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March 31, 2006
Wrong Assumptions and Best Learning
"Everybody talks about their successes, but the failures, the mistakes, are the most interesting things. Our wrong assumptions lead to the best learning." -- Alex Lee, President, OXO
That learning has made OXO, founded in 1990 and now owned by Helen of Troy Limited, one of the most respected design shops around. Thirty of its products are part of the permanent collection at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. "By bringing design back to the basics--efficient and comfortable performance--they've elevated it," says exhibitions curator Matilda McQuaid. The payoff from that elevated design: OXO has been profitable since its first year; revenue has increased steadily, at a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% since 1991, to more than $100 million in 2004. Here are a few of the company's most memorable missteps--behind-the-scenes stumbles that ultimately led to smarter, more-intuitive products.
Great Fast Company article here.
Posted by PJ at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 30, 2006
HZ: Information on Demand
HZ is an free information-on-demand email service catering to BlackBerry users (although it will work with your normal email, too). It allows someone to ping them with a specific request (from flight info, stock info, and weather reports all the way down to horoscopes and jokes) and get an automated response with the information within about 1 minute. Here’s are some examples:
If I send an email to “hz@hz.com” with the subject line “nextflights bos:lhr”, it will immediately respond back to me with an email listing all the flights that will get me from Logan (BOS) to Heathrow (LHR).
If I send an email to “hz@hz.com” with the subject line “quote msft”, it will immediately respond back to me with an email listing the current stock price for Microsoft (MSFT).
If I send an email to “hz@hz.com” with the subject line “letterman”, it will immediately respond back with Dave Letterman’s guests this evening, and last nights Top Ten List.
(For the record, when I started playing with this the other day, I just missed Airtran 445, their 9:15am flight to Heathrow; Microsoft is currently trading down 0.15 to 26.70; and number 9 on last nights Top Ten list was pretty funny)
Here is the complete list of information requests that can be made using the system (please note, for something like “hzquote@hz.com”, you can alternatively send it to “hz@hz.com”, and simply put the “quote” part in the subject line):
Quote - Get stock information
HZQUOTE@hz.com - symbol in subject
HZQUOTE+symb.symb@hz.com
Stock - Get detailed stock information
HZSTOCK@hz.com - Symbols in subject
HZSTOCK+symb.symb@hz.com
HZJOKE@hz.com - Get a joke
Weather - Get weather
HZWEATHER@hz.com – Zip code or city in subject
HZWEATHER+zip@hz.com
TAFMETAR - Get TAF and METAR info
HZTAFMETAR@hz.com - Idents in subject
HZTAFMETAR+ident@hz.com
Nextflight - Next flight between airports
HZNEXTFLIGHT@hz.com - airport:airport in subject
HZNEXTFLIGHT+airport.airport@hz.com
FlightInfo - Get current flight status info
HZFLIGHTINFO@hz.com - Airline and flight number in subject
HZFLIGHTINFO+airline.flightnum@hz.com
Address - Lookup address from phone number
HZADDRESS@hz.com - Phone number in subject
Define - Get a definition
HZDEFINE@hz.com - word in subject
Birthday - Get famous birthdays for today
HZBIRTHDAYS@hz.com
Areacode - Get info about area code
HZAREACODE@hz.com - Put area code in subject
KnockKnock - Get a knock knock joke.
HZKNOCKKNOCK@hz.com
Gasprices - Get gas prices for zipcode
HZGASPRICES@hz.com - zipcode in subject
HZGASPRICES+zipcode@hz.com
Lottery - Get lottery information
HZLOTTERY@hz.com - put state in subject
HZLOTTERY+state@hz.com
Exchangerates - Get current exchange rates
HZEXCHANGERATES@hz.com
Walmart - Get Walmart locations near zipcode
HZWALMART@hz.com - put zipcode in subject
Airport - Get airport technical information
HZAIRPORT@hz.com - put airport code in subject
HZAIRPORT+ident@hz.com
Tailnumber - Get aircraft information
HZTAILNUMBER@hz.com - put tailnumber in subject
Aviation Weather - Get aviation weather information
HZAVIATIONWEATHER@hz.com - put ident in subject
HZAVIATIONWEATHER+ident@hz.com
Starbucks - Get Starbucks locations near zipcode
HZSTARBUCKS@hz.com - put zipcode in subject
Letterman - Who is on Letterman and his TopTen list
HZLETTERMAN@hz.com
Directions - Get driving directions
HZDIRECTIONS@hz.com - put start and end in subject
Movies - Get local movie theatre information
HZMOVIES@hz.com - put zipcode in subject
HZMOVIES+zipcode@hz.com
EBay - Get Ebay auction information
HZEBAY@hz.com - put auction number in subject
HZEBAY+auctionnumber@hz.com
Earthquakes - Get earthquake information
HZEARTHQUAKES+us@hz.com - us earthquakes
HZEARTHQUAKES+world@hz.com - world wide earthquakes
Whois - Get Whois info
HZWHOIS@hz.com - domain in subject
Local - Get Google Local results
HZLOCAL@hz.com - Search term and Zipcode or city in subject
HZLOCAL+search+zip@hz.com
News - Get Google News stories
HZNEWS@hz.com - News Category in subject or message body
HZNEWS+Category@hz.com
Horoscope - Get today’s horoscope
HZHOROSCOPE+sign@hz.com
The service is completely free, and has no advertising to sift though; the company makes money though customizing this for corporate clients. It’s a nifty little resource that might save you some trouble and effort, both in the office and out on the road, and could be especially useful to folks who need to change their travel plans mid-trip.
Posted by PJ at 07:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 29, 2006
Seth Godin at Google
Seth Godin's (Wikipedia/Blog) presentation to Google, All Marketers Are Liars, is available here, and well worth watching.
Posted by PJ at 07:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 28, 2006
Eric Mankin on The 2006/2007 Video Game Wars
Eric Mankin of the Innovation and Corporate Entrepreneurship Research Center at Babson College sent out his weekly ICE Update newsletter yesterday, and it's a great one. I've posted it below. If you're not currently a subscriber to the newsletter, you can sign up by sending him an email.
Game Wars 2006 (and 7)Posted by PJ at 05:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
27 March 06
The major videogame battles coming up in 2006 and 2007 will be in consoles, the computer-like boxes that plug into your TV set. While Sony and Microsoft pursue a highly publicized product development strategy focused on massive computing power and multi-functionality, Nintendo’s approach is based on new kinds of game play.
My prediction: Nintendo will be the surprise winner in the battle between Microsoft and Sony.
Game Console Wars 2006 – three companies, two strategies
This battle has not yet begun. Both Sony and Microsoft have experienced significant start-up problems, so none of the systems are currently available at retail.
The Xbox 360’s scarcity
The Xbox 360 launched on November 22nd, 2005. Microsoft spent about $100 million promoting the product, to good effect -- PR firm Schneider & Associates found in its annual survey of most memorable product launches that the Xbox 360 was one of the top two most memorable launches of 2005.
Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t been able to produce enough consoles to meet the demand.
"[Microsoft] created demand for 5 million [units] and they delivered 607,000..." Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, in The New York Times, Feb. 06
Production of the Xbox 360 has been slowed by persistent component shortages. Microsoft won’t specify which components are causing the problem -- the device has more than 1700 components supplied by over 200 manufacturers.
As a result, the product is currently unavailable at retail. If you want to buy one, you can pay 20-40% above list price on eBay.
Sony delays the launch of Playstation 3
On 15 March, Sony announced that it was delaying the launch of its competing game console, the Playstation 3, by about six months, from April to November. Ken Kutaragi, the head of Sony’s Game Division, said the delays were caused by problems in developing copyright protection technology for Sony’s new Blu-ray DVD format.
Like the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3 will be packed with technology. A Blu-ray DVD player will be included, as will a 60 gigabyte hard drive, wireless connectivity to other Sony devices, and a camera. The Cell processing chip at the core of the console, jointly developed with IBM and Toshiba, is capable of processing at speeds more than twenty times faster than its predecessor.
A “Red-Ocean” battle of the giants
Sony and Microsoft are pursuing similar strategies in their new consoles. As Reggie Fils-Aime, Exec VP of Sales and Marketing for Nintendo, noted in February:
"Microsoft is ... trying to get you to put a PC in your living room because they are fundamentally a PC software company. Sony is trying to get you to put an entertainment hub that has Blu-ray technology because that’s important to their movie business and the rest of their entire electronics business." Reggie Fils Aime, Interviewed by Peter Rojas, Engadget.com, 20 Feb 06
Both companies are pursuing “Trojan horse” strategies – they sell their consoles at a loss with the hope of making profits by selling additional products and services that use these consoles over the next several years.
The Industry’s Stalled Growth
In the meantime, growth in videogame consoles has stalled. US revenue in the industry overall grew about six percent from 2004 to 2005, due to strong growth in handhelds, like the Nintendo DS. But sales of videogame consoles declined by 12 percent, according to market researcher NPD.
And sales of videogame software for those consoles declined as well, by six percent. Electronic Arts, the market leader in videogame publishing, has warned that its sales will fall below expectations in 2006. At the end of January, the company laid off about 5 percent of its workforce.
Many analysts expect this kind of slow performance in a “transition period” between game systems. Consumers are reluctant to buy new games or hardware when a new generation console is on the horizon.
Nintendo’s management sees the problem as a more profound one -- the videogame industry has not expanded beyond its core market of boys and young men.
“This industry can no longer rely simply on more and more young men coming of age to try gaming, and being in the … “ten to twenty year old” demographic. The fact is that that demographic is shrinking and the next cohort, their younger brothers, is even smaller.” Reggie Fils-Aime, Feb 06
Nintendo’s Revolution
Nintendo’s new Revolution game system will probably launch in June 2006. The company acknowledges that it will not be as technology-laden as either Microsoft’s or Sony’s offerings. While Sony and Microsoft consoles are designed to be multi-functional entertainment hubs, Nintendo’s Revolution will focus on game play, with a newly designed wireless controller that contains motion sensors.
Nintendo hopes that the Revolution will enable it to expand the appeal of its videogames to new customers who currently don’t own any system at all.
The console wars of 2006 will offer two competing strategies across three companies. But these battles haven’t started yet -- both Microsoft and Sony must first overcome the technical and logistical problems that are plaguing their sophisticated systems.
More Information:
1. The New York Times story on videogame sales lagging was from 6 Feb 06.
2. The Business Week article on Sony’s delay of its PS 3 system ran on 16 March 06.
3. The interview with Reggie Fils-Aime was posted on 20 Feb 06 and comes from the engadget blog.
4. I wrote about Microsofts’ Xbox 360 in an ICE Update from May 05.
5. I also did an Update in Sept 04 on the previous round of game wars, between the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.
6. The April 2006 issue of Wired Magazine, edited by Sims creator Will Wright, is devoted to an aesthetic appreciation of video games.
March 27, 2006
Guy Kawasaki on Sucking Down
Guy Kawasaki has a great blog post up about The Art of Sucking Down. He looks at how people treat those "beneath" them, and how they could get better service by treating people better. He breaks it down into nine rules: (1) Understand The Dynamic; (2) Understand Their Needs; (3) Be Important; (4) Make Them Smile; (5) Don't Try To Buy Your Way In; (6) But Do Express Gratitude On The Way Out; (7) Never Complain; (8) Rack Up The Karmic Points. His ninth point, Accept What Cannot Be Changed, is worth quoting here in its entirety:
9. Accept what cannot be changed. Sometimes things are just not meant to be: there are no more aisle seats, all the outside tables are taken, and the boss doesn't want to talk to any sales reps. If that's the case, shut up, and go on with life. Don't flatter yourself and believe that the airline is out to get you by assigning all the aisle seats to others. Life is too short to get upset by things like this.Posted by PJ at 08:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 24, 2006
Stressful Days: The White House Advance Office
There are few jobs in the world more stressful that the one done by the people in the White House Advance Office:
A presidential trip [...] is not a casual sojourn: it is a massive expedition, its every mile planned ahead, its every minute preprogrammed. The surge of cheering thousands must stop just short of a moving cocoon of security; curtained behind each VIP receiving line is the military aide with the "doomsday briefcase." Except for the military aide with the "satchel," all of the first lady's travel presents similar requirements for minute care and advance attention.
These massive expeditions are the responsibility of the White House Advance Office. How large a job is this? In seven years in office, President Clinton made some 2,500 appearances in over eight hundred foreign or domestic cities or destinations, plus some 450 appearances at public events in the Washington area. The pace of the work in the Advance Office was nothing short of breathtaking.
American President provides a fantastic overview of the White House Advance Office and the work they do.
Setup can be hectic, and lead time doesn't always exist...
I was walking into an afternoon meeting in the deputy chief of staff's office that I thought was supposed to be about the first family's vacation . . . and the deputy turns to me and says, "By the way, we are thinking of the President going to New York at nine o'clock to meet with the TWA Flight 800 families." I said, "Nine o'clock when?" And she said, "Nine o'clock tomorrow morning," about eighteen hours from now. I said, "I didn't bring my top hat, I didn't bring my cane, and I don't have any rabbits to pull out today. . . . Let's stop thinking about this; there is a 5:30 p.m. flight to Kennedy; I can get people on that flight. I can actually get something set up if the decision is made in the next hour." In the end, sometimes those things are easier than normal events, because there isn't time for people to start picking them apart and making changes.
...but the rewards can be unmatched:
"You look at each and every situation you become involved in, and try to figure out what are all the worst things that could happen in that situation, and then develop your own little mental plan as to how you would deal with each one of those problems, before you were faced with it, so that, before an event ever took place, you could try and resolve them all." The words are those of a professional, and the Advance Office is a professional place. Devoted as each staffer is, to Nixon or Reagan or Bush or Clinton, in a larger sense there lies in every one a dedication to a goal beyond mere partisanship -- a commitment to excellence. Take away the political names and labels: the commitment endures.
The very words of the Nixon Advance Manual, while Republican in origin, speak to a profession that is both within and beyond politics: "This is the advance-person's reward: the challenge of the task, and the knowledge that only a few -- but a very unique few -- will give credit where due. Those who look for public praise and gratitude should look elsewhere for their challenges. The true advance-person settles -- indeed thrives -- on a quiet kind of satisfaction, and a private kind of pride."
Thought your typical day in the office was stressful and difficult? Think again.
Posted by PJ at 07:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 23, 2006
The House That Edison Built
"At General Electric's Global Research Center, America's favorite blue chip is teaching inventors to think like businessmen--and businessmen to think like mad scientists"
Best Life magazine profiles the GRC in "Welcome To The Magic Factory," a fantastic article available here.
Posted by PJ at 08:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 22, 2006
Integrative Thinking at Rotman
I've long been impressed and fascinated by Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and the revolution that they're starting in business education. Rotman, under the leadership of Roger Martin, has refocused their education around the concept of Integrative Thinking. From the Rotman website:
The key job of a leader in today’s climate is to make valid, rather than reliable, choices out of messy, complex situations. Such decisions typically cannot be made from within narrowly-defined functional, regional or operational boundaries. Modern leadership necessitates the flexibility and creativity of Integrative Thinking.
Integrative thinkers build models rather than choose between them. Their models include consideration of numerous elements — customers, employees, competitors, capabilities, cost structures, industry evolution, and regulatory environment — not just a subset of the above. Their models capture the complicated, multi-faceted and multidirectional causal relationships between the key variables in any problem. Integrative thinkers consider the problem as a whole, rather than breaking it down and farming out the parts. Finally, they creatively resolve tensions without making costly trade-offs, turning challenges into opportunities.
At Rotman, our goal is to teach students to become skilled consumers and shapers of models. Our students learn how to audit a model’s logic in order to decide whether to use it, and if necessary, how to refine it. We teach them that when models clash, it is an opportunity to build new, more powerful models for understanding the messy world that we face. Equipped with skills in model building, our graduates are better positioned than their counterparts to diagnose the implicit models behind decisions and strategies; to assess the validity of models; to identify the ways in which the model in question conflicts with their own; and to build new models that are more powerful.
In short, the Rotman School is teaching business students to think in unique new ways, and they will be equipped to encourage new and valuable ways of thinking in their organizations.
The Rotman School’s evolving and innovative curriculum continues to undergo scrutiny and updates. We view our students as our partners in building and shaping our offerings. Our graduates leave the Rotman School assured in the knowledge that they are equipped to tackle all facets of business problems in order to find creative solutions.
This is a significant change from standard business education, where the Finance class teaches you that all problems have a financial solution, Marketing class teaches you that all problems have a Marketing solution, and on and on. Real world experience, of which many business school faculty have none, shows that problems rarely exist within a single domain, but are normally spread out across multiple business areas. Solutions require work across multiple business areas, not a slew of single-topic experts.
Four folks at Rotman, Lesya Balych-Cooper, Kirsty Duncan, Alison Kempler, and Rod Lohin, expand upon this in a proposal to the Aspen Institute:
The Context
At the Rotman School, we have significantly revised our curriculum, moving towards a program that emphasizes “integrative thinking” rather than a primarily case-based or functional approach. Future business leaders are taught how to think about the whole organization rather than the parts. In keeping with this approach, we would like to focus on the big picture and not on subsets of sustainability (e.g., specific social issues or impacts, or specific approaches such as stakeholder relations).
The Goal
Our goal will be to develop a useful model for business leadership in a sustainable global society. Such a model will provide the basis for an improved curriculum for current and future business leaders, including students, alumni and other members of the business community.
Clearly, this is no small task. To do this, we will engage senior faculty, staff and business leaders to conduct new research, hold seminars and conferences with academics and executives, and develop new curricular content and materials. These activities will be carried out leveraging our related networks and assets, including the AIC Institute for Leadership, the CCMF Center for Integrative Thinking, the Clarkson Center for Business Ethics & Board Effectiveness, and with the involvement of our students, alumni and the business community. We also look forward to learning from, and working with, the other members of the Aspen Institute’s TIP network in the development of all our important projects.
The Result
We believe that the creation of a model for business leadership in a sustainable global society is a key opportunity for influencing management education and the way business is conducted.
Success will be measured by products, profile and impact. As we engage in the process, there would be a number of possible interim products: research and discussion papers, published papers, reports from conferences and seminars, curriculum recommendations and changes, and new curricular content and materials for current students and business executives. We would also seek to build profile for these issues with our internal and external marketplaces.
Ultimately, impact is everything. The project’s success would not only be determined by the development of a new conceptual model, but also by the use of that model in our curriculum and by current and future business leaders who come into contact with Rotman. Beyond Rotman, we will look for our impact on other schools and business leaders more broadly through the Aspen TIP coalition and by the number of references to our publications and ideas in journals.
For more information on Rotman and the work being done there, they publish Rotman magazine, similar to the Harvard Business Review. Back issues can be downloaded from their website, unlike HBR!
Posted by PJ at 08:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 21, 2006
Managing The Trusty Ol' Email InBox
43Folders is doing a great series on managing your email inbox. The series, Inbox Zero, covers topics liks "Five Sneaky Email Cheats," "Where Filters Will and Won't Help," "Delete, Delete, Delete," (gee, I'm not sure what that one might be about), "Schedule Email Dashes" and more.
Here's an excerpt from the series introduction:
Clearly, the problem of email overload is taking a toll on all our time, productivity, and sanity, mainly because most of us lack a cohesive system for processing our messages and converting them into appropriate actions as quickly as possible.
So, over the next few days, I’ll be sharing detailed tips — some old and some new — on how I deal with email. Like most stuff here, there’s no guarantee that this will be any kind of panacea for you. Each of our needs and challenges differ, and there’s no one correct way to do practically anything. As ever, some of this will be more or less useful for you, and you should choose your own major changes with care and mindfulness.
Having said that, I really believe that there is a common set of errors and problems that many of us share — including a handful of terrible habits that have been reinforced by the most popular email programs.
I hope you’ll find some ideas that help you get a handle on your email issues and might improve the place that email has in your life.
Oh, and in case you're wondering: Mine is completely empty!
Posted by PJ at 07:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 20, 2006
An Economic Shift is Underway
An interesting shift is taking place, and it wasn't until I was surfing Craigslist Boston that I realized it. I came across this ad this morning (in case it has expired, I PDF'd it and you can get it here.) Here's the gist of it:
Hi, My name is Rathin Dey.
I have more than 4 years of experience in Internet Marketing, Database building and Web-site Updating for companies in USA.
I am looking for a job @ $5/hr wage rate.
I have experiences in the following fields :
[list]
I am interested in both Part-time & Full Time work.
If you have any kind of work which I could do from my office in India, please get back to me at the contact information given below :
Up until now, most people have thought of (cue Imperial Death March music) outsourcing as when WE go to THEM. But now, thanks to the growth of free, global communications platforms (like Craigslist) and global languages (like, increasingly, English), that dynamic is changing. We now have an increasingly highly-skilled workforce around the world, capable and willing to do jobs that we want done but don't really care who does them, so long as they are done well.
And now, they have a way of coming to us. And that's the key.
For a Dell or an IBM or a Ernst & Young to outsource to India required large scale engagements. Dell is aiming for 20,000 employees in India. Wal-Mart is aiming for 150,000 for it's China operations. These are large scale projects. But what about smaller ones? Software dev that only needs a couple dozen people? Or DB management that requires a half-dozen? Those jobs stayed in the US because the effort to find the right people in a foreign country outweighed the benefits of moving it offshore.
No more. Now, a coder in Bangalore can upload his resume to a Craigslist or a Monster or something else just as easily as can a coder in Boston or Baltimore or Burbank. And if all things are equal, and they're all qualified, it makes a lot more sense to go with the employee who wants the work for $5/hour as opposed to the employee who demands or expects the work for $50/hour.
On behalf of Rathin Dey and I, welcome to the next stage of Globalization.
Posted by PJ at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 17, 2006
Project Origami
KUOW, Seattle's public radio station, has done a fantastic piece on Microsoft's Project Origami. The interview, with Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times, can be downloaded here.
For weeks, the internet buzzed with news, rumor, and speculation about something from Microsoft called Project Origami. While people were confident that it was not a paper folding program, no one knew quite what it would be. Now that it's been revealed, some folks are still not sure what it means. The product is a new category of computer called the Ultra Mobile PC, a sort of hybrid of laptop, PDA, and iPod. Will it change the way we use technology or will it be a gadget without a home? We'll unfold Origami with the reporters who cover Microsoft for the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.Posted by PJ at 08:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 16, 2006
From Acceptance Letters to iTunes
The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, MA, has done away with the college acceptance letter, and replaced it with a podcast from iTunes. From their Wired Campus blog:
Pity the poor college acceptance letter. Sure, it's timeless and classy, but it's slowly losing ground to its more convenient little sibling, the e-mail announcement. And now, thanks to an odd new plan at Fitchburg State College, the old-fashioned letter will also have to compete with the academic world's tech obsession du jour -- the podcast.Posted by PJ at 08:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This month, more than 1,000 students accepted to the college will receive e-mail messages that direct them to iTunes, Apple's popular music store. There, the students will find a podcast in which Robert V. Antonucci, the college's president, lets them know that they've made the cut.
March 15, 2006
Links
Yeah, they're as much marketing as they are science and data. And yeah, Raindrop hasn't been updated in ages. But I've gotten hooked on blogs from R&D labs. Here are three to start with:
From Edison's Desk (GE Global Research Center)
Raindrop (Microsoft Social Computing Group)
PlayOn (Xerox PARC)
Posted by PJ at 07:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 14, 2006
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Flow
"I... have a naive trust in the universe –– that at some level it all makes sense, and we can get glimpses of that sense if we try."
I've started reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, and it's really fantastic. I've been trying to sum it up in a blog-sized bit and failing, so don't mind me while I take directly from Wikipedia:
As Csikszentmihalyi sees it, there are components of an experience of flow that can be specifically enumerated; he presents eight:
1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernable).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time - our subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is not too easy or too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
Not all of these components are needed for flow to be experienced.
Csikszentmihalyi suggests several ways in which a group could work together so that each individual member could achieve flow. The characteristics of such a group include:
1. Creative spatial arrangements: Chairs, pin walls, charts, however no tables, therefore primarily work in standing and moving.
2. Playground design: Charts for information inputs, flow graphs, project summary, craziness (here also craziness has a place), safe place (here all may say what is otherwise only thought), result wall, open topics
3. Parallel, organized working
4. Target group focus
5. Advancement of existing one (prototyping)
6. Efficiency increase by visualization
7. Difference of the participants is a chance
For more info:
"The Art of Work" (Fast Company, August 2005)
Faculty Page, Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University
Quality of Life Research Center at CGU
Brain Channels Thinker of the Year profile (2000)
American Psychological Association article (July 1998)
Posted by PJ at 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 10, 2006
Entrepreneurial Proverbs
Marc Hedlund over at O'Reilly Radar as posted a fantastic set of "entrepreneurial proverbs" based around five areas: Starting ("Losing sucks"), The Idea ("If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keep its secrets from you"), People ("Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into one"), Product ("Cool ideas are useless without great needs"), and Money ("No means maybe and yes means maybe").
Posted by PJ at 05:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackMarch 09, 2006
FORTUNE's History of the Cube
It wasn't born evil. Heck, it wasn't even born square. But evil and square are exactly what most people think of when the think of cubicle dwelling:
Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity."Posted by PJ at 01:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence.
March 08, 2006
Costly Meetings
Jeff Phillips over at Working Smarter had a brilliant entry today on how much money an average company wastes in meetings:
The article states that a recent survey found that an average employee spends 5.6 hours in meetings each week. Throw in prep time and wrapup time and that number probably extends to almost 8 hours a week. And frankly, in my experience, that number is low. But for the sake of argument let's use 8 hours as a baseline. Let's postulate that an average worker costs a business in salary and overhead approximately $100,000 per year fully loaded. This means the average person spends approximately 400 hours (50 weeks * 8 hours per week) in meetings. That cost is approximately $22,500 for the fully loaded worker. Note that in an average work year (say 2000 hours) almost one fifth is in meetings. In a medium sized firm of 100 people, over 400,000 hours of time is spent in meetings based on this math.Posted by PJ at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
For this investment, are we getting any benefits? If in an average sized business I wanted to commit 400,000 hours of personnel effort, I'd have to provide a strong rationale for how that time would be used and what the benefits would be. But since we use this time in small units scattered across the organization, no one bears the responsibility to determine what benefits the company received from this investment.
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Meetings are one of the few activities where a person can require the participation and attendance of others without a real justification or value proposition. It has become almost de riguer to attend a meeting once invited, so few people miss a meeting they've been invited to, even if there's little or no value for them. The cost of these meetings is astronomical and the benefit in many cases unproven or non-existent.
Internet Marketing At Its Best
Musicians looking for a break are increasingly turning away from conventional forms of promotion and toward the more populist venue of the Internet. MP3 blogs, Web-based music magazines, and online record stores all offer small-time bands a chance to reach a wider audience.
Here's the timeline of how one group, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! (aka, Alec Ounsworth, Lee Sargent, Robbie Guertin, Tyler Sargent, and Sean Greenhalgh) got noticed:
June 9: Dan Bierne writes about the band on his MP3 blog.
June 14: Pitchfork Media posts a review of the song "In This Home On Ice."
June 15: Blogger Gothamist posts an interview with the band.
June 20: Blogger Stereogum announces the band's show at the Knitting Factory.
June 21: Gothamist reports that David Bowie was in the audience at the Knitting Factory show.
June 22: Pitchfork posts one of a slew of reviews of Clap's first album.
Now? They're being named to "Best Of" lists left and right, they played Letterman at the end of last week, and their CD has jumped into the Top 100 sales list at CDNow.
