 I have a confession to make. So many things about economics were upsetting me. Not least the dogged pig-headedness of many economists who try to separate economics from politics and moral philosophy. So I decided to give the dismal science a makeover and wrote a play. Which, after sold-out shows in Cyprus, is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2026!
It took many months of development with Director Lia Haraki and Producer Elias Vasnic, who also created a phenomenal soundscape. Most audiences love this show, though economists may leave feeling a little less smug. Epic Economics starts with a free-market advocate of the eighteenth century, Adam Smith. It ends with a French economist deeply worried about inequality - Thomas Piketty. In between come the authentic words of other influential economists—and what a cacophony they make! There’s also the occupation of the London School of Economics in 1977 and an uncomfortable incident during a World Bank mission in Colombia. Yes, I couldn’t resist weaving in some of his own real-life stories—with wicked humour, songs and gentle audience interaction around the question: What would you protest about today? After the Fringe, it will be staged at the prestigious Michael Cacoyannis Centre in Athens. Discover how the economy shapes everything — who gets rich, who struggles, and what we fight about. This irreverent play puts the economists who shaped our world on trial — with humour, mischief and a damn good time along the way. Where and when? 📍 Paradise Green — The Annexe (capacity: 42 – get in quick!) 📅 17–30 August 2026 (no show 23 August), daily at 12:15–13:15 🎟 Preview: 17 August, 1:17 PM 💷 Standard £15 · Concession £13 · Family £24 Tickets available at https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on?search=true&text=Epic%20Economics%3A%20What%20would%20you%20protest%20about%20today%3F Find our website at epic-economics.dimis.org Epic Economics: What would you protest about today? Written and performed by Dimis Michaelides Direction, Dramaturgy and Lighting Design: Lia Haraki Sound Design and Music: Elias Vasnic Photography: Boyana Loizou For more info on the show contact Elias Vasnic producer/composer elias(at)densetheory.cc
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A day on the life of CyprusInno  In a historic summit in 2015, seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all UN member states. Starting with No Poverty and Zero Hunger the SDGs are a comprehensive set of Targets covering health and education, gender equality and income inequality, climate action and much more. The SDGs heralded a significant change in the perceived roles and responsibilities of government.
An Update of Collaborative Ideation  Imaginary scenario: you have been invited to a meeting to explore new approaches to a wicked problem. Loudmouth Number 1 describes his solution. Loudmouth Number 2 vehemently disagrees. A heated argument ensues. Some people take sides. Others remain silent. There are bruised egos. You are not the only one who feels frustrated. All that time just one single idea has been considered.
Have you ever experienced such a meeting? Have you ever wondered why brainstorming came to be? Read More...  The Learning Machines I am referring to are not the Artificially Intelligent products of humans, but the humans themselves.
More learning, learning more The acceleration of the pace of change of the last fifty years and our feeling that change will be even faster in the next fifty years breeds a new type of human. People will spend a smaller part of their working lives delivering value and a larger part learning and innovating. In their jobs they will generate more value in less time because they will be delivering new or improved products and services with new and improved tools and processes. In parallel they will be learning and innovating. The trend is a long-term one starting from the early days of universal education and the continuous rise of years in education before beginning to work. But learning is not just about taking courses at schools. It is also about developing useful skills on and off the job. Formal education will be supplemented by lifelong learning, with more frequent and shorter course often taken remotely. The working day will evolve from 95/5 to 60/40 : if in 2000 people spent 95% of their time at work actually working and 5% learning or innovating, the proportions will shift radically. By 2050, about 60 % of time at work will be spent delivering value to others and 40% learning or innovating. My figures are surely imprecise but the trend is not. In fact it is already happening.  The impact of Covid 19 on work and the economy is at least as dramatic as its impact on personal and public health. The pandemic has greatly accelerated innovations in the ways people work with enormous benefits and some sinister effects too. This should herald a new era of widespread social innovation.
You do not need a degree in economics to understand that if the pandemic has stopped you from making a living you can either survive on your savings (if you have any) or borrow against the future (if you can) or rely on help from others. Family and friends, communities and governments, are all playing roles in providing relief. People are not equally affected by the pandemic of course. Creativity and a capacity to change are always good allies but objective circumstances vary tremendously making change much harder for some. If the pandemic has boosted your business, you use your creative faculties to make the most of it and scale up. Good for you. If the pandemic has threatened your work, you use your adaptive acumen to figure out how to keep business going. This might be quite challenging. If the pandemic has devastated your work you use your resourcefulness to transform your work or you change jobs. It can be a tough struggle.  In the early nineties I worked for Zeneca, a pharmaceuticals and plant protection company. At the time it took 10-12 years for a drug or vaccine to go from lab to market. I recall heated conversations on how to shorten this time when we could.
Until yesterday, it still took 10-12 years to get a vaccine to market. Until yesterday that is, when an entirely new type of COVID-19 vaccine was registered in the UK less than 10 ½ months after the genetic code of the coronavirus was discovered. About 40-50 COVID vaccines are on trial. Two have been registered for use in Russia and at least two from China are in widespread use, but these have not completed the stage 3 large-scale trials normally required for registration. At this point in time, the western scientific community knows more about the vaccines which have completed the large-scale trials - from BioNTech/PFIZER, MODERNA and AstraZeneca.  It has been said that technology moves at 1,000 kph, private comanies at 100 kph and public administrations at 10 kph.
The myth that innovation is only for the private sector persists in many people’s minds. They forget who put man on the moon, invented the internet, designed some of the world’s finest health systems and who are still funding some of the world’s most ground-breaking research. Transformation in the way governments work does not have to be slow, but here are some reasons why it may be so: 1. Archaic dogma. Public administrations were created to give a sense of continuity and they have grown as the role of the state has grown. In the minds of their creators, they were not supposed to change even as governments may change. This myth is still strong in many people’s minds. 2. Archaic legal frameworks. Sometimes the establishment and existence of public bodies are embedded in national constitutions which are legally horrendously difficult to modify. 3. Archaic structures. They are often bureaucracies run by silos within silos, which was fine, until the last century.  Aspirations, Blessings and Curses of Working Remotely
One of the most significant ways the COVID pandemic impacted work has been to get much more of it done from home. Subscriptions to extra bandwidth and virtual meeting platforms skyrocketed. People’s imaginations and their capacity to make new things happen and change their work habits accelerated overnight. Working from home impacts organizations and lives in many different ways, sometimes very profoundly. This article seeks to explore some of the many dimensions of working remotely (whether this is from home or not). History. Many organizations have been working remotely for years. For over a century garment-making, jewelry production and professional writing were done from home or from home-based ateliers. So was much call center work in more recent years. Even ten years ago about 40% of IBM’s nearly 400,000 people were “telecommuters”. From its inception GitLab, an international software company, had no offices and now it has 1300+ employees from over 70 countries (see a “how-to” of remote collaboration here). This year the tech giants – Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft – all announced big and permanent changes to accommodate more work from home. Many others are doing likewise. This is not only COVID-related because there are huge potential increases in efficiency to be exploited. Possibilities. Not all work can be done remotely today.  Imagine you are implementing a transformation program in your organization. You have it all spelt out with the fashionable jargon of our times. A new vision for a new business model which came from heaps of Out-of-the-Box design thinking. With entirely customer-centric systems using state-of-the-art digital technology (and of course chatbots, actionable analytics, big data, internet of things). A lean and agile operation with plenty of scrum will implement this model which will empower everybody to think smarter and act faster. You might even celebrate a few failures. Oh and (how could I forget?) the truckloads of artificial intelligence you poured in to make it happen.
Then humans move in to spoil it all. Bastards! Really now? If you really thought the innovation roadmap you showcased on paper (or on powerpoint slides) would move everyone to action, then your own intelligence must be artificial. Cranky old fogies, arrogant pricks, short-sighted accountants, unimaginative bureaucrats, scheming silo sheikhs and comfortable chieftains are the usual suspects. But the most dangerous foes are in fact the most unlikely foes, good people. Technology Managers. They are probably good in managing yesterday’s technology and have good knowledge and tight control over today’s systems in operation. They are always ready to service new demands, if only users would express their wishes more clearly. But they hate the new generation of geeks and nerds.  Are Parkinson’s Law and the Peter Principle relevant to innovation?Parkinson’s Law and Change
10 people write 10 reports in 10 hours. If you hire 10 more people how many reports will all 20 people write in the same time? 20, right? Wrong! According to Parkinson’s Law it’s still 10. Published in 1942, the theory states that “work expands to fill the time available to complete it”. The reasoning is that first, managers crave power and more people to order about and, second, more people create more work for each other. Parkinson’s Law has often been used to victimize the civil service, but it is valid for all organizations devoid of good leadership and permeated by an unimaginative work ethic. It is more valid for report-writers than it is for widget makers or salespeople, whose output is easier to measure. Innovation is anathema to rigid outfits because it involves redesigning work. When it becomes possible through re-engineering (1990s) so 5 people and a machine can generate 100 reports, or through digitalization (these days) so 5 people and a cloud can let users generate any report they might need, the Parkinson crowds get angry. Their power structures and jobs are threatened and they mobilize to deny or resist the new developments. This is why “lean” and “agile” have become buzzwords today. The Peter Principle and Innovation Now imagine you are an invisible spirit looking around an organization. How many incompetent managers do you see? |