Quora

*/By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc./*

*/Follow us on Twitter/* [1]

I am a world-class procrastinator.  I figure if you are going to have a bad
habit then you may as well be good at it.  One of my favorite sites to
peruse while avoiding a task (such as writing blogs) is www.Quora.com [2]. 
Basically it is a site that satisfies the inner nerd in all of us.  On the
site people ask all kinds of weird, wonderful and whimsical questions –
mainly science and more specifically physics related.  Wonderful way to
enlarge your brain and pass the time with offbeat scientific trivia.

The odd thing about Quora is that although most of the stuff is totally
irrelevant, it does serve a purpose.  It creates a forum where people can
interact intellectually and from that comes fantastic ideas and new ways of
thinking.

Now contrast Quora with the various risk based blogs on Linked-in and such. 
There the discussion is very serious and everyone tries to be either as
practical or as academic as possible.  For the most part the discussions are
brain-dead rehashing of the brain-dead rehashings from the previous month. 
There is no whimsy; there is no wonder.  There is no asking a silly question
for the sake of asking a silly question.  As a result the breakthroughs and
the creative thoughts are missing.

Risk managers need to loosen up and let their inner child run free with the
offbeat questions.  The answers and the results might be surprising.


[1] https://twitter.com/rsdsolutions
[2] http://www.Quora.com