Foodforthought
Thought-provoking presentation on (buzzword alert!) “information shadows”, “the sensor web”, cloud computing, data collection/ processing/ visualization, local marketing + micropayments, P2P credit-card payments, social network risk evaluation… and how all this is coming together to create new products and services that feed on the cloud and/or organize it. It’s still impossible to tell just how practical this is and who will make money from this, but it’s nice food for thought. Also a comment on the skill of networking.
Gadgets that are increasingly online all the time help you multitask – but is that good? Scientists say a loud “no”, according to this New York Times article. There’s reason to be skeptical of either side of this debate, but it does recall one thing: One of Waren Buffett’s overlooked skills is that of saying no to things that would disrupt his schedule, or take time away from quiet reading and “just thinking”, as he says.
It seems obvious but Dan Pink makes it interesting in this 2009 TED talk: extrinsic incentives work great for certain situations but poorly for others of higher complexity. His other point, that there’s a “mismatch between what science knows and what business does”, is also important… but trying to bridge this gap can lead to information overload if managers try to cover all the “buzzwords” for fear of missing out on the latest (supposedly) performance-enhancing method.
Reader-suggested video in which James Surowiecki (author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”) interviews Michael Mauboussin from Legg Mason about “Think Twice”, Mauboussin’s book. It’s about mental traps we fall into and how to think better, and the video discusses many of the examples in the book. “Think Twice” has been out for a while and it’s a good “building block” read, a contrast to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”. Read them both and more.
We’ve discussed crowdsourcing and Netflix more than once. That it works for some uses better than for others is pretty clear… But Netflix has apparently messed up the database used in the original contest and that allowed some contestants to identify the actual people behind the movie choices, despite the promise of privacy. Needless to say, the FCC wasn’t too happy about it – and Netflix had to cancel its “Contest 2.0″, at least for now. Doesn’t mean that the tool doesn’t work, it just means that you have to be careful using it.
We can’t resist repeating this funny story about change – and we suspect more than a few readers will relate to it. But ultimately this is about how feeble our attempts at forecasting really are. For some things we are way too pessimistic and tend to ignore the exponential aspects of some innovation curves. For others, we are way too optimistic. The trick then is to not rely on either.
Buffett used the Thriftsville vs. Squanderville metaphor in this brilliant article back in 2003. Now it’s Charlie Munger’s turn with a parable on the wealth of a nation and how to lose it. It’s a fun read.
“If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?” Peter Drucker’s question can be applied in both the big picture and small picture – from the broadest strategic moves of your company to its tiniest daily processes. More than that: try substituting “company” in the previous sentence for “department”, “nation”, “regulatory system” and even “life”.
How does “fixing” Toyota (whatever that means) change a country’s demographics time-bomb or its still-rattling financial system? While there are interesting food-for-thought bits in these pieces, they all seem to give way too much importance to “planning a country” in a world where central planning (again, whatever that means) for a country of this size and relatively free market is ever less effective – if it ever was.
In his latest post, Tom Barrack of Colony Capital writes about some similarities between a big wave surfer and a successful investor. While we would be even more conservative in general, we agree with most the “credos”.
