Welcome to the first post on my new blog on my new website. I hope that this website supplements my Dean’s page on the Rotman site by assisting you in delving deeper into any subjects we share in common. The topics to which I will be devoted here include: Integrative Thinking; Design Thinking; Strategic Choice Architecture; Incentives, Executive Compensation & Governance; Jurisdictional Competitiveness & Prosperity; and Social Innovation. I hope you enjoy the site, the blog and the topics. I look forward to exchanging thoughts and ideas with you toward deepening knowledge, insight and skills, in these areas.

In my coming posts, I planning to tackle the following questions unless I get distracted by other topics in the meantime – always a threat.

Why are the world’s leading macro-economists, every single one of whom missed predicting the massive economic meltdown of 2008, now opining with cool confidence on how the recovery will transpire even though their tools for predicting the way forward are exactly the same as the ones they used while missing the biggest economic upheaval since the Great Depression?  And why on earth is anybody at all listening to them?

What is the single most important capability of designers who want to convert their ideas into action?

Can government agencies ever escape their current trap of over-emphasis on reliability (safety) over validity (opportunity)?  And why does that matter more than people might think?

Why do we think, simultaneously, that there is a principal-agent problem between owners and managers and that we can solve that problem by installing another layer of agents (called a board of directors) between owners and managers?  Either there is a principal-agent problem and it won’t be solved by another layer of agents, or there isn’t a principal-agent problem and we don’t really need boards of directors.

Why do academics now wax eloquent about the importance of interdisciplinarity but then describe it as a skill while describing their home field as a discipline?   Why do they believe that they can achieve it without developing robust theory on interdisciplinarity?

I would happily take requests on which topic to tackle in what order (including none of the above).

Till next post, be well…

Best, Roger