Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Get Ready to Face Resistance for Your Originality

Most people embrace new ideas only after they’ve become widely accepted. There’s a reason why you keep seeing the same posts throughout social media. Different avatars and logos, similar stories. If you’re a student of history, you’ll see the phenomenon more clearly with the benefit of distance. Paradigm-shifting ideas have always encountered resistance. Because they challenge our thinking. As individuals—and culture—we get into grooves. People say they want creativity, but deep down they don’t. What they want is acceptance and belonging. And that means going with the flow. Hence the sea of sameness. We love the work of original artists... Read more →

Humans’ Tool to Make the Infinite Comprehensible

Saints, armies, medicinal plants, treasures, book titles, nature collections, survival kits—the essential nature of lists. Swiss businessman Jean Henri Dunant was traveling in northern Italy when he spotted the aftermath of what became the decisive battle between Franco-Sardinian and Austrian forces. 40,000 troops dead, wounded or missing near the small village of Solferino. On June 24, 1859, Dunant became a stretcher-bearer. Alongside others who were equally ill-equipped to deal with the situation, he took on the unpleasant task of retrieving broken bodies from the battlefield. It was triage at its worst. A terrible start for one of the most useful... Read more →

Living Closer to your Friends Would Make you Happier. Why don’t you?

Three ideas why. We change. Life changes us. When I moved to America many years ago, I was thinking expansively—it would be great to immerse myself in a new culture. And that it was. I thought I could make new lifelong friends. What I didn’t understand is that beyond growing up together, lifelong friends in America meet in high school and college. After that window of time, your friends vary based upon where you work (occasionally), or live (sometimes), or the professional associations where you’re a member (maybe), or the causes you support (perhaps). The qualifiers are not accidental. Many... Read more →

Whatever it Takes

From the dark side of business and the growing imbalance of power to making a difference with naming and words. Lehman Brothers Inc. was an American global financial services firm and the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States. Its founding dates back to 1847. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, the firm employed 25,000 people. A culture of fear permeated the company. Richard Fuld is the former CEO of the only bank that collapsed in the financial crisis. The bank collapsed because they were taking too high risks. Fuld was known for his super aggressive language: “we’re at war,”... Read more →

They Called it the “Gentle Revolution.”

For six years I had the privilege of working with a group of therapists and researchers who believed that each child, at the time of birth, has the same potential as Leonardo da Vinci. Their belief was so strong that they started with brain-injured children—children who navigate life as different. The labels varied, but they’re not important. The children are. You see, typically we don’t see framing in our narrative. It’s like defaults. What you do with the cards you’re dealt, that’s what’s important. In a letter to Maria Montessori, her colleague and physician Giuseppe Montesano says, “You need to... Read more →

How Did we Move so Far From the Human Universe?

Scrolling through good conversations in my inbox, I came across an article I used to discuss what happened to management science. The article makes the case that physics might still be part of our human universe, not just an increasingly abstract description of some “uber-folded N-dimensional meta-scrapple.” To the question (emphasis mine): “Do you think that physics has neglected some of these foundational questions as it has become, increasingly, a kind of engine for the applied sciences, focusing on the manipulation, rather than say, the explanation, of the physical world?” Tim Maudlin says: “Look, physics has definitely avoided what were... Read more →

Philosophy as a Lens to Understand Money... and Yourself

“The philosopher's job is to be an interface between things that would not normally communicate with each other. We think about policies, strategies, business models, priorities: they are all open problems, where the philosopher has his perfect place.” Oxford University professor Luciano Floridi considers himself a digital philosopher. Digital communication has become a much greater part of our lives. And some of the best strategists I've worked with did use philosophy as a lens to make sense of things. His statement also bears with my own experience. For example, when I taught advanced digital marketing and communications to master students... Read more →

Embodying Values in Business

Dame Anita Lucia Roddick founded The Body Shop out of a desire to make ends meet in 1976. Her husband had left for the Americas for two years to ride a horse from Buenos Aires to New York. You can still find some interviews she’s given online. Listening to her talk, she sounds like a sort of Dame MacGyver, someone who can use the tools she has at her disposal to make things happen. She could take you from traveling for work to starting the franchise to the rise of the World Fair Trade Organization in six and a half... Read more →

How do You Get to "Good Enough"?

It took Clare Trapasso nine months of scouring the market in three states, touring dozens of homes, losing multiple bidding wars, and rescinding another offer on a fixer-upper that would need more work than they could afford to put in, before she and her partner finally closed on a cute, renovated Cape Cod outside of New York City last year. Along the way, Trepasso, who is a writer for Realtor.com, learned a few things that no amount of writing about the housing market could teach. If you're on the hunt for a house, her article could be valuable to shortcut... Read more →

Open Innovation: What if Work Were Everyone's Business

How much value do you put in one breath? Consider that we can go three days without water, and up to twenty days without food. For breath, we're talking minutes. The greatest freediver can teach you techniques to breathe better. Relaxing helps: “Calmness. Stillness. Barely-there-ness. There are dreamlike contours to the plunge.” The limit of breath holding is dictated by your metabolic rate. It regulates how little oxygen and how much carbon dioxide you can tolerate in your body. Similarly, the limit of creating a safe space for holding innovation depends on the company where you're operating. Your culture regulates... Read more →