Category Archives: Inspiration

Thngs that inspire me and have made an impression upon me in some way

Visualizing Earth Day

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Not to forget that today is Earth Day, I’m reminded of being exposed to Chris Jordan‘s photographic art during a flight I took, I think, last year. His images stuck with me, and several seem very fitting to draw your attention to today:

Of course, there are many more works by Mr. Jordan, and I encourage you to experience them–at least online, if not in person.

The Myths of Innovation

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Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Innovation is a refreshingly unpretentious read–one that I accomplished straightaway in an afternoon (off).

Here are my takeaways–all quotes are Scott’s unless explicitly noted otherwise:

  • Innovation as an accumulation of smaller insights…connecting pieces…realizing picture (puzzle); therefore, take action to enable insights to occur more freely.
  • Work passionately and take breaks to let the mind wander and the allow the subconscious to work on our behalf.
  • Epiphany as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems
  • “It is an achievement to find a great idea, but it is a greater one to successfully use it to improve the world.”
  • “The secret tragedy of innovators is that their desire to improve the world is rarely matched by support from the people they hope to help.”
  • “The greater the potential of an idea, the harder it is to find anyone willing to try it.”
  • “Innovative idea are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel.”
  • Is your desire to find new ideas to conquer greater than your desire to protect the success you already have?
  • “Wise innovators–driven by passion more than ego–initiate partnerships, collaborations, and humble studies of the past, raising their odds against the timeless challenges of innovation.”
  • Imagination > Knowledge > Information
  • I’ve put knowledge above information for some time know, but Albert Einstein’s belief that “imagination is more important than knowledge” (stated on page 83) captured my attention.
  • How can content-centric applications do a better job of capturing the user’s imagination, let alone increate the knowledge derivative?
  • “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” -Linus Pauling
  • Does this sound like your team? “Ideas flow between people easily and in large volumes. Conversations are vibrant with questions and suggestions, prototypes and demos happen regularly, and people commit to finding and fighting for good ideas.” If not, why?
    • Actually commit reminds me of something U2 bassist Adam Clayton said while being interviewed on the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb DVD. His comments are captured here, although I recall them to be slightly different on the DVD.
    • A group of people, a team or a band, has to commit before any real business can take place. Too often I see groups form for one reason or another without mutual commitment, and typically it’s just a matter of time until they disband, leaving some frustrated and others numb.
  • “Successful innovators compare their ambitions to their capital.”
  • “Sorting out the meaning and impact of innovations is more complex than the task of making the innovations themselves.”
    • “What problems does this innovation solve? Whose problems are they?”
    • “What problems does this innovation create? Whose problems are they?”

    Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

    Reach beyond existing demand

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    I just finished reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, and it’s caused me to reevaluate the potential impact of ideas as related to content, its management and the value derived from both.

    While I will post more specific thoughts on Blue Ocean Strategy shortly, I thought it worth quoting the authors’ challenge of two conventional strategy practices: focusing on existing customers and driving for finer segmentation to accommodate buyer differences:

    To maximize the size of their blue oceans, companies need to take a reverse course. Instead of concentrating on customers, they need to look at noncustomers. And instead of focusing on customer differences, they need to build on powerful commonalities in what buyers value. That allows companies to reach beyond existing demand to unlock a new mass of customers that did not exist before.

    Do you struggle to maintain content, whether it be documents, pictures, videos, etc. at home or at work, yet you don’t see the point of a content management system? What makes you a noncustomer?

    Given ECM or content management in general, what do you value? Say it’s time. How could adopting ECM save you time or multiply your time to focus on other priorities? If you’ve already adopted ECM, how could your system demonstrate it values your time more? Where is your system costing you time rather than valuing it?

    Is ECM so unique as to only apply to an enterprise–whatever that means? If you have ECM deployed at work, what do you wish you could leverage at home? Is working with content outside the enterprise all that different from features and functionality you’ve come to rely on at work? What differences, if any, are perceived, not real? Why?

    Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

    A fire has started, indeed

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    I just finished watching Charlie Rose’s interview of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos on PBS. Most of the conversation focused on Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device, an amazing new device that embodies a vision to improve the act of reading. Kindle was the chosen product name specifically because it means to start a fire. The creative fires surrounding authoring, publishing and reading are certainly stoked by the arrival of this device.

    Charlie Rose has got to be one of the best connected persons in the world.

    Part of his paradigm–appropriate given his profession–is that questions are important. So, Charlie asked Jeff what question the Kindle seeks to answer. Jeff replied something as follows: “How can the act of reading be improved? How can a the essence of a book be improved?”

    Q: What is the most important aspect of a book? A: It disappears. That is, when you start to read a long form, well written text, you enter the world of the author. Paper and ink fade away; the book disappears.

    Jeff went on to say that you “can’t ‘out book’ a book.” There are aspects of books that cannot be improved upon. So Kindle doesn’t attempt to outshine such qualities of books but rather focuses on what physical books cannot do.

    Nearly 90,000 books today can be delivered to Kindle, which can store up to 200 books, yet weighs less than the average book at slightly more than 10 ounces. I probably own more books than I can pack into a Kindle, but I assure you that I can’t carry my personal library either! :-)

    Jeff expects devices like Kindle to become platforms for experimentation, and he very quickly remarked that most experiments will fail. However, experimentation benefits everyone by uncovering the unforeseen challenges, creating new choices, lowering access barriers, etc.

    I appreciate that Kindle has been under development for the past three years. Kindle represents a bet by Amazon’s leadership that all of the required technology would be commercially available in time for today’s public launch (e.g. the paper-like display, 10 years in the lab). It’s a fine example of calculating risk-taking as well as, what appears to be the reasonable expectation of a rewarding commercial future.