Leadership – Page 143

Linchpinning

If you don’t subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog, you should. And if you haven’t bought a copy of his latest book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible? (2010) get one without further delay (unless, that is, your book budget is limited, at which point I’m pretty sure you need one of my titles far more urgently).

Seth, it turns out, is a friend of the family. He and my Dad (the “Godfather of Gore”) are buddies. In Linchpin he even describes Dad as an artist, which … and if you’ve ever watched 2000 Maniacs you’ll understand what I’m talking about … suggests Seth has a very generous definition of art.

A holiday card to the industry, 2010

Recently, scientists at CERN split mercury nuclei for the first time. They expected two zirconium nuclei. What they got was ruthenium and krypton.

For some of us, it’s remarkable enough that they could tell. Knowing enough about fission that this result is surprising is even more remarkable.

For the particle physics community, the gift was the surprise itself. Expected results tell researchers they’re on the right track, but unforeseen results? They can open a whole new field of inquiry. If you’re a scientist, that’s what you hope for.