Rory Sutherland

This is why, fairly early on, Microsoft placed whiteboards along the corridors on the Redmond campus; for they found that the accidental meetings which took place in hallways were in fact more productive than the scheduled ones which happened in meeting rooms.

In a single sentence my view is “Planning + Creative = Good. Planning > Creative = Bad.”

The second assumption is just as dangerous: it is the dangerously linear assumption that the best way to build a brand is to set out to build a brand. I really don’t believe this. I think if you set out to build a great business, you’ll stand a fair chance of building a great brand. I am not equally confident that someone aspiring to build a great

As an aside, American government buildings are the only buildings on the world where lavatories and washrooms are often not stacked above each other on successive floors — a universal practice in the private sector where it serves to minimise plumbing. The reason? The US government pays builders and plumbers by the hour, not by the job.

cite this new paint as an example of “feedback” — the notion that people will make better choices when their decisions have rapidly visible results.

arbitrary. Even relatively worthy successes such as Google’s or Microsoft’s may be as much the result of lucky timing as anything else. Instead, capitalism is at its indisputable best not when picking but when picking off. In unerringly killing off the bad: the inefficient, the redundant, the outdated or the needlessly complex.

Then reality comes into it, and actually, the reason they buy the iPad is that they know that every time they get out the Samsung, all their friends will say: “why did you get that, why didn’t you buy the iPad?” and that this will bring with it a little burst of anxiety and a little burst of effort. Never, never underestimate the importance of that

When you are accustomed to living life at an online pace, you live in a world where every action results in an immediate response. Click on the link and, after just a few seconds, up comes the page. Hence when you order a coffee and 10 minutes later it hasn’t arrived, your first response is no longer. “Gosh, they must be quite busy!” No, your auton

burdens imposed on workers by the owners of land. Magie