Author: Will

Quotes from Thomas Edision

I’m not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

I am glad that the eight-hour day had not been invented when I was a young man. If my life had been made up of eight-hour days, I do not believe I could have accomplished a great deal.

It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought. That is tragically true. Some of us think, more of us think we think and most of us don’t even think of thinking.

Everything comes to those who hustle while he waits.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!

The reason most people do not recognize opportunity is that it usually goes around wearing overalls, looking like hard work.

Results? Why man, I have gotten a lot of results, I know 50,000 things that won’t work.

The end of the suburbs and other myths

Perhaps the biggest myth is that Americans are moving to cities in droves. Yes, Americans have been departing sparsely populated rural areas for metropolitan areas, which contain urban “cores” surrounded by suburbs. But that’s not the same thing as moving to cities. While there is definitely a cultural shift among young people toward urban lifestyles—since many are putting off marriage and kids—most young people simply aren’t moving at all.

via The End of the Suburbs and Four Other American Migration Myths – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

Strategy Prototyping

I’ve been spending a lot of time working on both prototyping and strategy lately. Prototyping has been accepted as an iterative activity for a while now. And, with agile development, the same is true- we have been focusing on how to quickly we can iterate when we develop products in production as well.

But, I was thinking about strategy. With strategy we sometimes think of it more as a waterfall process. Identify what you are building a strategy for, gather relevant facts, have meetings, focus for a period of time (hours, days, sometimes weeks) and voila, come out with the strategy. But, the problem is that in our modern hyper-dynamic business world – strategy should look more like prototyping as well. You have assumptions. They need to be tracked and responded to in a dynamic way.

Then I found this HBR article about the thing I was living. Here’s a key quote:

A strategic possibility — a set of answers to the five key questions of strategy (what is our winning aspiration, where will we play, how will we win, what capabilities must we have, and what management systems are required) — is, in fact, a prototype. At first, it is a conceptual prototype. Strategy can be thought of as moving from the conceptual realm to the concrete realm through the process of iterative prototyping.

Strategy Is Iterative Prototyping – Roger Martin – Harvard Business Review.

Think of strategy itself as a process of assumptions we believe to be true. And, include a prototyping process by which the assumptions are tested and retested as the environment changes; and as you discover some of your assumptions were wrong.

 

History of icons

User interface icons help us operate technology. Some are obvious; others seem illogical. One survived a near-death experience, one involves a Danish king, and others depict objects on their way to becoming relics. Here’s a brief history of the lines and circles we find on our computers, on our phones, and in our software. 

Signs of the Times – Harvard Business Review.

Elio

Pretty cool for running around town (and to work and back). Would be great to have an all electric version.

The Fantastic Mr Feynman

Screen Shot 2013-08-11 at 8.36.01 PM

The Fantastic Mr Feynman – YouTube.

YouTube has a free documentary about Richard Feynman. It was good, I recommend it. Back in 2005 I read several of the books available at the time on Feynman. The documentary gave a good summary.

Below are some Feynman quotes. 

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

If books are your thing – the Feynman book I would recommend starting with would be: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑