Roger van Oech's Whack on the Side of the Head series of books and lectures were once very popular.

The idea of subjugating and manipulating nature as the first farmers did, still drives human endeavor.

From humble beginnings the Venetian republic grew in strength, along the way becoming highly efficient in building galleys for trade and defense.

The gulf between expectations and realities has been the subject of fascinating discussion in the modern corporate sector. Danny Miller's The Icarus Paradox, describes how business executives fly too high, fail to heed warnings to restrain their ambitions, and come crashing down. One example he gives is the decline, in the 1970s, of Control Data Corporation. This company succeeded in building faster computers than their larger competitors such as IBM, but overspecialization in computing speed led to weak overall performance. In situations such as these, senior executives frequently ignore advice to exercise caution. Miller recounts similar problems at Wang, Polaroid, ITT and others. Some, like Federal Express, staved off disaster by means of flexibility.

Seymour Cray found his company, Control Data Corporation, failing due to overspecialization in computing speed.