Howard's Riffs
Interconnected Agency
Agency is a real word. It means something - or it used to. And now Silicon Valley has it.
📝 Writing
This is where most of the writing lives. 650+ posts since 2016 - some about learning and creative work, some about whatever I couldn't let go of that week. A restaurant that changed fine dining, a Nintendo executive who saved the company, a Gmail interface for leaked documents...
Howard's Riffs
Saturday mornings
The loop that builds senior judgment is closing. The institutions can't move fast enough. So what happens in the gaps?
A.I.
What A.I. quietly undoes
A.I. doesn't replace collaboration - it makes it optional. And optional things have a way of disappearing.
Creative Business
The Merchant's Stall
Merchant.dev's shop looks like a Studio Ghibli market stall. Nothing's stopping anyone from building something that feels like a place.
Howard's Riffs
Madri: A Beer from Nowhere
A "Spanish" beer brewed in Burton-on-Trent is now the UK's fourth most popular. How did they figure this out?
Groove Theory #22 - A Narrow Corridor on La Rive Gauche
A keynote brief, two weeks on the clock, and a question: how much of yourself fits through someone else's frame?
Mindsets & Growth
Your Other Language Skills
Your language skills matter more than ever - but not the ones you think. Industries, sectors, scenes. The jargon, the rhythm, the sub-sub-sub of it all. Which ones do you speak?
Mindsets & Growth
What Do You Do?
How do you explain what you do in two sentences? Your career, your side project, the thing you still can't describe to your parents?
A.I.
Piano for the Office
In 1906, typing was marketed to women as "piano for the office." Safe. Respectable. Those same roles are now most exposed to AI automation.
Creative Business
The Jetpack That Doesn't Work
Citymapper lets you choose a jetpack, hoverboard, or catapult to get across town. None of them work. And that might be exactly the point.
Creative Business
The Garage
Most startup origin stories start where the founder wants them to. Ask what came before the garage. What's not in the story?
Howard's Riffs
Chicken or Egg?
A touch of Grafitti wisdom
Mindsets & Growth
The Mistake Picnic
Patrick Collison spent three hours going through every mistake in Michael Ovitz's memoir. There's something unfashionable about that. And something worth noticing.
A.I.
Taste the Soup
In 'Ratatouille', anyone can cook - but a great chef has to taste the soup. This applies to AI too. The skill now is judgment, not production.
A.I.
Three Big A.I. Bets - keynote
A 25-minute talk on the three bets every services business is already making - whether they've named them or not. Talent, model, positioning. Recorded in Paris.
Groove Theory
Groove Theory #21 - The Fourteen Hour Queue
What a '90s London music scene reveals about the audiences that actually matter
Creative Business
Boredom created Bond
Ian Fleming wrote his Bond novels at a villa with no hot water and no glass in the windows. I think I've found my equivalent.
Howard's Riffs
I'd love to work with you
Someone offered to help without showing they'd read what I sent. One detail would have been enough. Which makes it stranger when it's missing.