I’ve often struggled with the notion of definitions when working in organizations. On the one hand, too many of us hide our ignorance and uncertainty behind a wall of jargon and terminology. Terms fall in and out of favor and their relationship to the underlying real world is often less important than their value from a [...]
Tagged Knowledge work, OrganizationAnother gem from Richard Feynman. In this clip he uses the game of chess to illustrate how scientists go from making observations about the world to better and better theories that account for the observations. There’s a lot of depth in this simple analogy and it’s well worth dedicating some of your own brain cycles [...]
Tagged ThinkingSome details about what my partner in collaboration, David Friedman, and I have been up to lately. For the past few months, my colleague Jim McGee and I have been hard at work on a project we’ve named Collaborating Minds. It will be an online problem-solving community — with a unique membership recruiting strategy. The [...]
Tagged collaborationFinally had a chance to read a very interesting essay in the Journal of Cell Science titled "The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research." In the wondrous ways of the web, this little gem from 2008 found its way into my life by way of a blog post by Matthew Cornell in January of this [...]
By way of my friend and colleague Espen Andersen. I’ve found that I’ve already used this story in several conversations and that I find myself mulling it over regularly in recent days. The Edge question this year is "How has the Internet changed the way you think?". The result is eminently readable – my favorite [...]
Tagged ThinkingHere’s a pointer to an excellent interview with Alan Kay. As always, Alan shares some deep insights about technology innovation and the willingness to take on risk (he’s not confident in the ability of most organizations to tolerate risk no matter how small the level of funding involved). Anyone with an interest in the continuing [...]
Tagged Alan Kay, Innovation, SmalltalkTech Support Cheat Sheet Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:00:00 GMT There’s a striking amount of wisdom and good advice packed into this flowchart. It’s not about the body of knowledge stored away in your head. It’s about a robust strategy for generating and testing ideas that are likely to be productive. What puzzles [...]
Tagged Knowledge workIt’s no secret that I’m a fan of curiosity. Wanting to know how things work or what’s around the next corner is fundamental to being human. I’ve come across two video clips that illustrate the power of this far better than I can. The first is a clip by the late Nobel prize winning physicist [...]
Tagged Bassler, curiosity, Feynman, TEDI found this wonderful piece from the late Isaac Asimov in Dan Ariely’s excellent Predictably Irrational blog. Here is what Asimov had to say about believing in data… "Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? – in ancient astronauts? – in the Bermuda triangle? – in life after [...]
Tagged evidence1000 Times Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:00:00 GMT We live in complicated times. We’re all trying to make sense of what is going on. That sense making isn’t made any easier by lazy writing and thinking. Actually, I don’t think this is a matter of deliberate efforts to mislead so much as it represents [...]
Tagged BI
