This year's the traditional International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) Conference will take place in a city that is a case of "performance improvement" gone wrong: New Orleans. A recent article on The New Yorker titled "Louisiana disappearing coast" exposes a typical case of societal and environmental performance: the "solutions" to the floods are causing the coastal line (and therefore part of Louisiana's state) to wash away in the Gulf of Mexico. The complex l

The Prosperity Paradox (Christensen, Efosa & Dillon, 2019) discusses a critical component for successfully moving people and communities out of poverty and deliver sustainable return on social and financial investment. Clayton Christensen's "innovator's dilemma" -the reason why so many new businesses and programs based on great ideas or products fail while others succeed" - must be addressed in developing countries by not just introducing new revolutionary, affordable product

Urbanists and city planners often look "up" to the mega-cities for keys to success -or even failure-. New York, Chicago or San Francisco, Paris, Buenos Aires, Shanghai or Mumbay have occupied the front and center of attention of government, mayors, investors and real estate planners. The Next American City, a recent book by Oklahoma's mayor, Mick Cornett, invites us to think otherwise. Cornett cleverly uses the title of a famous American classic, John Steinbeck's novel The G

One key success factor for transforming cities and neighborhoods is to move from a focus on a "master plan" to a one of "eyes on the street" that focus on the perspective of a dweller or a visitor, instead of those of architects, engineers or other urban planners. We must start by exploring the place, , moving from the master planner's offices to the neighborhood streets and dwellings and listening to residents, visitors and other stakeholders/ That first exploration phase pr