My Idea articulated through My Napkin.

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I often use the Napkin Rider Aid to help innovators articulate their ideas on the back of a napkin. Here's mine.

 

At the centre of my work is a simple idea:  The Art & Architecture of Scaling.

 

Through working with innovators and entrepreneurs, I saw that the challenge is rarely just the quality of an idea or the technology behind it. It is understanding the reality into which it must enter — the systems, relationships, institutions and conditions that will shape its future.

 

My Napkin brings together the different expressions of this thinking.

 

The 3As — Abstraction, Articulation and Alignment — explore three connected capabilities needed to understand complexity, communicate ideas and bring people together around purposeful action.

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The Innovators Racecourse book focuses on perception. It changes how we see innovation, shifting our attention from the horse to the racecourse: the wider system in which an innovation must succeed. The additional essays build on those ideas

 

The Training Yard is where you develop the judgement and capabilities needed to navigate that reality, through reflection, practice and experience. The essays and accompanying Rider Aids help you pause, examine a situation and act.

 

The Backers brings the philosophy into practice, putting money, experience and connections behind ventures to help turn potential into progress.

 

The green racecourse connects these elements. It represents the journey I travel with innovators as a mentor, with organisations as a non-executive, and with ventures as a backer.

 

It also provides a way for people to explore the ideas themselves, through my book, essays, models and Rider Aids.

 

Everything returns to the idea at the centre:

 

Art teaches us to see.

Architecture teaches us to understand.

Reality teaches us to scale.

 

It is about developing the perception, understanding, judgement and capability needed to help innovation succeed in the

world.