The Innovation Show

"No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.' - Philip K. Dick Homeostasis refers to the maintenance of relatively constant internal conditions in an organism. For example, we maintain a body temperature of around 98.6°F (37°C). In a cold environment, we shiver to return to this temperature. In a warm climat...

It is a pleasure to welcome the author of The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, Mark Solms. In this episode, we share some terms like: Markov Blankets, The Free Energy Principle, Homeostasis, Entropy and more. We also look at the neuroscience of innovation. Time Stamps 00:00:00.076 Introduction: Exploring the Free Energy Principle 00:02:48.180 Feeling as an Equation: The Red...

It is a pleasure to welcome the author of The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, Mark Solms. In this episode, we will discuss questions such as where does arousal come from anatomically and how does it arise physiologically? And the central question of today is where the seemingly magical shift from automatic reflex to volitional feeling occurs. Today, we will share some term...

The struggle you're in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. - Robert Tew In a world of abundance, we take many things for granted. Our morning coffee is one such example. A morning brew helps many of us win the battle to wake up by winning a neurochemical war. However, there is another battle that takes place using chemical warfare. The battlefield? The dense, green foliage of t...

In "The Hidden Spring," our guest Mark Solms takes us on the journey of Feelings. Feelings are difficult to research because they are inherently subjective, but If we exclude feelings from our account of the brain, we will never understand how it works. You tell us, to a fantastic degree, neuroscientists searching for an explanation of consciousness have ignored feelings. Mark Solms takes us on an...

In The Hidden Spring, our guest Mark Solms takes us on the journey of Feelings. Feelings are difficult to research because they are inherently subjective, but If we exclude feelings from our account of the brain, we will never understand how it works. You tell us, to a fantastic degree, neuroscientists searching for an explanation of consciousness have ignored feelings. Mark Solms takes us on an e...

The first in a new project on The Innovation Show. Hire For Neurosignature, Train for Skill: The Brain is Like a Waterbed "Autists are not just square pegs in the round hole of society. The real problem isn't the challenge of fitting them in, it's that in trying to do so we risk destroying their unique shape." — Paul Collins  The parents of an autistic young man approached a local convenience stor...

In The Hidden Spring, our guest Mark Solms does not dive too deeply into Karl Friston's mathematics. As you will discover, he summarises its implications, describing Friston's free energy as a quantifiable measure of how a system models the world and how it behaves. This notion leads to a very different idea of consciousness from Descartes's reason-centric version that set up the puzzling dualism...

Why does it feel like something to be alive? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now, at last, Mark Solms, who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming, has arrived at his answer. More than just a philosophical argument, the Free Energy theory will profoundly change how you understand your existence. The very idea that a breakthrough...

Part 1 of a 9-part series with the brilliant Mark Solms. Why does it feel like something to be alive? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now, at last, Mark Solms, who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming, has arrived at his answer. More than just a philosophical argument, the Free Energy theory will profoundly change how you und...

If you could make a change—any change you wanted—what would it be? Would it be something in your organization or your industry? Maybe something it's in your community or throughout society as a whole? Creating true change is never easy. Most startups don't survive. Most community groups never get beyond small local actions. Even when a spark catches fire and protesters swarm the streets, it often...

I was MC for the tech stage at the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz, Austria. I had the pleasure of meeting the brilliant Phaedra Boinodiris. A fellow with the London-based Royal Society of Arts, Phaedra has focused on inclusion in technology since 1999. She is the business transformation leader for IBM's Responsible AI consulting group and serves on the leadership team of IBM's Academy of Technol...

Helen Edwards joins us for part 2 of a 2-part episode on her book, "From Marginal to Mainstream Why Tomorrow's brand growth will come from the Fringes – and How to get there first." Her book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their 'mainstream inhibition' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the 'strangeness' of behaviou...

Helen Edwards joins us for part 1 of a 2-part episode on her book, "From Marginal to Mainstream Why Tomorrow's brand growth will come from the Fringes – and How to get there first." Her book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their 'mainstream inhibition' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the 'strangeness' of behaviou...

Our guest is the author of 15 books, over 160 practitioner articles, and over 60 Darden cases, etc. dealing with innovation and learning. Every time I catch up, he goes and writes another book. He has become a dear friend, thought partner and mentor. He honoured me by asking me to pre-read the manuscript and offer an endorsement, and this is what I wrote: "A life-changing book written by an old so...

Metaphors show people how to look beyond the surface levels of life, to an enlightened truth. This book attempts to point to something deep, spiritual, and powerful. Metaphors, stories, and musings speak to the heart, not to the brain. Listen with your heart; that is where we all find inner truth. It is a great pleasure to welcome the author of "Life is a Metaphor: Metaphors, Stories and Musings f...

The aim of mind-wandering, odd as it might sound, is to improve the efficiency of your generative model. As ordained by the Free Energy Principle, a model is only efficient if it uses the minimum resources necessary to perform the work of self-organisation. That boils down to finding the simplest model that successfully predicts sensory samples of the world. The simplest model does not arise natur...

We caught up with Dr Robert Hogan during his 2023 worldwide tour. Robert challenged decades of academic tradition to demonstrate personality's impact on organisational success. He pioneered the use of personality assessment to improve workplace performance. One of his key findings is that organisations should look for humility in a leader rather than charisma. A humble leader channels energy into...

Today's book offers a comprehensive approach to extraordinary problem-solving. Conceived by a super-creative quartet of top-tier business consultants, the book builds upon a novel premise: What if you framed problems as if they were games of profound significance? How might you design something new or reimagine the old, particularly when competition increases, technology disrupts, change accelerat...

Today's book draws on a decade of research and 50 case studies to present six mindsets that help business leaders and nonprofit equivalents be more confident and creative about strategic problem-solving and be successful where others are afraid to act (or act recklessly). The concept is modelled after innovative companies such as Patagonia which are not afraid to step out into risk using small mov...

Today's guest discovered that over 10 years, just 1 in 12 companies managed to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile, where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company's current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to g...

What is it about the top tech product companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix and Tesla that enables their record of consistent innovation?   Most people think it's because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their peo...

Disciplined Entrepreneurship will change the way you think about starting a company. Many believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but great entrepreneurs aren't born with something special – they simply make great products. This book will show you how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehe...

Does this sound familiar?  * Are you always one prototype away from a solution but never seem to get there?  * Do you spend most of your time fixing problems you did not anticipate?  * Does it seem like everything is going well until launch when it all falls apart?  * Are you getting very little return on the resources you deploy?  * Does the performance of your product in the market rarely meet t...

Very few large companies manage to avoid stalls in revenue growth. These stalls are not attributable to the natural business cycle. Our guest's careful analysis reveals that most such stalls directly result from strategic choices made by corporate leaders. In short, stoppages in growth are almost always avoidable. This extensively researched book analyses the growth experiences of more than 600 Fo...