We’ve all heard of Leonardo da Vinci, but have you heard of Leonardo of Pisa, and do you know why he deserves to be famous? He’s better known under the nickname of Fibonacci, invented in the nineteenth century.  But Leonardo of Pisa made his breakthrough achievement in 1220, and it was pretty fur-fetched. He constructed the following puzzle: Start with two rabbits, one male and one female. Imagine they are fairly restrained rabbits, sexually, and give birth to...

‘The virtuous are virtuous for no other reasons than to join forces with others who are virtuous, to mutual benefit.  And once co-operators segregate themselves from the rest of society, a wholly new force of evolution can come into play: one that pits groups, rather than individuals, against each other.’ So writes Matt Ridley in The Origin of Virtue.  It’s worth thinking about whether we could take this to its logical – or possibly illogical – conclusion.  Could...

It strikes me as whimsically appropriate that I should be sitting in Australia in the middle of summer, watching the persistent rain outside, snugly – and perhaps smugly – reading about the English and the glories and humiliation of their – my – history.  It’s rather delicious to quote Rudyard Kipling: If England was what England seems An’ not the England of our dreams, But only putty, brass an’ paint ‘Ow quickly we’d chuck ’er!  But she ain’t! Many imagine that...

Eugene Hoeven interview with Richard Koch. How did it come about that you wrote about the 80/20 Principle? Discussions about the imbalance in life between what we should be doing and what we are doing and some insights into Richard’s new book coming out in June 2020 – How to Be Unreasonably Successful.    ...

The poet Philip Larkin famously observed that sex was invented in 1963.  Or rather less dramatically:  So life was never better than/In nineteen sixty-three/(Though just too late for me)/Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban/And the Beatles’ first L.P. The swinging sixties themselves perhaps started their decade two or three years late, but then whoosh!  An era of drab restraint ended and a whole new period began, nicely called ‘the permissive society’ by the...

Insights into what the 80/20 Principle is, what it is not, what it really means for a business or person and how it should be applied.              

What will make you successful? What will make you rich? Preposterous as it sounds, there is a magic formula. There is a way to get several times more money and fun out of a business. By finding a star venture.      ...