Born Agile: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Natural Human Innovation

You were born knowing how to solve problems. Then someone taught you to ask permission first.A million years ago, someone cooked the first egg. No business case required.Ancient athletes rebuilt their technique between throws. No approval needed.Polynesian navigators crossed thousands of miles of open ocean by trusting what they could see, rather than what the charts said they should see.They were being Agile. They just didn't call it that.Then bureaucracy arrived, promising certainty and control. It delivered compliance and stagnation instead.In six tales spanning prehistory to the Second World War, time traveller Alistair Corrie uncovers a pattern hiding in plain sight: we are naturally brilliant at innovation, collaboration and adaptation, right up to the moment the systems built to keep us safe quietly switch those abilities off.From the savannah to Bletchley Park, from Olympic sand to cathedral scaffolding, the same three acts play out. We discover something remarkable. We bury it under process. And now and then, gloriously, somebody digs it back out.The twist? The people who did the digging were not special. They were simply allowed to be themselves.Six fables. One pattern. Every era.If you have ever sat in a meeting thinking "there must be a better way", this book is your proof that there is. And that you already knew it.