Bookpleasures.com isthrilled to welcome A.J. Thoresen, author of  DecodingEfficiency and Innovation: How Systems, Minds, and Nations Shape OurFuture.

This book examines thedelicate balance between structure and creativity, demonstrating thattrue progress is not achieved through solitary genius or aggressiveoptimization.

Instead, it emerges fromthe alignment of three fundamental forces: the systems we create, theminds we develop, and the nations we build.

In a world increasinglyinfluenced by artificial intelligence, global competition, andorganizational complexity, few thinkers offer a framework as relevantand insightful as A.J. Thoresen.

Her work investigates howthese three elements interact to foster innovation and efficiency,emphasizing the importance of their interconnectedness in shaping ourfuture.

A.J.'s diverse backgroundin engineering and finance  offers her a unique perspective.

With a BSc in Engineeringand a Master's in Finance from London Business School, she combinestechnical rigor with strategic insight in her writing, which iscertain to captivate readers.

Today, we sit down withA.J. to discuss the concepts behind her book, the tension betweeninnovation and efficiency, and the importance of making wisedecisions in an age of rapid change.

Norm: Good day, A.J.,and thanks for taking part in our interview.

Every book has anorigin story. What specific observation or moment in your career madeyou realize that the tension between efficiency and innovation wasthe critical topic you needed to explore?

Was there a particularcompany, news event, or even a personal frustration that served asthe final catalyst for your decision?

A.J. I have long beeninterested in the tension between efficiency and innovation, as theyhave a counter intuitive nature. They are not opposites, but they donot always travel easily together.

Efficiency seeks toperfect what is known, while innovation reaches for what is not yetproven.

When efficiency dominates,it can suppress the very conditions that allow innovation to emerge,yet without efficiency, innovation cannot scale.

When artificialintelligence entered the public stage, both highly efficient andinnovative, I felt compelled to understand how businesses, minds, andnations balance these forces.

The book grew from thatsearch. It is idea-driven and deeply researched, written to makesense of a world that is accelerating faster than most can read.

For many organisations,the concept of efficiency itself has become unclear. Some equate itwith speed, forgetting direction. Others believe they are innovatingwhen in fact they are only optimising.

Decoding Efficiency andInnovation was born from the need to clarify these confusions to askwhat true progress means in an age where doing more often replacesthinking better.

Norm: How does the riseof AI and automation fit into your framework? Does AI enhanceefficiency to such an extent that it poses a greater threat tohuman-led innovation, or is it a tool that can unlock new forms ofcreativity?

Where should weconcentrate our efforts to ensure that AI benefits both efficiencyand innovation?

A.J. Artificialintelligence intensifies the paradox between efficiency andinnovation. It embodies both, yet also exposes their limits.

AI can execute tasks withextraordinary precision, speed, and consistency, qualities thatredefine operational efficiency.

But this very strength canbecome a weakness if it narrows human imagination or discouragesindependent thought.

The danger is not that AIwill replace us, but that we may begin to imitate it, optimisingourselves into predictability.

When that happens, humancreativity becomes procedural rather than original.

Used consciously, however,AI can unlock new creative capacity. It can remove friction fromwork, accelerate learning, and expand the scale at which we exploreideas.

The key lies in how wedesign the relationship: humans must remain the interpreters ofmeaning, not merely the supervisors of machines.

Our efforts shouldconcentrate on cultivating what technology cannot replicate: context,empathy, ethical judgment, and imagination.

These are the forces thatgive direction to intelligence. Efficiency will continually advancethrough automation, but innovation will only advance throughawareness.

Norm: Your bookpresents "systemic wisdom" as a fusion of agility andresilience. Can you provide a real-world example where this balancewas effectively achieved?

What design principleswere crucial for its success, and can they be applied acrossdifferent industries?

A.J. Systemic wisdom isthe ability to design with intention structures that are preciseenough to be efficient yet open enough to evolve.

In Chapter Five, Idescribe this as structural efficiency: perfection achieved not whenthere is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to takeaway.

Balance is a livingharmony, and as in nature, wisdom lies in knowing when enough isenough.

One example of thisprinciple in action is Amazon. Its structure combines efficiency withagility: small, autonomous teams operating within a coherent largersystem.

Decision-making isdecentralised, yet alignment is maintained through clear metrics andlong-term orientation.

The design is intentional,not accidental; it allows the company to move quickly without losingdirection.

Yet even Jeff Bezosrecognises that a well-optimised system can become blind to newpossibilities. His call to “keep wondering” is a quiet butessential counterbalance to efficiency.

It acknowledges thatefficiency, when left unchallenged, can become its own form ofinertia.

Wondering curiositywithout immediate utility is what keeps an efficient system alive andadaptive.

At a national scale,Singapore illustrates a similar equilibrium, where governance andeconomic design are engineered for both order and flexibility.

Toyota, on the other hand,demonstrates the strength and the constraint of continuousimprovement.

Its discipline ofrefinement is extraordinary, yet it also shows how systems optimisedfor steady evolution can sometimes struggle with disruptiveinnovation.

Across industries, thedesign principles remain consistent: clarity of purpose, simplicityof form, and the humility to leave space for the unknown.

Structural wisdom is notan endpoint; it is a discipline of awareness that enables systems tobe both excellent and surprising.

Norm: You criticizetraditional corporate structures for unintentionally stiflinginnovation. What structural change would you recommend for aconventional company today? How can leaders implement this changewithout triggering internal resistance?

A.J. Most corporatestructures were designed for control, not creativity. They optimiseinformation flow upward, but rarely insight across.

The result is thatinnovation becomes episodic rather than systemic.

The most powerfulstructural change a company can make today is to intentionally designits culture, rather than treat it as an afterthought.

As Peter Drucker remindedus, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Without culturalalignment, even the best strategies collapse into bureaucracy.

One useful way to thinkabout culture is through the iceberg model: visible elements, such aspolicies and goals, sit above the surface, but the deeper layers —beliefs, values, and unspoken assumptions — shape real behaviour.Leaders must learn to work with both levels.

Vision, mission, andvalues should not be wall statements; they should become thearchitecture of daily decisions.

Psychological safety iscentral to this transformation. Amy Edmondson’s four stages ofpsychological safety offer a practical map: inclusion, learning,contribution, and challenge.

Each stage builds trustand courage. When people feel accepted, free to learn, empowered tocontribute, and safe to question, innovation stops being a slogan andbecomes a natural outcome.

Norm: Bell Labs oftenserves as a prominent example in your Systems section. What lessonsfrom its physical and organizational design do you believe moderntech campuses have misunderstood or overlooked?

If you were tasked withdesigning an innovation hub today, what elements would benon-negotiable?

A.J. Bell Labs remains oneof the most remarkable examples of intentional design in innovationhistory. It was not only a research centre but an ecosystem built forintellectual collision.

Its long corridors andopen offices were designed to make people from different disciplinescross paths daily.

Physicists,mathematicians, and engineers worked within the same physical andconversational space, turning chance encounters into discovery.

The design reflected asimple but profound truth: innovation flourishes when ideas can movefreely between minds.

Many modern tech campusesimitate the appearance of Bell Labs' open spaces, creative lounges,and visible collaboration, but they often overlook its deeperstructure.

The true genius of BellLabs was not in aesthetics but in permeability. It balanced freedomwith focus, and exploration with purpose.

Today’s organisationstend to prioritise speed and comfort over depth and dialogue. Theybuild spaces for work but not always for wonder.

If I were designing aninnovation hub today, my non-negotiables would begin with structuralpermeability, a design that allows disciplines to overlap bothphysically and intellectually.

The second would be timefor exploration, protecting cycles of slow thinking within fastsystems. The third would be psychological safety, the culturalfoundation that makes questioning possible without fear.

Norm: In the "Minds"section, you explore cognitive biases and creativity. Which bias doyou think is most damaging to innovation in teams, and why? Have youseen any organizations successfully neutralize this bias?

A.J. One of the mostdamaging biases to innovation is what I call the illusion ofprogress, the belief that a company is advancing when it is onlyrefining what already exists.

It often appears asincremental innovation: small, safe improvements that feel productivebut rarely change the system itself.

The danger is subtle.Incrementalism gives teams the comfort of movement without thediscomfort of transformation.

This bias persists becauseit feels rational. It aligns with short-term performance metrics,operational discipline, and the human desire for predictability.

But when every companyfollows the same logic, progress becomes relative rather than real;you are not ahead, you are merely not behind.

Over time, this createsentire industries optimising themselves into sameness.

No organisation is immune,but some have learned to counterbalance it. Apple under Steve Jobs isa defining example.

Jobs resisted theincremental instinct by focusing on what people did not yet know theywanted. His process was not driven by market validation but byinternal conviction, vision preceding demand.

That required a culturecapable of questioning even its own success.

SpaceX offers another kindof antidote. It innovates through iteration, but iteration serves adisruptive goal.

The company treats failureas data, not defeat, and builds systems where learning compoundsfaster than caution. It shows that efficiency and experimentation cancoexist when risk is structurally integrated rather than avoided.

Ultimately, awareness isthe safeguard. Innovation decays when organisations become toocertain of what works.

The most creative teamsinstitutionalise doubt; they design curiosity into their process.

Norm: You highlight thesignificance of creative collisions. How can remote or hybrid teamsdigitally cultivate this type of serendipity?

Are there specifictools or rituals you've observed that work particularly well?

A.J. Creative collisionsare not accidents; they are the outcome of intentional design.

Physical proximity oncemade them easier, but the essence of a collision is not geography; itis the willingness to engage, to listen, and to build upon theunfinished thought of another.

Remote and hybrid teamscan absolutely cultivate this energy, but it must be structurallybuilt into the culture.

The most innovativeorganisations do not treat digital collaboration as a limitation;they treat it as a new medium for connection.

They design systems thatmake interaction habitual rather than optional.

One effective practice isthe use of cross-disciplinary sessions that pair people who rarelywork together.

When such encounters areprotected time, not afterthoughts, they replicate the creativecorridor digitally.

Some companies also use“open thread” platforms, where ideas are posted in their earlyform, and others are encouraged to expand or challenge them.

These digital collisionscan often be richer than physical ones, as they remove hierarchy andallow for time for reflection before a response.

The key is rhythm.Serendipity online must have structure beneath it, rituals thatinvite curiosity, not just communication.

The most forward-thinkingcompanies, often in the technology sector, recognise this. They knowthat creativity does not depend on shared walls, but on sharedwillingness.

When that willingnessbecomes culture, distance disappears.

Norm: You argue thatinnovation is not only about ideas; it's about making those ideasusable.

Which cognitive traitsor habits enable people to bridge the gap between invention andimplementation?

Can these traits bedeveloped, or are they inherent?

A.J. Invention andinnovation share a boundary but not a definition. You can be onewithout being the other, yet the most transformative people andorganisations learn to bridge both. Invention is the act of bringingsomething new into existence. It begins with curiosity, observation,and the willingness to pay attention long enough for a pattern toemerge.

It is born from noticingwhat others overlook.

Innovation, by contrast,is what happens when that idea becomes usable. It is the translationof possibility into reality, the discipline of execution andadoption.

Many brilliant inventionsnever become innovations because they remain personal discoveriesrather than shared systems.

The gap between the twocan be vast and sometimes measured in decades, even within a singleproduct or concept.

The traits that close thisgap are perseverance, adaptability, and clarity of purpose. Inventorsimagine what could be; innovators build the bridge that allows othersto walk there.

One needs wonder, theother needs patience and courage. When these qualities coexist,progress compounds.

These traits are notfixed; they can be cultivated.

In Part Two of my book, Idescribe various types of inventive minds, some driven by aesthetics,others by necessity, constraint, or chance.

What unites them isintent: the desire to create and the persistence to refine.

Anyone can become both aninventor and an innovator if they stay attentive to what they sense,remain disciplined in what they build, and are courageous enough topersevere.

Norm:Your case studiescover Silicon Valley, Germany's Mittelstand, and South Korea'sindustrial policy.

Which of these modelsdo you believe is most adaptable for emerging economies?

What cultural or policychanges would be necessary to facilitate that adaptation?

A.J. Of the three, SouthKorea’s coordinated industrial model is the most adaptable foremerging economies.

It demonstrates how anation can compound progress through clear missions, disciplinedexecution, and continuous improvement of capabilities.

Silicon Valley depends ondeep venture capital and a cultural tolerance for failure that isdifficult to replicate.

Germany’s Mittelstand,meanwhile, relies on patient family ownership and regional craftecosystems that take generations to mature.

South Korea’s pathstands out because it demonstrates how to deliberately build capacitywithin one or two decades when government, industry, and finance workin alignment.

To adapt this model,countries need focus, patience, and trust.

National priorities shouldbe few and sustained long enough to take root. Education must connectdirectly to real industries, building skills that translate intocapability.

Finance should rewardlong-term progress rather than short-term profit. And governance mustbe steady and fair, so that coordination remains collaboration, notfavouritism.

South Korea’s experiencealso reveals that competition and protection must coexist.

The state supported firmsbut tied that support to performance, pushing them towards globalmarkets rather than domestic comfort.

The result was anecosystem that learned quickly because the frontier continuallytested it.

Yet the deeper truth isthat every lasting model begins from constraint and identity. SouthKorea, Singapore, and Taiwan all converted scarcity into focus anddiscipline.

Switzerland builtreliability and quality from its neutrality and limited resources.

The Netherlands, much ofwhich is below sea level, has turned geography into ingenuity,becoming one of the world’s leaders in agri-food technology.

These nations succeedednot by copying others but by designing from their own limitationsoutward.

In that sense, the SouthKorean model is not a formula but a mindset. It represents structuralefficiency at the national scale—few missions, clear compacts, andcontinuous upgrading—held together by trust, patience, and purpose.

Norm: You've advisedgovernments on innovation policy.

What is the most commonmisconception policymakers have about fostering innovation, and howdo you help them change their mindset?

A.J. The most commonmisconception among policymakers is that innovation can be achievedthrough short-term programmes or funding cycles.

Real innovation policy isnot about projects; it is about patience. It requires a time horizonmeasured in decades, not election terms.

In Chapter Two of my book,I write that macroeconomics think in decades, while microeconomicsthink in quarters.

The same misalignment oftime appears between governments and the economies they lead.

Many policymakers alsoconfuse innovation with activity. They believe it can be engineeredthrough incentives or slogans, but innovation at the national levelis not a campaign; it is a culture of dynamic efficiency.

It means building thecapacity to evolve continuously, not only to create new technologiesbut also to continually improve the system that creates them.

If I were to advisegovernments, I would encourage them to shift from the language ofcontrol to the language of cultivation.

Innovation policy shouldbe designed like an ecosystem, where education, capital, governance,and trust mutually support one another.

Political change isinevitable, but the national innovation strategy must remain stableacross different parties. Continuity, not consensus, is what carriesnations forward.

Norm: With experiencein engineering, finance, and policy, how has this interdisciplinarybackground influenced your understanding of innovation andefficiency? Are there any fields or disciplines that are currentlyunderutilized in discussions about innovation?

A.J. My thinking has beenshaped more by curiosity than by credentials. Engineering taught meto see systems as how structure determines behaviour.

Finance revealed how thosesystems move within limits, how capital and attention flow, and howshort-term metrics can distort long-term value.

The policy offered aperspective on scale, showing how individual choices accumulate intoa collective direction.

Together they shaped ahabit of thinking in layers, always asking not only how somethingworks, but why it matters.

What I have learned isthat innovation and efficiency are not separate disciplines; they aretwo expressions of design, one exploratory, the other integrative.

True understanding comesfrom crossing boundaries rather than defending them.

The fields mostunderutilised in innovation today are those that study human meaning:philosophy, anthropology, and psychology.

We often speak oftechnology as if it exists apart from emotion and identity, butinnovation ultimately begins in the human mind and ends in humanexperience.

The next frontier will notbe faster machines, but a deeper understanding of how values,perception, and trust shape the systems we build.

Norm: How can we learnmore about you and Decoding Efficiency and Innovation: HowSystems, Minds, and Nations Shape Our Future?

A.J. DecodingEfficiency and Innovation: How Systems, Minds, and Nations Shape OurFuture is available through major booksellers and onlineplatforms, including Amazon.

Readers can also find itand share their reflections on Goodreads.

More about my work can befound at ajthoresen.com, where I plan to share occasional reflectionson innovation, systems, and human capability.

The book is part of anongoing exploration rather than a conclusion—an invitation to thinkmore deeply about how we create, organise, and progress.

Norm: As we concludeour interview, what is one idea from the book that you hope readerstake into their daily lives—whether they are CEOs, teachers, orstudents?

How can they beginapplying it starting tomorrow?

A.J. If there is one ideaI hope readers take with them, it is to pause and ask what efficiencytruly means.

We live in an age thatmoves faster than our ability to think; yet, progress withoutunderstanding is merely acceleration.

The book is, in many ways,a small civilisational map.

It begins with the modernworld of business, where leaders and organisations utilise whatalready exists, and how effectiveness complements the equation ofefficiency.

It moves through thebreakthroughs of history, revealing that innovation has many forms:it can be visionary or pragmatic, urgent or patient, born ofconstraint or care.

And it ends with nationsand technologies, artificial intelligence, quantum systems, and theinfrastructures that will define our collective future.

But beneath all of it liesa single discipline: awareness. To pause, to understand, to alignwhat we do with why it matters.

AI may transformeverything, but it cannot tell us what is worth transforming.

The next decade willreward those who combine intelligence with judgment, speed withreflection, and innovation with purpose.

So whether you are ateacher, a student, or a leader, begin by asking one simple question:Are we moving wisely, or merely moving fast?

The difference between thetwo will define the future.

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors

Connect with me on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram