Lego is more than just a toy manufacturer. It is a mindset. It is a culture. The familiar Lego block has been highly popular for decades – and not just with kids. Lego is a company with a mission: to create blocks that will keep kids of all ages engaged for hours in creative pursuits. It is a company with brilliant ideas and a very strong identity. Yet, as David Marcum and Steven Smith point out in Egonomics: what makes ego our greatest asset (or most expensive liability), when ideas and identity become confused, companies can find themselves in trouble.

“I saw 5 ships go sailing by…” warbled David Frost on That Was The Week That Was (the smash-hit BBC TV political satire show) in a parody of the traditional Christmas carol. It was almost 40 years ago, in the last week of December 1969, and the ships Frost was referring to were the 5 Israeli-manned gunboats that slipped out of the northern French port of Cherbourg on Christmas morning, en route for Haifa. As they made their way through 20-foot waves, the gunboats were tracked by French reconnaissance planes, an RAF Canberra from Malta, Soviet tankers, the radar forests of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, television cameramen and even Italian fishermen. For a full account of the story, you can read The Boats of Cherbourg by Abraham Rabinovich. Or if that’s too taxing, google gunboats Cherbourg.

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch was a nightly CNBC television entrepreneur-encouragement show hosted by Donny Deutsch, former CEO of advertising and media business Deutsch Inc. The show featured hot business topics, new ideas, successful mean and women in the business field - in fact, all the ingredients of the American dream. On the back of this show, Wharton graduate Deutsch wrote The Big Idea: How to Make Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Come True, From the Aha Moment to Your First Million. The book profiles the entrepreneurs who have visited Deutsch’s show, with particular focus on the stories of mothers, students, retirees and former screw ups fuelled by a good idea. Deutsch’s enthusiasm shines through every page of the book. He is genuinely interested in what makes people with ideas tick, and is fascinated with how people have the courage and stamina to make their dreams come true.

In 1895, Mark Twain wrote a wicked essay: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, a scathing attack on James Fenimore Cooper’s story, The Deerslayer. In his essay, Twain claims that Cooper violated eighteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction. Rules 1-11 focus on characters, characterization and story development. For example: Rule 1 - A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. Rule 5 - When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

I sat down recently with a couple of colleagues in the coffee shop area of a well known conference hotel. We were deep in discussion, when one of our party – it may even have been me – felt hunger pangs and suggested that we order a round of sandwiches to fuel our discussions. We signalled to a passing waitress that we wished to order something, and she came over, pen and notepad in hand. “What sandwiches would you like?” she asked in an East European accent. Each of us proceeded to ask for their filling of choice – tuna, cheese and egg. “Tuna, cheese and egg?” she asked. Yes, we nodded. A few minutes later, she returned with our sandwiches. We all looked at our plates in disbelief. Instead of three different sandwiches, each containing the filling we had indicated, we had been served with three identical sandwiches, each containing the identical triple-layer filling: tuna, cheese and egg. After our hapless waitress had gone, we all fell about in helpless laughter. In fact, we thought it was so funny that we didn’t even complain, and tucked happily into our special concoction.