Gus Guerrero

The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play . It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on idea... See more

We then used these objects to prompt discussions through questions of making – specifically asking participants ‘why do you think this was made?’ Making motivations is a lens being explored by the V&A East team as a curatorial framework and we wanted to build on this. Through these conversations, participants drew lines between their objects an... See more

Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen (2016) put it even more concisely:

“A theory is a statement of causality. It’s a statement of what causes what and why.”

Theories then, are ideas about how things work - about causality and how to create change. And those who dismiss theory dismiss the practical application and power of ideas.

What we have is a compounded problem, in which people with generational wealth pull the levers on a society that they don’t understand. Whether corporate policies or social welfare or college financial aid, nearly every aspect of society has been designed by people unfamiliar with not only the experience of living in poverty but the experience of l... See more

Meanwhile, given that everything we write comes to us via the many lenses of the experiences we’ve accumulated across a life—we speak of trees, for example, according to what we know of trees by actual experience and through what we’ve experienced of trees in books, movies, nursery rhymes, and more—then everything we do is at some level research fo... See more

“The chief utility of a general theory... of strategy lies in its ability not to point out lessons, but to isolate things that need thinking about. Theory provides insights and questions, not answers.”