The need for fresh eyes is important for the products and tools we create as well. While the full time people who work on products are undoubtedly experts on them, that very expertise can get in the way of seeing what outsiders will notice first.

My relationship with libraries has evolved through my years as a reader, student, teacher, and mother. And, of course, libraries have evolved too, as do most institutions. In my last post I wrote about how things change with time, whether we realize it or not.

Change is hard. In fact, change is so hard  that we tend to forget that change has happened before.

Holistic thinking looks beyond financial models to enable planning for the complexity that is part of our world.

Storytelling is an important skill for anyone who works with data and turning insights into action. A story is more than an account of incidents or events.  It is a path to understanding, and serves a purpose greater than simply relaying information, because good narrative can enable decision makers to both see the import of the data, and see the path to action.

But understanding the details — in fact, the banalities — of what other people do helps us to both build empathy and to find openings for forming better working and personal relationships as well as creating something new and transformative in the world

Recognizing your business’s life stage can help you strategize around possible futures.

Tell me if you’ve heard this before — a Lyft driver with a programmed GPS (almost) ends up in the wrong country. No, not the one where the Uber driver got stuck on stairs, or for that matter any of myriad examplesof people blindly following a magical machine voice, with morals about the dehumanization power of machines. My story is about how machines, or perhaps, more appropriately, the algorithms that run them, need to be considered as active agents in social interactions, albeit ones that do not behave in the same way as human actors.

Strategically creating quests for users can enhance the experience. 

Are you having an honest discussion about your product's strengths and weaknesses? 

As an anthropologist, I am familiar with the interplay between magic and science and the seemingly divergent realms of rational scientific process and causality through magical association. Often the lines between them are not so distinct as we might like to believe that they are. The same holds true In business, where the belief that following certain (rational) processes, steps or frameworks will, by (magical) association, lead to desired results.

The starting point for understanding your target market comes with knowing both who the  customers are who are currently attracted to your offering and who you want to attract as new customers.

The issues of understanding infrastructure and rendering tacit knowledge about its master narratives explicit—to ourselves and to users—do not have easy answers.

Company success and employee satisfaction depend on social ties that are hard to forge in a globalized era

A reflection on the malaise and angst of middle aged professionals encountering work, love, death, and daily life in a world that requires constant evaluation and reevaluation for each individual’s own personal sensemaking.

Drawing on an array of methodological tools and collaborating across the business to achieve results.

Since the early 20th century, calendar reformers have fought to smooth global commerce and unite humanity. But can adopting a new calendar bring people together in peace?