Category: Opinions & Research
Small Towns, Big Relief: Nostalgia, Tradition, and the Break From Self
Small towns do more than change the scenery. They give visitors a break from themselves. This piece unpacks how nostalgia and tradition create identity relief that boosts spend, dwell time, and community value. Practical takeaways for tourism, luxury, food, museums, and policy.
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Opportunism or Partnership? The Ethics of Regional Investment
Regional investment can bring jobs and services, but also resentment when trust is broken. This article explores reciprocity, legitimacy, and the ethics of belonging in small towns.
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Urban Refugees: When City Migrants Rewrite Country Life
City migrants bring renewal to small towns but also risk reshaping them in ways that erode what made them attractive. This article explores the café paradox, the culture clash, and why belonging is earned, not claimed.
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Why Big Business Struggles to Belong in Small Towns
When big business arrives in a small town, success isn’t measured only in sales. Southerly Ten’s patience in Gippsland shows how trust can be earned, while Woolworths and Bendigo Bank reveal how quickly it can be lost. Small towns measure belonging not in quarters, but in decades. This article explores why culture, memory, and legitimacy matter more than profit when corporates cross the town gate.
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The Last Ten Minutes of Luxury
Guests pay for days yet remember minutes. The peak end rule explains why a stay often lives or dies on one high moment and the day of departure. What works, what fails, and how to design the arc so memory carries your brand home.
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The Hidden Psychology of Time in Retail: From Scarcity to Timelessness
Airports, resorts, and luxury boutiques don’t just sell products. They sell time — scarce, abundant, distorted, or timeless. This essay explores how time shapes shopping behaviour.
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When the Fix Becomes the Flaw : Why ‘Experience Design’ Is Breaking Retail
Retail has doubled down on experience design to win back emotion and attention. But when design becomes control, engagement collapses into performance.
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The Illusion of Genius: Why We Mistake Narcissism for Insight
Not everyone who sounds like a genius is one. Our cultural radar is tuned to confidence, not complexity—narcissism, not nuance. In this piece, I trace the myth of genius through history, psychology, and systems, and suggest a quieter, more connective intelligence that the world urgently needs.
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When Plates Can Talk: How AI Is Reshaping Food Service in Aged Care
Nearly 40% of aged care food is thrown away—unrecorded, unnoticed, unremarked. But a new generation of AI tools is changing that. By tracking what’s actually eaten, systems like AFINI-T offer real-time insight into nutrition, risk, and resident dignity—transforming food from a static cost into a dynamic source of intelligence. This isn’t about surveillance. It’s about finally listening to the plate.
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Swiss Cheese Thinking: From Disaster Metaphor to Strategic Advantage
We use the Swiss Cheese Model to explain how failures happen—but what if we flipped it? This article explores how Swiss Cheese Thinking can transform traditional strategic planning into a resilience-based, investor-grade framework that absorbs shocks instead of collapsing under them.
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The Evolution of Luxury: From Gold Leaf to Inner Peace
Luxury isn’t about wealth—it’s about what’s missing. From postwar security to digital-era silence, what we call “luxury” keeps evolving. This essay explores how rarity shapes desire, how the luxury industry sells emotional scarcity, and why the most coveted experiences today are often the quietest.
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What Happens When the Last Bank Leaves Town?
As more banks close their doors across rural Australia, communities are turning to post offices for basic services—but can they really replace what’s been lost?
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