I am very interested in how goals can be achieved with high quality, focused and engaged participants. Games whether psychological, narrative or social are fascinating examples of this. Games are structured activities where a participant or participants pursue a goal or outcome. Doing great work is fun and can be gamelike. Some of the best start-up moments or breakthroughs I have →…read more
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Crowdsourcing, intrinsic motivation and positive externalities are powerful forces when combined. I am currently teaching some friends about the online world. My friends use Facebook, twitter etc. but don’t know how they work as media tools. Similar to the fact that watching TV doesn’t necessarily mean one understands the dynamics and mechanics of it is a marketing, social or psychological phenomenon. →…read more A lot of systems get out of hand due to feedback loops, whereby the inputs of something end up getting amplified by a system and then increase the input again. Biology, finance and other complex system fail when a system goes haywire and self amplifies exponentially. There isn’t a good language for graphic feedback story telling outside of the systems thinking world. →…read more Checklists are not sexy, but their results are. I just finished the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. I am sold and you should be as well. Checklists save lives, make money and make life less stressful. Outperformance seems to be associated with repeat process and efficient group communication. Checklists allow for managing individual and team processes for better outcomes. The book gives →…read more Real professionals, no egos or issues, this is a team acting together for a common goal. These guys, practice, they listen and they act professionally under the most extreme of pressures without hesitation. Checklists also play a crucial role. Watch one of the most moving human dramas of last year play out. I just found this on Barry ritholtz blog. There is a great book about growing economies and finding new markets by serving the poor. It is called the Bottom of the Pyramid. I read and reviewed it in 2006 and was hooked. The thesis is that the poorest people are a huge market and they need services and will pay for them. People who live on less then $10 →…read more Excreta, turds, poo, shit, etc. are all terms for something that induces disgust in most. This response is innate and indeed wired into use at a visceral level and a key to survival. All we need to know about shit, is that we want to be away from it. Sadly many can't get away from it, they end →…read more  Leave a comment  Uncategorized  Anthropology & Marketing, Books, Making things better, Management, PropertyWiki
Stare at the red dot in the center of the figure for a minute or two. Acme Rocket Motor's shares are going to the moon because Wily E. Coyote uses them all the time to chase the Road Runner…. A lot of financial writing and prognostication is poorly done. I am not merely speaking of the outcomes, but rather the rigor of the presentation and thought behind the processes. Few escape the sobriquet, of bad punditry, →…read more Sam Savage's latest offering Flaw of Averages is a useful book and set of thought tools he calls mindles. If you have a PHd in statistics or mathematics, your job or role rarely begins and ends with you. Often your models will need to be explained to people. More importantly the places where the models could or would go wrong need →…read more Leave a comment Uncategorized Books, Finance & Economics, Management, Math, Quantitative analysis, Thinking in Pictures |
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