Unquiet Water: Finding Meaning in Faith
What is faith, to me? It is the trust that someone has seen more than you. Consider how a biologist experiences a forest, versus how I experience it. Where I would see “a leaf” they might see an unusual plant for this elevation...
We Need Imagination Now More Than Ever
Imagination — the capacity to create, evolve, and exploit mental models of things or situations that don’t yet exist — is the crucial factor in seizing and creating new opportunities, and finding new paths to growth...
The Playful Corporation
We don’t usually think of play as an essential part of business. Play looks like an optional extra: something you do after you’ve finished your work, rather than being an integral part of work itself...
Competing on Imagination
What is upstream of innovation? How can we understand and shape the murky mental territory that leads to good ideas: the realm of imagination?
Books as Therapy - Online Tool
This is a tool to put you in touch with books that are helpful to read when facing certain problems. We believe that the point of reading is therapeutic: we read in order to live better...
The Ethics of Ego - Radio Interview
Many of us tend to recoil from displays of egoism – to the point where we push ourselves far in the opposite direction, and lose natural confidence and assertiveness. What if we looked past our distaste and approached egoists as having something to teach us?
What can neuroscience and theology teach us about human nature?
Building a better society starts with thinking about how we imagine ‘humans’ – all that we share underneath the surface...
Competing on Imagination
What's the use of the humanities? Currently they are not fulfilling their potential. The humanities can be powerful, if we use them as a starting point to get out in the world, compete with others, and build good things...
When SMART Goals Are Not So Smart
We rarely question the need for goals, and the familiar acronym SMART instructs us that good goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based. But none of these attributes say anything about the context in which we are setting goals...
A Fuller Approach to Life - Interview
“We have this almost religious approach to ambition – not that we call it that – but we imagine that if we can just get that position at the top of the firm we’ll be saved...”
Culture: A Memory Game
A card matching game showcasing iconic works of art, architecture, design, and literature. Each work represents a unique perspective or key insight into the question of how to live a good life...
Getting Uncomfortable on Purpose
A sign that purpose has lost its power is if discussing it is comfortable—if in articulating purpose you are merely describing, rather than disrupting, how your company works...
Dumbo Feather - Interview
Philosophy should help us with the answers, as well as asking questions. Philosophy has perhaps put too much emphasis on asking the questions about life, rather than having a shot at answering them...
Ideas, Emotions, and Innovation
Business is dominated by plans and analysis. But people are not moved by logic alone. According to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, behind every apparently sensible scientist is a child who was irrationally drawn to fire...
Andy Warhol - Video
Andy Warhol was the most glamorous figure of 20th-century art. Much about his life was eccentric – he wore a silver wig; he liked to peel potatoes while lying in bed; he liked to go to the dry cleaners to enjoy the smell of the chemicals...
Philosophical Honey - Product
The School of Life's first food range, Philosophical Honey, souced from the birthplaces of Ancient Greek thinkers, Zeno of Cyprus, Epicurus of Samos, and Plato of Athens.
Heads, You Die: Choice Architecture and Predictable Irrationality
Policymaking is organised around the assumption that people are rational. This is out of touch with the latest evidence from brain research, and out of touch with common sense...
Dieter Rams - Video
Dieter Rams is one of the world’s greatest designers of everyday objects. His mind, which might in other eras have been employed making sculptures for altarpieces, is devoted to calculators, shelving, office chairs, TVs, radios, watches, record players...