So, gorging on TED talks can eventually result mild in nausea. In high doses their relentlessly positive, earnest, can-do tone reacts rather unpleasantly with deep-seated British cynicism. Fortunately the cure is simple. After a brief period of abstinence levels of immunity usually return to normal. This is good news because the series regularly delivers useful or diverting thoughts.

I have no great interest in ‘management theory’ – there are too many things in the world that are more interesting – but it would be daft to ignore the fact that Stan’s Cafe is a business, all be it one that is constitutionally barred from distributing a profit. As a result I didn’t skip this TED talk by Margaret Heffernan and was pleased not to as it turned out to be an engaging piece that confirmed all my existing biases.