Frog Soup

I find it fascinating what seems to happen in plain sight, but that we let pass by. We know why – working under pressure, our ability to create heuristics – rules of thumb – to ease our workload means we concentrate on the most pressing issues. They allow us to be more efficient. At the same time, our biases – many hard wired – mean that we misinterpret many of the “out of the ordinary” things that do make it to our attention. The result is that, like the apocryphal experiment of boiling frogs, we don’t notice until it’s mostly too late, and we end up with a “Black Swan” event. Obvious in hindsight, totally unexpected at the time it happens.

Two pieces of information arrived in my inbox this morning that have a degree of froggy quality.

The first was one of Boston Consulting Group’s excellent summaries. It’s main article relates to their survey on the most innovative firms of 2014, and the issues facing many executives that they feel their teams are not up to it.

The second was one inclu…