Iver Anderson and Emma White, metallurgists at Ames Laboratory, like to show off two samples of metal powders encapsulated in custom-made hourglasses to visitors. Dull gray, the powders are barely remarkable in and of themselves, let alone in comparison to each other—until the hourglasses are flipped.

How tall are you? How old? How much do you weigh? Do you care? Is it important to you that the measurements for height, age, and weight are accurate? What about the measurement of the gasoline that you pump into your tank? Is it important that the 12 gallons you pay for are truly 12 gallons?

Biology is becoming increasingly digitized. Researchers use computers to analyze DNA, operate lab equipment and store genetic information. But new capabilities also mean new risks, and biologists remain largely unaware of the potential vulnerabilities that come with digitizing biotechnology.

The emerging field of cyberbiosecurity explores the whole new category of risks that come with the increased use of computers in the life sciences.

Industry 4.0, cyber-physical systems, or the internet of things (IoT): the paradigm shift in the production economy is cheerfully progressing under various names. What they all refer to is the digitalization and networking of production processes and environments. The idea is by no means new. The difference is that there are now technologies that offer a level of precision, speed, and flexibility to a previously unknown degree.

Last Friday’s episode of QDL welcomed the new year with our usual original take on featured editorial content, plus a great Tech Corner. In case you missed it, here’s what we covered:

On Tuesdays I write about the top-voted question on “Ask Berkun.” This week’s question came from J.R., who wrote: “What is a favorite theory that you wish more people understood?”

I loved my Honda. Is it OK to cling to that emotion, even after a car takes its final drive and lands in a dissection yard to be pulled to pieces so other old Hondas can stay on the road? Are there counselors out there specializing in car grief who might advise? ’Tis the Christmas season, so I can imagine what they might say: Let it go, let it go, let it go.

This tale is an attempt to do just that, and to highlight some random acts of quality humanness along the way.

For the last 30 years, NIST and the Department of Commerce, together with the President of the United States, have been recognizing the nation’s most outstanding organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

What would you say about a system that improves performance but is disliked by a significant percentage of those participating in it? Conventional organizational hierarchy may be just such a system. Yet plenty of theorists—including, at times, ourselves—have concentrated on explaining the existence of hierarchy, rather than seriously examining how it could be made more likable.

People are always asking us for help with ways to prioritize. Almost everyone believes prioritization to be an action in and of itself. They ask, “What mechanisms do you use to prioritize?” However, we find most often that prioritization issues, like trust issues, are a symptom of deeper problems.

This video discusses what some of those root causes are and how we at Modus Cooperandi approach them.