Heading home from the IPG Autumn Conference and buzzing with a heady combination of inspiration, new ideas, old friends and red wine.
But I only have time for a short blog, so from the plethora of inspiration I’ll go with Nicholas Lovell‘s closing remark, that ‘Nobody knows anything.’ Lovell is the author of The Curve (and what’s more an upcoming guest on The Extraordinary Business Book Club) and he spoke passionately and persuasively about embracing uncertainty, being willing to try and if necessary kill ideas, failing early and cheaply, and much more that’s close to my lean heart.
But that phrase, attributed to William Goldman, really stuck with me. Lovell said he finds it hugely encouraging, and I know exactly what he means. We live and we learn, but our knowledge is always provisional, context-dependent, subject to change in the light of new evidence. It’s not knowledge that’s our competitive advantage but our capacity to learn and still stay humble, open to new ideas.
Nobody really knows anything, and that’s what makes it so much fun.