Invisible Dynamics

Florida, United States. 28 January 1986. NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center with seven people on board. Seventy-three seconds later, it broke apart. All seven crew members lost their lives. The previous evening, engineers and managers at Morton Thiokol, the company that manufactured the shuttle’s rocket boosters, had joined NASA officials in a teleconference about the unusually cold weather forecast for launch. Their concern involved the O-ri

Kimono and yukata in luxury leadership An experience can be impeccably executed and still feel wrong. Every detail follows the brand’s standards. Yet the client feels uncomfortable, hurried or simply unseen. The organisation has delivered its approved version of excellence while missing what this particular moment required. A comparison between formal kimono and yukata offers an interesting starting point for examining that gap. Kimono encompasses a range of garments and leve

The meeting ends with a clear decision: make the client experience more exclusive. Everyone agrees. Retail starts developing a more personalised service. Marketing proposes more selective access. Operations redesigns appointments to give each client more time. Three reasonable responses. Three different interpretations. This illustrative scenario could occur in any maison. The misunderstanding becomes visible when the plans collide, although it began much earlier: inside a wo

Nike is leaving the S&P 100 after almost eighteen years. Since its 2021 peak, the company has lost more than $220 billion in market value. Its shares have fallen to levels not seen in more than a decade, while younger competitors such as Hoka and On have gained ground among runners, athletes and consumers. It would be easy to tell this story as a familiar corporate tragedy: an iconic brand made the wrong strategic bet and paid the price. But that explanation is too simple

Founded in Shanghai in 1997, ICICLE is a Chinese high-end fashion brand built around natural materials, understated design and its “Made in Earth” philosophy. Over almost three decades, it has developed a network of more than 240 stores across nearly 110 Chinese cities, established a creative centre in Paris and, in 2018, acquired the historic French fashion house Carven. In Hangzhou, ICICLE has opened its second Garden Store. But describing ICCF SHANSHUI as a new retail dest

When motivation disappears, organisations often look first at the individual. Is the employee disengaged? Resistant to change? Unable to adapt? Not resilient enough? But what if the individual is expressing something that belongs to the system? According to Gallup, only 20% of employees worldwide were engaged at work in 2025. Manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, while low engagement was estimated to cost the global economy approximately $10 trillion in los

“Agentic” does not mean that the system possesses unlimited independence or human-like judgement. Different systems operate with different degrees of autonomy. However, a genuinely agentic system should combine several of the following capabilities: Capability Meaning Goal understanding Translates a general purpose into concrete activities Planning Determines which actions to take and in what sequence Tool use Interacts with email, databases, calendars and other software Memo

On 26 January 2026, France’s Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs, DINUM, officially announced the progressive rollout of Visio, a videoconferencing platform developed by the French State, across all government services by 2027. The objectives stated in the official release are clear: ending the use of non-European videoconferencing solutions, protecting the security and confidentiality of public communications, reducing strategic dependencies on external infrast

What happens when we become more accustomed to seeing ourselves than to feeling ourselves? There was a time when a mirror was one of the few places where we could encounter our own image. We looked, adjusted something, and walked away. Today, our image rarely leaves us. We photograph ourselves. We film ourselves. We select, crop, correct, publish, observe reactions and, sometimes almost unconsciously, begin to imagine how a moment will look before we have fully lived it. Some

4.3 million vehicles recalled. Not because a technology didn’t exist. But because, when it mattered most, humans might not understand how to use it quickly enough. Nine automakers are involved in what has been described as China’s largest automotive recall, following concerns around emergency door-release systems that may be difficult to identify and operate when electrical systems fail. At first glance, this is an automotive safety story. But I believe it raises a much broad

For decades, organizations have been built around a fundamental scarcity: human cognitive capacity. Information was difficult to collect. Data took time to analyze. Expertise was concentrated in relatively few people. Producing reports, comparing alternatives, identifying patterns and transforming information into possible courses of action required significant human effort. Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing this equation. And this may lead us to a paradox. As machi

In 1974, cognitive psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer conducted an experiment that became one of the most influential demonstrations of how reconstructive human memory can be. Participants watched footage of a car accident. Then they were asked to estimate how fast the cars had been travelling. But the researchers changed one word in the question. How fast were the cars going when they hit each other? How fast were they going when they smashed into each other? Sam