seeing and feeling. There is something very visceral about theatre and there is nowhere to hide” – The Edge.
“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labour and there is an invisible labour.”
– Victor Hugo.