‘There is nothing new under the sun’ wrote Solomon. Isaac Newton said ‘We are standing on the shoulders of giants’. Both play out in any sector or industry you work in today. In some of my recent reading on both regenerative agriculture and digital governance/identity/rights, I am struck by how long various strands of thinking have been around.

Often centuries.

Not always in its current form or application, but interestingly sometimes it is. I am also struck by how often the conventional wisdom or way of doing things is relatively ‘new’. We live in a fast paced, instantaneous world now, perhaps one of the most revolutionary things we can do is to pause, reflect, learn from history. Perhaps as a society we’ve developed a form of collective ADHD and we need calm space to breahe again.

This does not mean we do not need ‘doers’. We do. But on our teams we need diversity, doers and reflecters. There is much we can learn from our ancestors, countless mistakes we do not need to make. Otherwise as as George Santayana says, ‘

This does not mean we do not need ‘doers’. We do. But on our teams we need diversity, doers and reflecters. There is much we can learn from our ancestors, countless mistakes we do not need to make. Otherwise as as George Santayana says, ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

Who’s shoulders are you standing on today? They may not be world famous, but that doesn’t mean they are not giants.

Photo by Enric Moreu