Management Lessons from Best Jokes

It's interesting enough to learn that a 'case' story often told in management sessions is derived from a joke. Or probably seen as the other way around that the case is considered as (just) a joke ?. The lessons learned from the story, I would suppose, are about getting to the point, understanding what is actually the problem to come up with the real solution. A classical case about doing the right things versus doing things right.

It is rated as Top Joke in Canada by the University of Hertfordshire, UK in a research project http://www.laughlab.co.uk/ to find the best jokes in the world. Here is the story.

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300°C.

The Russians used a pencil.