Haphazard Business is a journey around England, in an old camper van named Brook, seeking to discover how ideas form and become reality.
The goal is to use the learning gathered from the trip to create a new type of Innovation Hub.
There is no fixed route or direction of travel. The journey will be dictated by events, recommendations, invitations, weather, roadworks, and just randomly stopping. The intention is to mimic the sense of haphazardness often felt when starting a business, developing a useful product or creating an artwork.
The menu (hamburger top left corner) contains blog posts, photos, recordings and short videos of places visited, interviews and discussions on how ideas emerge, creating stimulating discussion and debate.
Feel free to comment or write a guest blog post. Welcome along…
Donation
This is a self-funded project, any donations to Haphazard Business are very welcome. Thanks John M
£5.00
John M
Carol David Daniel
In my view, if anything the world is becoming less predictable and forecasting is guess work. If you have an objective in mind then you need to ensure that your approach is agile and that you can adapt what you are doing by comparing where you are with where you want to be. Planning years ahead and expecting to achieve the end goal without adapting won’t usually get you where you want ot be although Universities such as the one I work at do take such an approach.
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Platform-7
Thanks for comment Carol, there are other comments along similar lines appearing in regards the need for agility. Karl Richter mentions the need of coping mechanisms for the ‘current mega trends re increasing uncertainty and unpredictability’ (Haphazard Routine) and Prof. John Wood touches on the idea ‘auspicious combinations’ (Abundant Choice), which can create a synergy from two or more perceived negatives.
The question this poses is how much agility can a person/organisation build into a plan? With such rapid improvement in technology and the unstable political situation likely to continue for a long period, is the risk decision makers just sit on their hands?
John M
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C D Daniel
survival of the fittest, those that adapt will survive, the Kodak’s of this world won’t. If your plan does not have a mechanism for feedback and acting on it like many public secotr organisations it wil eventually fail. People who manage more established businesses are probably at the highest risk and the most likely to sit on their hands till it is too late.
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Platform-7
Your response prompted me to look up Kodak to see what it is up to these days. I became friends with an ex-Kodak exec who gives a fantastic talk on the Kodak collapse, and highlights some of the things you mention here. This Kodak video from 2014 , https://youtu.be/Dmy167ABd3E discusses the journey of their new SONORA system, and clearly feedback is front and centre in the General Manager’s mind and how they have been expanding the business. This might be a good case study for later in this project. Thanks, John M
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C D Daniel
I can’t help feeling a sense of deja vu from Kodak as the offset printing market continues to decline against digital printing: https://www.smitherspira.com/resources/2015/october/future-trends-digital-vs-offset-printing
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