Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
A small business person came to me the other day with a problem. He is an intelligent person. He’s well educated. So he outlined his problem verbally with all the many facets to it. When he had finished I could see a pattern emerging. I’m just an ordinary person with no special powers although I wished I did have them. This person was doing something intelligent. He was talking out his problem and at the same time gaining greater clarity. Continue reading “How do you escape mental blocks?”
In art, in drawing and painting, perceiving the shape of a space is important. You are trying to change your perspective so that you see the positive aspects of negative space. As Betty Edwards, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” says, we tend to focus on objects rather like in some cultures where working “within the space of a problem” is common practice. In drawing, recognising negative spaces is just as important as identifying positive forms.
Negative spaces and positive forms is a good metaphor for new business ideas. We tend not to make it a habit to look with a different perspective at problems for opportunities. In our culture the word “problem” seems “negative” and we tend to use euphemisms such as “challenge”. But by looking for problems we are able to see the positive form or solution emerge. Continue reading “Looking for positive forms in negative spaces”
Honeybees in the US are dying in large numbers but industry experts and scientists can’t put their finger on precisely what is killing the honeybees.
In a recent article I saw in Time the estimate was that one-third of US honeybee colonies died or disappeared during the past winter. This drop they say is a 42% increase over the previous year and well above the 10% to 15% losses beekeepers have experienced in normal winters.
What makes the mass deaths in the colonies so concerning is the potential impact on farming. The honeybee accounts for one in every three mouthfuls of food. Bees pollinate agricultural crops worth at least $15 billion in the US.
Continue reading “How do you detect what’s wrong in your business?”
