April 2012
1 post
The Cognitive Limit of Organizations
The vertical axis of this slide represents the total stock of information in the world. The horizontal axis represents time.
In the early days, life was simple. We did important things like make spears and arrowheads. The amount of knowledge needed to make these items, however, was small enough that a single person could master their production. There was no need for a large division of labor...
February 2012
3 posts
Do Things, Tell People.
These are the only things you need to do to be successful*. You can get away with just doing one of the two, but that’s rare, and usually someone else is doing the other part for you.
If you you don’t have any marketable skills, learn some. It’s the future. We have Khan Academy and Wikipedia and Codecademy and almost the entire world’s collective knowledge at your...
The Single Sentence Email Project
We all know we spend way too much time in email: word-smithing defensively so as not to offend, taking extraordinary effort to ensure we are clear, ensuring each carefully crafted bit of our message cannot be misconstrued.
I thought the best solution is to simply limit the volume of email. Talk face to face when possible. Of course, this has its own drawbacks.
Here’s another:
If you’re...
The Rise of the New Groupthink
I totally agree.
SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
But there’s a problem with...
January 2012
1 post
Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles to Good Design
While in San Francisco, I paid a visit to the SFMOMA which had an exhibition on Dieter Ram. Beautiful products. Look closely and one can see his subtle, powerful, and timeless principles applied.
Good design is innovative - The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design...
November 2011
1 post
1 tag
If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong: The...
To summarize these results:
The average players are working just as many hours as the elite players (around 50 hours a week spent on music),
but they’re not dedicating these hours to the right type of work (spending almost 3 times less hours than the elites on crucial deliberate practice),
and furthermore, they spread this work haphazardly throughout the day. So even though they’re not doing...
October 2011
4 posts
“Profit in a business is like gas in a car. You don’t want to run out of...”
– Tim O’Reilly
Your Number One Priority
I think living healthier is the single biggest accelerator we could apply to improving society today. But here I am, falling prey to the same excuses – too much work, not enough time, too tired, too hard, tomorrow.
So I made a decision. I decided to re-prioritise.
For the last month, my number one priority every single day has been to exercise. I have done this to the exclusion of meetings,...
1 tag
Questions I Ask When Reviewing a Design
I’ve been thinking more about how I review a design… in no particular order, and I don’t ask all of them every time.
What does it say?
What does it mean?
Is what it says and what it means the same thing?
Do we want that?
Why do we need to say that here?
If you stopped reading here, what’s the message?
What’s the take away after 8 seconds?
How does this make you feel?
What’s down below?
How...
Hire For The Ability To Get Things Done
Inability to get things done may manifest itself in multiple ways including: Lack of urgency. Used to a large company environment where its OK if things take a few weeks longer.
Easily distracted. Heavy procrastinator.
Lazy / doesn’t work hard. Some very smart people are basically lazy. Don’t tolerate this.
Starts but never finishes things.
Lack of follow through – makes commitments but...
September 2011
1 post
Jobs and HP
When he was in eighth grade, Steve Jobs decided to build a frequency counter for a school project and needed parts. Someone suggested that he call Bill Hewlett. Finding a William Hewlett in the telephone book, the 12-year-old Jobs called and asked, “Is this the Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard?” “Yes,” said Bill. Jobs made his request. Bill spent some time talking to him about his project....
August 2011
3 posts
Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER
SCAMPER is a technique you can use to spark your creativity and help you overcome any challenge you may be facing. In essence, SCAMPER is a general-purpose checklist with idea-spurring questions — which is both easy to use and surprisingly powerful. It was created by Bob Eberle in the early 70s, and it definitely stood the test of time.
SCAMPER is based on the notion that everything new is a...
3 tags
How LinkedIn used Node.js and HTML5 to build a...
This morning, LinkedIn launched its gorgeously overhauled mobile app. We’ve already told you all about the new features, but for developers, the most exciting part is what’s going on under the hood.
The app is two to 10 times faster on the client side than its predecessor, and on the server side, it’s using a fraction of the resources, thanks to a switch from Ruby on Rails to Node.js, a...
2 tags
On Creativity
From Wanken:
John Jay of Wieden + Kennedy was recently named one of the most creative business people in 2011 by Fast Company. His position as W+K’s executive creative director takes him between all of the W+K offices in an effort to breed those cultures into the main headquarters in Portland.
In this video John Jay talks about his creative process. He takes a step back and approaches his...
July 2011
1 post
What Happens to User Experience in a Minimum...
If you want to be lean, the idea of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is popular these days. This is where you build something with as little as possible so you can learn and figure out if you’re headed in the right direction or not. Something that comes up quite a bit when rapidly iterating taking a concept to a production is what features to leave out and how can leave holes in user...
June 2011
2 posts
Iterating an Idea vs. Building a Monumental...
During an internship with Maxis, the creators of SimCity and the Sims, designer and programmer, Chaim Gingold engaged in some high-tech forensics and gained insights on innovation, prototyping, and factors that lead to successful projects.
Maxis was in the thick of The Sims Online, and the other intern and I were placed in the hallway outside of Will’s office, next to the Elvis shrine, on...
1 tag
Why is Jeff Bezos Not Scared of Failure?
During an Amazon shareholders meeting earlier this week, the following question was asked as to whether or not the company is being innovative and taking enough risk:
If it’s still Amazon’s philosophy to make bold bets, I would expect that maybe some of them wouldn’t work out, but I am just not seeing that. So, my question is where are the losers?
Founder, president, and CEO, Jeff Bezos had a...
May 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Are You Solving the Wrong Problem?
In the late 1950s, a British industrialist named Henry Kremer created a prize for an airplane powered only by the pilot’s own body. Teams entered and there was certainly no shortage of innovative construction techniques and aerodynamic designed. However, after more than a decade there as no winner.
Then an engineer by the name of Paul MacCready came along.
Paul realized that what we needed...
Innovation in Unlikely Pairings
We often hear about how innovation is often not a brand new idea or something that arrives in an “Ah-Ha!” moment. Rather it’s combining things we already know in new or different ways. Here’s an example of such an innovation…
This is a solar-powered trash can my friend across in Philly (we have some in Austin, too).
My first thought was “why would you...
Business Class: A Fresh Way to Look at Freemium
I’m sure most of you know Freemium is a business model where a basic product or service is offering is free, but charges money for premium for advanced features or functionality. You probably use such products all the time. Pandora, Hulu, Evernote, SpiceWorks, SurveyMonkey, as well as 40% of Apple App Store games incorporate this business model, making it extremely popular in the online and...
April 2011
1 post
The Top Idea in Your Mind
By now, we know “Eureka!” moments are pretty much just as real as the tooth fairy and that it’s largely environmental factors that affect the cultivation of great ideas. As such, one of the best things an organization can do is to invest in building an environment where ideas can take root and flourish.
This got me thinking about what I can do to be more creative and cultivate...
January 2011
1 post
1 tag
Working Better: How to Carve Out Time to Think
A few decades ago, career paths were more linear. A good company boy or girl could work at the same place for decades, climbing up the corporate ladder one promotion at a time. These days, not so much. In an economy in which people change jobs frequently and a time when many of us are creatively self-employed, you really have to think through your next moves. Of course, finding quiet time...
October 2010
3 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Why Companies Should Insist that Employees Take...
When Sara Mednick, a former Harvard researcher, gave her subjects a memory challenge, she allowed half of them to take a 60 to 90 minute nap. The nappers dramatically outperformed the non-nappers. In another study, Mednick had subjects practice a visual task at four intervals over the course of a day. Those who took a 30 minute nap after the second session sustained their performance all day...
September 2010
4 posts
What Ever Happened to Programming
I want to make things, not just glue things together. When people ask me what I like about my job, I always say the same thing: that its the thrill of starting with nothing and making something. That, for me, is the essence of programming, and it hurts that there isn’t as much of it about as there used to be.
The Collapse of Complex Business Models
Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.
Clay Shirky
Cultivate Teams, Not Ideas
Execution isn’t merely a multiplier. It’s far more powerful. How your team executes has the power to transform your idea from gold into lead, or from lead into gold…
If I had to point to the one thing that made our project successful, it was not the idea behind it, our internet fame, the tools we chose, or the funding we had (precious little, for the record).
It was our...
1 tag
A Look at the Design Process of Aviation Innovator...
Quick prototypes. Small teams. No bureaucracy. No lengthy documentation. Limited meetings. A Skunk Works approach to design. They were all essential to Clarence (“Kelly”) Johnson’s process for creating some of the most remarkable planes of the past century, including the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird [SvN]. Johnson was once described by Time Magazine as perhaps the most successful aviation innovator...
February 2010
1 post
2 tags
We’re the Stupid Ones: Our Failure as Developers
When folks need an elevator, we should give them an elevator, not an airplane. We’ve been giving them airplanes for 30 years, and then laughing at them for being too stupid to fly them right.
Ed Finkler
July 2009
1 post
1 tag
NYT: And the Pursuit of Happiness / Can Do →
Benjamin Franklin was a genius, one of the great inventors of this country. What did he do? Well everything…
June 2008
1 post
1 tag
“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”
– Tim O’Reilly