Ex-Enron CEO Said Taken to N.Y. Hospital (AP)

Grok Headline matches for Ex-Enron CEO Said Taken to N.Y. Hospital (AP)

Ex-Enron CEO Taken to NY Hospital

Ex-Enron CEO Taken to NY Hospital 04/10/2004 01:01 AM
Reuters via Wired News Apr 10 2004 4:43AM GMT

Ex-Enron CEO Taken to NY Hospital After
Bar Dispute

Ex-Enron CEO Taken to NY Hospital After
Bar Dispute 04/09/2004 09:17 PM
Reuters via Wired News Apr 10 2004 1:43AM GMT

Police Take Former Enron Exec to
Hospital (AP)

Police Take Former Enron Exec to
Hospital (AP) 04/09/2004 04:00 PM
AP - Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a Manhattan hospital early Friday after several people called police saying he was pulling on their clothes and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source told The Associated Press.

Yahoo! News - Enron Ex-CEO Skilling
Taken to Hospital

Yahoo! News - Enron Ex-CEO Skilling
Taken to Hospital 04/11/2004 06:56 AM
Not paranoid, just drunk off his ass .. went nuts in Manhattan .. taken to a hospital .. Yahoo News .. skeptical

news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&u=/ap/20040409/ap_o n_re_us/enron_skilling_4&printer=1
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Discovery Hospital Adds Seven Hospital
Clients

Discovery Hospital Adds Seven Hospital
Clients 08/06/2004 02:17 AM
Discovery Hospital provides Internet-Based Content Services to hospitals. This press release announces several new clients in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas and Georgia. [PRWEB Aug 6, 2004]

A little bit of Enron in us all

A little bit of Enron in us all 07/03/2004 02:17 AM
Sunday Times South Africa Jul 3 2004 5:16AM GMT

The Enron Tapes

The Enron Tapes 06/03/2004 01:33 PM

In the annals of corporate corruption, the words of the Enron Energy traders who chortled (CBS) over the screwing their company was giving California and other western states in the 2000 energy crisis are amazing mostly for their brazen quality. Still, if California's political leaders -- from both parties -- hadn't made such a mess of deregulation, the crooks from Enron and other companies never would have had the opportunity in the first place. That doesn't excuse them, any more than a burglar is excused for entering a residence where the owner forgets to lock all the doors. Someday we'll know who Cheney's energy buddies were -- the ones he's trying so hard to shield from the public. The only surprise will be if Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling aren't among them.

Enron remix MP3

Enron remix MP3 06/17/2004 01:10 PM
The infamous Enron tapes (in which innocent, electricity-using grandmothers are scorned) and some random Bush quotes are mashed up with Snap!'s The Power in this MP3. Link to descriptive blog text, and Link to MP3. (Thanks, Dav)

Doing the Enron math

Doing the Enron math 07/16/2004 01:52 PM
Well, the good news is that if Martha Stewart deserves 5 months in jail for what she did, then by the same calculus it's going to be hard to let the Enron boys off with anything short of the chair....

Enron Gets OK on Bankruptcy Emergence
(AP)

Enron Gets OK on Bankruptcy Emergence
(AP) 07/15/2004 10:05 AM
AP - Enron Corp. received court approval Thursday to emerge from one of the most expensive bankruptcies in history.

ENRON Chief Ken Lay Is Indicted

ENRON Chief Ken Lay Is Indicted 07/07/2004 09:19 PM
Free Internet Press Jul 8 2004 1:27AM GMT

Enron Said to Gouge Customers for
$1.1B (AP)

Enron Said to Gouge Customers for
$1.1B (AP) 06/14/2004 07:43 PM
AP - Enron Corp. manipulated the energy market practically every day during the 2000-01 power crunch and gouged Western customers for at least $1.1 billion, according to audiotapes and documents released Monday.

Enron Prosecutors to Keep Pressure on
Lay

Enron Prosecutors to Keep Pressure on
Lay 07/09/2004 08:01 PM
Reuters via Wired News Jul 10 2004 0:11AM GMT

Enron said to gouge customers for $1.1B

Enron said to gouge customers for $1.1B 06/15/2004 12:16 AM
Seattletimes.nwsource.com - Tue Jun 15, 01:20 am GMT

Ex-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay surrenders to
FBI

Ex-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay surrenders to
FBI 07/08/2004 08:30 AM

Another Brick in the Enron Wall

Another Brick in the Enron Wall 02/19/2004 03:35 PM
Prosecutors get their biggest prize to date: It's Enron executive Jeff Skilling's day in court.

Former Enron Chairman Surrenders to
F.B.I.

Former Enron Chairman Surrenders to
F.B.I. 07/08/2004 09:11 AM
The indictment reportedly cited a "wide-ranging scheme" and included 11 charges, including securities fraud and misleading investigators.

Former Enron chief Lay surrenders to FBI

Former Enron chief Lay surrenders to FBI 07/08/2004 10:42 AM
CNET Jul 8 2004 2:20PM GMT

Enron ex-boss Ken Lay is indicted

Enron ex-boss Ken Lay is indicted 07/07/2004 04:26 PM
Enron's former chief executive Kenneth Lay is indicted in connection with the 2001 collapse of the former US energy giant.

Pick Up A Piece of Enron

Pick Up A Piece of Enron 07/18/2004 01:47 PM
Slashdot Jul 18 2004 6:09PM GMT

Enron Defendants Get Help From Unlikely
Source

Enron Defendants Get Help From Unlikely
Source 06/03/2004 11:42 PM
Defendants in the Enron fraud trial may have found an unlikely witness on their behalf: Andrew S. Fastow, the government's star cooperator.

Vanity and Vulgarity at Enron

Vanity and Vulgarity at Enron 06/03/2004 10:20 AM
Transcripts of conversations between energy traders are stranger than fiction.

Sources: Enron's Lay May Soon Be
Indicted (AP)

Sources: Enron's Lay May Soon Be
Indicted (AP) 06/20/2004 06:44 AM

us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://story.news.yahoo.c om/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040620/ap_on_bi_ge/enron_lay
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AP: Ex-Enron CEO to Be Charged Thursday
(AP)

AP: Ex-Enron CEO to Be Charged Thursday
(AP) 02/18/2004 09:20 PM
AP - Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron chief executive who resigned less than four months before the company imploded in scandal, was expected to surrender Thursday on charges related to the company's collapse, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Enron boss 'to hand himself in'

Enron boss 'to hand himself in' 02/19/2004 04:24 AM
Jeff Skilling, a former Enron chief executive, is expected to surrender to the FBI, it is reported.

Enron/I Got the Power mashup

Enron/I Got the Power mashup 06/17/2004 01:10 PM
Dav sez, "The ever brilliant Tim Ross of Tuba Frenzy has mashed up the Enron tapes (and I think some Bush quotes) with Snap!'s The Power. It's beautiful. Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn!" 5.1MB MP3 Link (Thanks, Dav!)

Top Enron Accountant Said Surrendering
(AP)

Top Enron Accountant Said Surrendering
(AP) 01/22/2004 02:51 AM
AP - With a guilty plea from former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow secured, the case against the failed company's top accountant is moving to the forefront, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Former Chairman of Enron Is Said to Be
Indicted

Former Chairman of Enron Is Said to Be
Indicted 07/07/2004 05:48 PM
A federal grand jury has returned an indictment against Kenneth L. Lay and it is expected to be unsealed on Thursday.

Hospital in a box

Hospital in a box 11/13/2003 05:23 PM
globetechnology.com Nov 13 2003 4:59PM ET

Ken Lay Says He's Not Guilty of Crime in
Enron Fall

Ken Lay Says He's Not Guilty of Crime in
Enron Fall 06/27/2004 09:43 AM
Reuters via Wired News Jun 27 2004 1:41PM GMT

No more booze for former Enron boss
(Reuters)

No more booze for former Enron boss
(Reuters) 05/07/2004 04:25 PM
Reuters - A federal judge has ordered former Enron Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling to stop drinking alcohol and submit to a curfew, the fallout from the former corporate star's drunken misadventure in New York in April.

Enron agrees to pay $35 million
settlement

Enron agrees to pay $35 million
settlement 04/28/2004 05:17 PM

Enron 'cashed in on power crisis'

Enron 'cashed in on power crisis' 06/02/2004 11:00 PM
CBS airs tapes which suggest collapsed energy trader Enron tried to manipulate electricity prices during California's energy crisis.

Crimes of Others Wrecked Enron, Ex-Chief
Says

Crimes of Others Wrecked Enron, Ex-Chief
Says 06/26/2004 03:56 PM
HOUSTON, June 22 There was a time when Kenneth L. Lay's close relationship with President Bush brought him power and influence in Washington that was virtually unparalleled among his colleagues in corporate America.

Lay Tells Newspaper Others Destroyed
Enron (AP)

Lay Tells Newspaper Others Destroyed
Enron (AP) 06/26/2004 07:17 PM
AP - Former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay took responsibility for the company's spectacular demise but blamed any criminal acts on underlings in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times.

Sources: Enron CEO Kenneth Lay Is
Indicted (AP)

Sources: Enron CEO Kenneth Lay Is
Indicted (AP) 07/08/2004 05:51 AM
AP - Kenneth Lay, the founder and former chairman and CEO of Enron Corp. who says he committed no crimes at the scandal-ridden energy company, has been indicted on criminal charges, sources told The Associated Press.

Former Enron executive to plead guilty

Former Enron executive to plead guilty 05/19/2004 07:13 PM

Ken Lay Says He Not Guilty of Crime in
Enron Fall

Ken Lay Says He Not Guilty of Crime in
Enron Fall 06/27/2004 03:23 AM
Reuters via Wired News Jun 27 2004 7:34AM GMT

Enron Ex-Chief Lay Indicted, to
Surrender

Enron Ex-Chief Lay Indicted, to
Surrender 07/07/2004 10:56 PM
Reuters via Wired News Jul 8 2004 3:38AM GMT
Grok Description matches for Ex-Enron CEO Said Taken to N.Y. Hospital (AP)
GrokA matches for Ex-Enron CEO Said Taken to N.Y. Hospital (AP)

Frusion Breakfast Brawl

Frusion Breakfast Brawl 03/27/2005 02:51 AM
Frusion Breakfast Brawl .. hit it up here

frusion.com/game.asp
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Ed Russell started a petition

Ed Russell started a petition 04/17/2004 12:41 PM
Ed Russell started a petition that (overnight) has gathered ~200 signatures. Sure, that's just a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, but I have to appreciate the sincerity of the people out there. To quote an ol' wine cooler-weilding dude: "Thank you for your support." I don't think anybody's gonna march on Washington any time soon, but......

SFJ hangs out with Russell Simmons

SFJ hangs out with Russell Simmons 08/03/2004 11:01 AM
in the year of the Frere-Joneses, it's only natural he meets the President of Hip Hop

Russell to reveal SNP intentions

Russell to reveal SNP intentions 06/28/2004 01:58 AM
A third contender in the race for the leadership of the SNP is expected to come forward on Monday.

Reconstituting the Russell Indexes

Reconstituting the Russell Indexes 06/23/2004 02:10 PM
Now we know the additions and deletions to the wide-ranging index.

russell simmons brings out the vote

russell simmons brings out the vote 05/06/2004 06:58 PM
def presidential candidate 2008

Russell Becoming a Full-Fledged Yahoo!

Russell Becoming a Full-Fledged Yahoo! 02/05/2005 09:01 PM
Excellent news. I ran into Russell at URL's (the cafeteria) on Friday and he told me the news: he's going to become a full-time Yahoo soon. We also noted that it was really hard to believe that it's been three months since he started as a contractor (story). Time flies when you're having fun, and we've both been doing a lot of that recently. :-)...

Russell Beattie Notebook - LifeBlogger!

Russell Beattie Notebook - LifeBlogger! 08/05/2004 04:23 PM
Russell Beattie Notebook - LifeBlogger!: "how I had just downloaded the Lifeblog beta from Nokia's site and how it seemed incredibly hackable. The images are all stored in your My Documents\NokiaLifeblog folder, the text messages are stored as plain text and the repository for all the meta data was labeled ...

Russell Pavlicek's Linux Scorecard

Russell Pavlicek's Linux Scorecard 12/21/2002 04:16 PM
Over at Infoworld, Russell recounts his predictions for 2002 to see how accurate he was. While he was pretty good for 2002, I'm really interested to hear what he thinks 2003 will bring Tux fans....

Russell Simmons, Glen E. Friedman, the
WTC, the RNC, and a message.

Russell Simmons, Glen E. Friedman, the
WTC, the RNC, and a message. 07/22/2004 12:52 AM
Sean Bonner, with whom I co-curated the SENT phonecam art show, blogs:

Russell Simmons owns a loft facing ground zero. Since 9/11 there's been extremely limited access to the building, but this morning our good friend, photographer Glen E. Friedman get in for a few minutes to make a statement which will be up through the RNC. Here's a bunch of pictures from inside and out.

Link< /a> (And incidentally, Mr. Friedman was an invited participant in SENT. Some of his phonecam photos from the show are here.)

Russell Beattie - Geo based mob bl0gging
with a mobile phone!

Russell Beattie - Geo based mob bl0gging
with a mobile phone! 02/17/2004 11:52 PM
dveloppeurs du projet .. WaveBlog .. guide .. Russ

russellbeattie.com/notebook/1006221.html
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Russell Simmons' Wife Faces Drug Charges
(AP)

Russell Simmons' Wife Faces Drug Charges
(AP) 07/29/2004 05:12 PM
AP - The wife of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons faces drug and motor vehicle charges after police said she was driving erratically and ignored the flashing lights of a cruiser for nearly two miles.

IPOs play bigger role in Russell index
rebalance

IPOs play bigger role in Russell index
rebalance 06/12/2004 07:02 PM
Investor's Business Daily (subscription)-58 minutes ago ... But that's starting to change this year, as firms such as Google, Domino's Pizza, GNC and Jackson Hewitt step up to the plate. See full story. ...

the bling breakfast

the bling breakfast 05/19/2004 11:50 AM
a $1000 omelet better come with a side order of "sex with supermodel"

Six euro breakfast

Six euro breakfast 07/11/2004 10:38 PM
Note to self: don't eat at Oulu airport.

There's a flying machine waiting to take me back to Helsinki. *sigh* Weekends like these just don't happen, you know... ;-}

Breakfast is Fundamental

Breakfast is Fundamental 06/02/2004 08:52 AM
super delicious breakfast .. "Cheat Commando" toon

homestarrunner.com/cheatcereal.html
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Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's 07/18/2004 04:11 AM
Sunshine + nature + freshly picked strawberries + champagne + friends = A pretty good breakfast moment.

Ain't summers brilliant? They're just like winters, except a lot warmer... ;-)

Not just for breakfast anymore

Not just for breakfast anymore 11/13/2003 02:01 AM
What was your first experience with the sacred cup of java? I don't remember my very first coffee experience, but...

spam -- it's not just for breakfast any
more!

spam -- it's not just for breakfast any
more! 12/19/2004 02:57 PM
Nor in english, not that this is any great surprise to anyone. (And it looks like nearly half the spam my filters catch isn't Latin-1/Unicode. I don't know if this is an argument for or against dumping all the non-Unicode encodings... :) This piece actually made it through the filters, which was mildly interesting. I'm not 100% sure it actually is spam (my Japanese isn't very good) but after a half hour or so with the dictionary and grammar reference it sure looks like it. I expect I'll poke at it some more, but on the off chance I'm...

TV's Breakfast with Frost to end

TV's Breakfast with Frost to end 08/13/2004 12:26 PM
Veteran TV presenter Sir David Frost is to end his Sunday morning BBC programme and present a new series.

New on my wishlist: Breakfast with
Hunter

New on my wishlist: Breakfast with
Hunter 03/06/2004 02:02 AM
While getting up to date on HST’s ESPN Column Archive , there it was, an advert… Breakfast With Hunter …...

Fan Club Breakfast 2004

Fan Club Breakfast 2004 05/29/2004 07:58 AM
The first Fan Club Breakfast has been scheduled for Saturday, July 24 at San Diego Comic-Con. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, June 3 at Starwarsshop.com. For more info on this event please click here!

Breakfast with Guido van Rossum

Breakfast with Guido van Rossum 06/11/2004 03:04 AM

OMG. I met Guido van Rossum this morning. Guido is the father of python, my favorite only programming language. He was in Helsinki meeting with the Nokia folks working on python Symbian phones. He will be talking to developers later today.

I have a long history with python. The Ultraseek search engine by Steve Kirsch at Infoseek was written in python and many of the people in Digital Garage which I was co-CEO of at the time were developing the Japanese version and working in python. Later, Cyrus et al at Digital Garage use Zope, a python package to build a commerce site. More recently, I learned python using Dive Into Python by Mark Pilgrim as my tutorial and I wrote the first useful script in my life, Technobot. In the process of writing the script, I went for help on #python on Freenode which regenerated my interest in IRC and led to the birth of #joiito. I owe a lot to python and therefore to Guido. So thanks!

Russell Baker on Paul Krugman, Joan
Didion on George W. Bush: the NYRB is 40

Russell Baker on Paul Krugman, Joan
Didion on George W. Bush: the NYRB is 40 10/28/2003 11:08 PM
It seems slightly scandalous that Krugman has persisted in noting that the present administration has been moving the lion's share of the money to an array of corporate interests distinguished by the greed of their CEOs, an indifference toward their workers, and boardroom conviction that it is the welfare state that is ruining the country. Krugman has been strident. He has been shrill. He has lowered the dignity of the commentariat. How refreshing. Russell Baker reviews Paul Krugman's The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. We have now reached a point when even the White House may be forced to sort out how a president who got elected to execute a straightforward business agenda managed to sandbag himself with the coinciding fantasies of the ideologues in the Christian fundamentalist ministries and those in his own administration.... Joan Didion reviews Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages by Tim F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The New York Review of Books 40th anniversary edition is an especially good read..

Houston, it's on its way

Houston, it's on its way 03/14/2005 05:04 PM
Following up on the PowerBook saga, and as a reminder to myself: the laptop finally hit the road today on its way to the Houston repair center. While Apple paid to get the shipment box to me early yesterday, DHL...

Travel,edification,breakfast-cheap!.

Travel,edification,breakfast-cheap!. 07/14/2004 11:57 AM
The Educator's Bed and Breakfast Network Lodging for US $34 per couple per night, and breakfast too! Required - a house of your own (or maybe a large apartment, I suppose) to host fellow members. Membership costs $35 per year with a one-time $10 initial registration fee. "Educators" is a broad category which includes teachers of all sorts, writers, journalists, researchers, librarians, probably DJ's....many bloggers...

Should Game Consoles Make Breakfast,
Too?

Should Game Consoles Make Breakfast,
Too? 08/16/2004 03:49 PM

Food Cart Gets More Students to Eat
Breakfast (AP)

Food Cart Gets More Students to Eat
Breakfast (AP) 12/26/2004 02:54 PM
AP - It's not just OK for students to eat on the run when they arrive at a middle school here each morning. It's encouraged.

Rabid Bat Spoils Woman's Breakfast (AP)

Rabid Bat Spoils Woman's Breakfast (AP) 07/30/2004 05:04 PM
AP - A journalism professor received rabies shots after encountering a rabid bat while eating breakfast outside of a downtown cafe.

Breakfast with Dave Snowden and an
Epiphany

Breakfast with Dave Snowden and an
Epiphany 06/05/2005 11:12 PM

A synopsis of a recent breakfast meeting with Dave Snowden, head of the Cynefin Centre and thought leader on complex systems and narrative and their application in business. Last week I attended a breakfast presentation by Da ve Snowden of the Cynefin Centre in Toronto. He provided us with an entertaining recounting of his disenchantment with traditional consulting and his realization why most of what management and experts and consultants try to do in organizations has no significant, durable impact whatsoever. As he described his learnings and discoveries about complex adaptive systems and how pervasive they are in our business and personal lives, I began to realize that appreciating enterprises, organizations and systems as (mostly) complex rather than merely complicated is more than just a basis for re-framing business methodologies, it is a completely different way of sensing and dealing with the world. It changes everything. Here are just a few of the extraordinary paradigm shifts that this reframing provokes: Complicated World Complex World Assumption of order ("research this to find out if there's a market for it" Realization of unorder ("let's explore what might happen if we did this") Importance of aggressiveness and charisma to "lead the change" Importance of collaboration and humility to participate in the evolution Actions driven by authority-based direction Actions based on learnings from conversations, consensus and freedom to act bounded by personal responsibility Top-down hierarchical communication and knowledge transfer Peer-to-peer (networked) communication and knowledge transfer Military win/lose competitiveness Natural win/win cooperation and coexistence Emphasis on action (making decisions quickly and 'expertly') Emphasis on paying attention (making decisions continuously, improvisationally) Assumption of rational choice ("tell people why they should buy X") Realization of entrained behaviour ("study people to discover if they might buy X") Primacy of objective reality ("what's happening here") Primacy of perception ("what do people think is happening here") Changing the way things are Understanding why things are the way they are Assumption of intention ("why did this happen") Realization of meaning ("what do we learn from this") Assess causality Look for pattern and correlation Focus Experiment Leadership is everything Membership is everything Strive for stability Strive for resilience Exploit weaknesses, opportunities, needs via speed-to-market Explore weaknesses, opportunities, needs via continuous environmental scan Mechanistic (machine) models of behaviour, relationship, order, connection Organic (natural) models of behaviour, relationship, order, connection How do we solve the problem How do we deal with the situation Set "go-to-market" mission, objectives, strategies, actions Understand the market and actors' identities and influence the attractors and barriers that bring the market to you Market as rational Market as emotional Here are some of the highlights (to me) of his presentation: Innovation today is driven by networkers, not by scientists or marketers Networks are only as good as their perceived trustworthiness, reciprocity and quality (personal value of contacts) 'Edge Cultures' like Singapore, New Zealand and Canada are using the networked economy to become highly innovative, both because they can and because they must Management science is finally getting more like real science, through the use of complex adaptive systems theory, cognitive science, and anthropology etc. Taylor's mechanistic view of organizations and markets dominated management science for a century, and was still evident recently in the passion for business process reengineering Senge et al (learning organization, systems dynamics) challenged the mechanistic aspects but not the hierarchical aspects of Taylorism (people were still expected to align themselves to the strategy, not the other way around); DNA and information ecology metaphors were first used by this group <>Then knowledge management challenge the Taylorist model further (saying people can't be 'reengineered'), but too much of the initial KM focus was on the futile effort to make tacit knowledge explicit ("expecting you to learn how to ride a bicycle by reading the manual"), and because codifying knowledge erases most of its context ("You can teach in three days what it takes three years to write in a book" (and the context-rich hands-on teaching is more effective) KM began to realize that informal networks are far more important than the ones on the organization chart, and to realize that the most innovative people are under 25 (few preconceptions on how things should be done) and over 45 (time and perspective to become aware of alternatives) Narratives (stories) are the only effective mechanism for translating concrete (hands-on) knowledge into abstract (codifiable) form, and are also very motivating (e.g. power of myths) KM has recently spawned a new discipline Narrative Inquiry to understand through large collections of anecdotes the true nature of the market (they catch 'weak signals' that questionnaires and focus groups etc. miss) KM has also spawned a new surge in Non-Hypothesis Based Research, where direct observation with no preconception is used (a form of anthropology) to acquire learnings There is an increasing awareness that dominant companies lose their position because their cultural filters blind them to much real knowledge, as happened to IBM when they passed up early adoption of the PC and the innovations that led to Sun's and Microsoft's successes (this is entirely consistent with Lakoff's and Lappe's framing theories, except it is applied to organizations and management rather than to individuals) This use of narrative-based, Non-Hypothesis Based Research actually costs less than traditional analytical hypothesis-testing methods, and produces far more innovation opportunities Such research can be made even more powerful by the use of Alternative Simulations, a technique that involves asking people to imagine what would have resulted if something happened in history that didn't really happen, and which allows preconceptions and blind spots to be overcome, so participants can begin to 'think ahead' from the patterns found in the true anecdotes that come out of Non-Hypothesis Based Research Such thinking is needed to deal with what Dave calls the impending "demographic time bomb" (far too few companies are thinking ahead to the needs of a much older market population) There is a big difference between creativity and innovation -- the latter requires starvation because it entails risk and unorthodox thinking that are rarely tolerated until there is no alternative (this is consistent with Christensen's observations about disruptive innovations, which I wrote about on Wednesday) The adoption of complex adaptive systems theory seems to be currently strongest in the pharma, telecom, defence and banking industries The current focus of this theory is on what Dave calls ABIDE: Attractors, Boundaries, Identities, Dissent, and Environment; its objective is to get executives thinking about how to have an impact on complex systems by changing attractors (the people, groups, qualities and benefits that attract stakeholders) and removing or changing barriers (the conditions that impede or inhibit stakeholders) in stakeholders' various personal identities, rather than focusing on traditional 'complicated' systems approaches like missions, strategies and objective-setting Dave uses this story to illustrate why ABIDE works better than traditional approaches in complex situations:: Imagine organising a birthday party for a group of young children. Would you agree a set of  learning objectives with their parents in advance of the party? Would you create a project plan for the party with clear milestones and empirical measures of achievement? Would you start the party with a motivational video or use PowerPoint slides? No, instead like most parents you would create barriers to prevent certain types of behaviours ("the bedrooms are off-limits"), you would use attractors (party games, toys, videos) to encourage the formation of beneficial, largely self-forming identities; you would disrupt negative patterns early to prevent the party becoming chaotic or necessitating the draconian imposition of authority. At the end of the party you would know whether it had been a success, but you could not define (in other than the most general terms) what that success would look like in advance. If you think the example is unfair because it refers to children, just substitute 'cocktail party' for 'children's party'. The point is that we see a complex situation as a merely complicated one, we form an exaggerated sense of our understanding of the system and what could happen, our knowledge of all the variables and their causal relationships, and our control over the situation, and so our behaviour doesn't 'make sense', sometimes with terrible consequences. In every situation there are attractors and barriers over which we have some control and many others over which we have none. So rather than being presumptuous, making inaccurate assumptions and setting naive objectives, we should focus on the attractors and barriers we have some control of, pay attention to what's happening, what's possible and what's needed, and improvise sensibly to optimize the situation. As in the party example above, we often have a lot more control over the initial conditions than we have over eventual outcomes, and we should use that to advantage. I hope to be able to write about some specific business applications of this approach soon, and I suspect it will play an important role in the design and operation of AHA! The Discovery and Learning Centre.

Ex-Enron CEO Said Taken to N.Y. Hospital (AP)

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: frusion breakfast "russell denson" houston