Monthly Archive for November, 2008

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Ideas that change the world

Published on 5 November, 2008 in Innovation. Closed Tags: , , , .

Einstein’s famous E = mc2 was expressed in a mere three pages, yet the concept that mass is merely concentrated energy has changed the world. Illnesses being caused by bacteria and viruses is a very recent concept, yet again it is now taken as a given. University, in my experience, is more about learning a relatively small number of key concepts that are able to apply across contexts than it is about learning piles of useless and quickly forgotten formulae and rules.

What are the ideas that have changed your mind?

The Financial Times has identified a number of significant books in their shortlist:

  • The Long Tail , by Chris Anderson
    Mass market economics gives advantage to those products and services that are in high demand, but as borders come down and the global village shrinks, we are seeing parts of the market able to be serviced that were previously too small. Exemplar: Amazon can stock millions of books that an ordinary bookstore – even one the size of Borders – cannot stock because the proportion of the market is too small in a geographically limited market.
  • Small Giants , by Bo Burlingham
    Profitability for a company will be maximised when that firm focuses upon being excellent at what it does best, rather than trying to grow until the diseconomies of scale are unavoidable.
  • The Wal-Mart Effect , by Charles Fishman
    Some companies create market forces as much as being subject to them and other insights available by speaking directly with former executives.
  • China Shakes the World , by James Kynge
    The growth of China is directly impacting the lives of much of the world. As it grows, we are seeing strengths and weaknesses evolve. One thing is certain: There is even more to come!
  • The Box , by Marc Levinson
    Container ships criss-cross the world with the products of globalisation. Entrepreneur Malcom McLean (1914-2001) created the container concept, and made possible the global goods trade system as we know it today. This guy bought a truck for $120 in 1934 but the company ended up with 1770 trucks; he sold his interest for $25,000,000 in 1955. But it was his next venture where he really revolutionised things: Containerisation allowed him to cut the stevedoring charges from $5.83/ton down to just 16c/ton!!! The increasing move towards mechanisation made his innovation even more successful. His containers won patent protection, but then he kept a step ahead of Apple’s mistakes by granting the International Standards Organisation a royalty free lease because he realised that industry grown was more powerful than patent protection. By 1969 – just 14 years after he had exited the trucking business – he sold his interest for $160,000,000. The company is now part of Mærsk.

There are many amazing concepts available today. One of the most important in my mind is that structuring access to information is as important or more important today than the information itself; that the immense quantity of information available to us simultaneously democratises information and increases the value of brands as a way of streamlining our information filtering system. But that’s why I usually read the Tom Peters Wire Service …

Daniel Smith

New Theme

Published on 3 November, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: .

We’ve changed the theme on The Genius Project ‘s blog.  Hopefully it makes things more user-friendly for our readers.  If you’re viewing this on an RSS feed, check us out as we were meant to be viewed .

Genius as made, not born

Published on 3 November, 2008 in child genius. Closed Tags: , , , , .

There was a place in California known as the ‘Repository for Germinal Choice ‘.  From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, they offered a place where women could be artificially inseminated by people of genius IQ levels.  It was dubbed the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by media reports, despite only a single Nobel Prizewinner was actually known to have contributed.

Even allowing that only 50% of the genes passed on were from a genius, the Repository did not produce geniuses at any kind of documented rate.  It did produce people who felt a void from never knowing their father, as David Plotz found in his 2005 book, The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank .

Claretta Yvonne Dupree 2007. The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. Review of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by David Plotz. New York: Random House, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-6124-5; 262 PAGES, HARDCOVER, $24.95 (USA), $34.95 (CANADA). Ethics & Medicine 23, no. 1 (April 1): 63-64.  Available from Proquest.com .

Of course, there were a number of structural problems with the operation of the sperm bank (self-selected donors, the donors of dubious giftedness…), but as other research has correlated, the fundamental problem was that genius is not something that happens to infants at the moment of conception.  Genius – particularly in any societally meaningful way – is largely something that happens far further in the future than that… and continuously along the genius’ life.  This will be a focus for a number of my upcoming posts on this blog.

If this is the case – and research suggests that it is – then the influence of parents on their children cannot be understated, and what the parents consistantly convey to their children can make all the difference…

Andrew Smith.

Self-actualisation Revisited

Published on 2 November, 2008 in High Performance and Personal Growth. Closed Tags: , .

I’ve had a little post-it note sitting beside my desk for a few months now, so it’s about time I actually wrote something about this! Self-actualisation comes down to three words things:

  1. Independence
  2. Non-attachment
  3. Power-ambivalence

Independence means that you think for yourself. It requires an individual to choose their own path rather than choosing the path that is given to them or the one that others would choose for them. Independence demands that an individual take responsibility for their conditioning and their thought processes, and to take responsibility for their experience of life. Sooner or later, great people have to leave the ‘tribe’ that gave them their foundations – that is the only way to start your own tribe.

Non-attachment means that while you can work towards goals and objectives, you do so while remembering that most things that seem to matter don’t. They might act – even ferociously – as if what they were doing mattered, yet when their work is done they retreat in the peace that comes from knowing that it doesn’t. Money, relationships and our reputation are powerful motivators for those who are not living at this level.

Power-ambivalence means that you do not try to control others. Self-actualised people do not live to manipulate or control others, but instead proceed along their personal path, honouring their truth as their truth, rather than trying to impose their beliefs or ideas upon others. While leaders are called upon by communities to provide guidance, self-actualised leaders do so without becoming attached to the perks, privileges or prestige attendant thereto.

Daniel Smith

Visionaries shut up and listen… and not to focus groups

Published on 1 November, 2008 in Change, Innovation and Personal Growth. Closed Tags: , , .

Really cool stuff doesn’t follow trends.

Kinda cool stuff does – but not really cool stuff.

Google didn’t follow the trends set by the (then!) giants like Microsoft and Yahoo!… and the Pure Digital’s Flip didn’t either – even though they sold 1,000,000 basic camcorders last year, they radically diverge from the path charted by Sony and the rest of the industry. It wasn’t that their CEO had focus groups and steadily developed a novel product – “He paid attention, and created a product for them without hiring focus groups. ”

Isn’t that where the really great ideas come from?

Business schools have been popularising the “Blue Ocean” – but great minds have been thinking this way for thousands of years. In order to get ahead of the pack, you have to either be a born freak or you have to chart a different route. And born freaks chart a different route intuitively.

We make it hard for those that want to march to their own tune. Radicals are punished – and that it is a good thing in a sense… it is in the nature of the ’system’ to challenge those who work to undermine the Nash Equilibrium presently being enjoyed so as to ensure that the proposed change overcomes the switching cost. It’s not personal – it’s just evolutionary.

To stand out can be frightening and lonely. Yet if you don’t be true to yourself – or a company is not true to itself – what do you really have left?

Great minds listen to their inner voice. In the modern world, it is often drowned out by the clattering of empty vessels, but if you can stop and listen to the voice within, you can start to explore what makes you great. What makes you unique? What are you better at – or could you be better at – than anybody else? What are you passionate about? If you could stop and listen to that voice from within, what would you do? It’s like we have an internal radio tuner that we seldom tune – and we get confused that all the white noise means that there’s nothing really there.

It is still your song to sing… if you dare.

Daniel Smith

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