I have read many articles, books and scientific papers that promote the value of assimilating marginal gains, the process of making a change, testing that change and then improving on it, slowing increasing performance. This type of process has been credited with the breakaway performance of UK Cycling over the last decade and is now used by many professional athletes and teams. What Tim Harford proposes in this September 2015 TED talk, however, is quite different. Although he acknowledges the value of paying attention to detail, he suggests this can take a lot of time and rarely results in something astonishing. For innovation, he suggests, what you really need is mess and chaos, making the brain work harder and look for a new way. He gives a number of fascinating examples from research where this has been shown, as well as outlining the use of ‘oblique strategy’ cards, created by Brian Eno and designed to cause difficulty and so ingenuity in the production of some of the greatest albums of the last forty years.

Another TED really worth watching and just 15minutes long. Perhaps revising with the radio on isn’t so terrible……