Education-zen
January 27, 2010Posted By Michael Doneman
"The problem of the steady change of ideas (or the perpetual need to imagine new ideas) also demolishes the notion that the essence of education consists in mastering certain contents or materials. You are not little birdies sitting in the nest with your mouths open to receive half-digested worms of knowledge regurgitated by the faculty. Education is not about content. It is not even about skills. It is a habit or stance of mind. It is not something you have. It is something you are." So says educator Andrew Abbott. To work towards...
Podcast on Ethical Entrepreneurship
August 26, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman
I'm pretty new to the world of podcasting, but I found this interview refreshing in that Cameron Reilly, the owner-operator of the G'Day World Podcasting Network, allowed time to really explore and flesh out ideas in a way that other forms don't tend to allow, in favour of more clipped and sound-grabby formats. I found this particularly useful in trying to discuss the 'bigger picture' context for my practice and the Edgeware business generally. People have been telling me for a while that short audio clips are useful ways...
Speaking at the Hive
July 17, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman
I was asked to give a short talk at a Brisbane networking function called The Hive on 30 June 09, on the topic of 'entrepreneurship'. The talk was filmed, and video is now on Youtube, but to save the bother of looking it up, here's the talk, in three sections.
Business Ethics
July 12, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman

Business ethics is an important field for Edgeware because it’s in the ‘change the world’ bit of our DNA.
You don’t ‘adopt’ ethical practices; you can’t operate without ethics, even if you couldn’t name them and you don’t have a code. We make moral judgements all the time and they’re the basis of our actions a lot of the time whether we recognise it or not. The question is: are these good ethics or not so good ethics, is this action which is good or action which is not so good? And this ‘good’ concept, that’s...
Speaking at the Brisbane Ideas Festival
May 14, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman
I was invited to convene a session at the Brisbane Ideas Festival in March 2009, a panel on the topic of Creative Entrepreneurs: The Artists of Commerce. I selected a group of Edgies from a variety of businesses and a variety of demographics, reinforcing the concept that creative entrepreneurship is a matter of psychographics, not demographics, as in Ian Plowman's proposition that Edgies are essentially 'weird', and that Edgeware is a platform for 'validating weirdness'. More on the video itself, also accessible through Youtube (and thanks to Edgie Sarah Moran for this).
Edgeware's Build Your Business
September 11, 2008Posted By Michael Doneman

Edgeware's Build Your Business program is an alternative to business education for new entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs who want to re-imagine or grow their businesses. Each time it runs, it changes, because the needs of participants and the dynamics of the group make changes necessary. Edgeware aims to provide more than just a course, because there is no single pathway to success in business. Each participant comes to Edgeware with a different mix of expectations, ideals, capabilities and needs.
So Edgeware aims to provide practical skills and competencies, but also the kinds of...
Competence and Capability
August 28, 2008Posted By Michael Doneman

Having thought about this idea of phronesis for a while it didn't come as a surprise to learn that the three 'R's' - usually taken to mean reading, writing and 'rithmatic - were originally conceived as
Reading and writing
Reckoning and figuring
Wrighting and wroughting
... where the third 'R' refers to the knowledge of action, of making and undertaking, of phronetic knowledge.
... and brings to mind, again, the distinction between competence and capability, a foundation of skills and competencies which are not ends in...
