Ahead of the Curve

Fascinating talk by the author of the Rational Optimist.

Key takeaway:

"What's relevant to society is how well people are communicating their ideas and how well they're cooperating, not how clever the individuals are."

To use a musical analogy, Apple's specialty is the remix. It curates the best ideas bubbling up around the tech world and makes them its own. It's also a great fixer, improving on everything that's wrong with other similar products on the shelves.

Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying:

"Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

The above quote represents a core piece of their strategy, none of the products they've released have been new to the public, they've just been better and different versions of what came before.

The concept of intelligent failure makes a difference here. Sitkin's criteria for intelligent failures are:

• They are carefully planned, so that when things go wrong you know why
• They are genuinely uncertain, so the outcome cannot be known ahead of time
• They are modest in scale, so that a catastrophe does not result
• They are managed quickly, so that not too much time elapses between outcome and interpretation
• Something about what is learned is familiar enough to inform other parts of the business.
• Underlying assumptions are explicitly declared
• These can be tested at specific checkpoints, identified in advance, since planned results may not be equivalent to outcomes.

From Sim Sitkin's Learning through failure: The strategy of small losses

Download PDF here --> http://www.box.net/shared/njixay8y94

Well worth reading if you're a retailer!

“ The connected topics of innovation and leadership, are a bit like pornography in the sense that those who consume it the most, are just not constitutionally equipped to perform the acts described in the literature. But they love reading about the stuff they can’t and won’t do. — Victor Newman

>via johntropea.tumblr.com

Great video the design elements behind the Hyperfuse (which Celtics PG Rajon Rondo is wearing in the Finals right now).

via @kiwiquick