… or why Brexiters, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump succeeded with the very same story Yes, I do believe, that, if you break the narratives of the Brexiters, Putin and Trump down to their core, they basically tell the very same story. In its most simple form, their story goes…

… or why rule-breaking means progress More recently, I investigated the connection between heroism and innovation… and I found that innovating, not surprisingly, can be a heroic act indeed. Let’s take a look at heroes first. There are some common misconceptions about heroes: Many people intuitively imagine heroes as superhumans…

The title might be misleading as, well, technically COVID-19 and the current crisis is not really a black swan event, but more of a grey rhino. The reason being is that black swan events are technically events that are unpredictable and beyond what is normally expected. However, proponents to call…

Every decade is known for something; and every decade brought us some key innovations they will always be associated with. The 1960s were the decade of civil unrest and fundamental social change that also brought us colour television and the moon landing. The 1980s were times of cold war and…

In today’s chapter, I analyze why heroes value social companionships, team-work and friends and what lessons this beholds for the rest of us. “Let the rest of the world beat their brains out for a buck. It’s friends that count. And I got friends”, says the troublesome Bette Davis in…

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. He enjoyed a calm life somewhere in the Shire on the edges of Middle-earth. All the other hobbits lived equally content and peaceful lives and every day seemed to be only a slightly different variation of the day before. However…

Imagine a young businessman who is sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison for the alleged murder of his wife and her lover; a crime he never committed. He has to do time in a horrible jail with inhuman conditions and sadistic prison wards who enjoy torturing the inmates…

Imagine you are a boxer. Imagine in one fight your face is hit so often that it resembles a cauliflower; imagine you see your opponent double and imagine you can’t feel your legs anymore. Every time you get knocked down, the only thing you hear is the faint noise of…

Remember the beautiful movie Dead Poet’s society? It tells the bitter-sweet story of the progressive teacher Keating who stands up against the arch conservative norms in an elitist boarding school in the 1950s. Mr. Keating, wonderfully portrayed by Robin Williams, warns his students against leading lives of “quiet desperation,” and…