In a world that is becoming more and more futuristic by the minute, there are few places that need our attention as urgently as education. While innovations and changes may represent exciting strides towards the future for those of us already in the adult world, they place urgent demands on the knowledge and skills of today’s students - the ones who will actually inhabit the future that is approaching.

Today’s students need to be equipped within innovative classrooms with adaptable skills for their unpredictable futures. However, for teachers, the disruption of the pandemic to students’ learning, the speed at which technologies like ChatGPT are infiltrating the classrooms and ever-increasing layers of bureaucracy mean integrating innovation and creativity in the classroom is often far beyond their capacity.

Retrospect makes fools of many of history’s giants, consistently proving true the proverb, “Pride comes before a fall.” From enemies to empires, individuals to organisations, it’s the players who grow too comfortable at the top who suffer the hardest fall.

When I’m working with clients, I strongly encourage them to keep a watchful eye on the forces of disruption that they may be least expecting or least concerned about. Unconventional competition is constantly the catalyst for the downfall of the big players, not least because it is often dismissed, underestimated or simply undetected until it’s almost too late. Of all the many forces of disruption organisations are vulnerable to in the modern world, unconventional competition might be the hardest to monitor and respond to.

It feels a bit mercenary to think of care as a currency. And yet, one look at the state of corporate capitalism and it becomes quickly clear that few things set an individual or organisation apart more than sincere, unhurried and attentive care.

A couple of years ago, I caught a typo in the Wall Street Journal. It was in one of the regular email newsletters that I had signed up for, called The Future of Everything. Written by staff at the WSJ, the newsletter always has a warm and conversational tone while keeping the polish and elegance of a publication of such prestige.

All the talk of the importance of failure can feel tired at times. Beyond that, it can feel ingenuine – as much as people say they believe in the importance of failure for success, it feels unlikely that they themselves actually want to fail and even more unlikely that they believe pursuing failure as an end in itself is a wise or worthy approach.

However, it remains true that genuine, well-meaning, measured and sensible risks that result in failure must be applauded and encouraged. The reason for this is that they are a sign of genuine risk-taking, and in an age of disruption, the surest sign that an organisation will fail is an unwillingness to take genuine risks.

Can you explain the difference between ‘used cars’ and ‘pre-owned vehicles’? What about ‘wire tapping’ and ‘electronic intercepts’? Or ‘impotence’ and ‘erectile dysfunction’?[1]

The difference? Semantics!

The world’s most famous Youtuber made the news in late January for his big spending. While Youtubers are notorious for their opulence, the standout part of this video was that this was spending with a cause – that cause being the funding of life-changing eye surgery for 1000 unsuspecting strangers. Mr Beast may be known for his extravagance, but he is undeniably admired for his philanthropy[1].

Sometimes you just ‘know’. In the absence of evidence, logic and often common sense, all of us experience a deeply felt certainty that seems to defy all of our standard principles of decision-making. Despite this, we can’t help but be led by these gut instincts, and they play a larger role in the formation of our beliefs, opinions and decisions that we realise.