Monthly Archive for February, 2009

Design Perfection

Published on 16 February, 2009 in Innovation. Closed Tags: , , , .

‘You know you have achieved perfection in design’, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the great adventurer, once wrote, ‘not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.’

While design and creativity are noble concepts and innovation a powerful notion, the reality is that it is very difficult to operationalise design quality. It seems self-evident to reduce such questions back to the desired values… but what are they?

While growth and development is part of education, discrimination remains one of the fundamental purposes… the challenge is how are we to discriminate fairly?

Daniel Smith

Cracking iPods at 22

Published on 13 February, 2009 in High Performance, Purpose and Science and Technology. 4 Comments Tags: .

This kid is a genius. When he was 15, he cracked the copy protection on DVDs, allowing millions of people to make backups and share DVDs around the world. Now, at 22, he’s cracked the Fairplay code that Apple have been using to try to preserve their monopolistic position in the music player market… it’s even better than an anti-trust suit against them!

You have to wonder what drives this kid… but you can be sure that it’s not the money!
Great work, DVD Jon!!! For the full story, have a look here…

Daniel Smith

Mattering in a changing world

Published on 11 February, 2009 in Change. Closed Tags: , , .

The other day, a friend was asking me whether I was going to expand and get myself an office. Really, I quite like keeping lean and using coffee shops and park benches as my office space… to me, I don’t really want an office at all! And though there are teleconference challenges still to be overcome, security risks and self-management issues, but there are some perks to be able to go to work without having a shower, much less getting dressed…especially as the high-impact talent of today demands a better work-life balance.

I love how the economic circle turns… while we still have Indian students coming to study at our Universities, now our students are being tutored online by Indians in India ! And the value for money that you can get is mind blowing… and is all the more important considering that India and China produce five times the number of science and engineering graduates as the United States. We need all the help we can get to keep up… 

Having been involved with community groups for some time, one of the challenges that you face sooner or later is handing over control. This is especially a challenge when you’ve actually made a difference – where you’ve sought to lead the organisation in a particular direction. Studies of business development – like this case study from HBS – show how the ‘founder’ or early leader of a change is often replaced over time as the organisation moves to a different phase in development. The conclusion: Often, you can be the king of a small domain or the prince of a great empire.

My dad is getting close to retirement. He’s worked in the public service forever and I struggle to see what he’s going to do with himself once he retires… maybe he’ll start his own company and become part of the wave of retirees flocking to create new wealth when they don’t really need to do it ! My grandfather did it… so did the guy who created Dreamworld… Hopefully he’ll be a bit more sensible than the current array of media-tart-web 2.0 entrepreneurs .

I’m increasingly obsessed with design. To me, it’s where the value is being created today – it’s where it’s at. We have enough stuff, now we want it to deliver values… here are some of the Masters of Design … Jochen Zeitz (CEO, Puma AG), Steve McCallion (creative director Ziba Design), Paula Scher (partner, Pentagram) and Clive Wilkinson (principal, Clive Wilkinson Architects).

It would seem that we could see more Fields Medalists (like a Nobel prize in maths) coming from outside the peer review system with the creation of internet-based journals that are peer-reviewed after publication like PLoS ONE and Philica . To me, this is very interesting, posing challenges to the existing publishers, though creating great opportunities for dynamic new findings and ideas – should be great to watch it grow. This direction has stimulated the venerable Nature already – they’ve started exploring how to maintain relevance with its own experiment in online peer-review. I wonder when we’re going to start creating concept maps of the concepts and supporting references though…

Daniel Smith

Risks

Published on 9 February, 2009 in Innovation and Science and Technology. Closed Tags: , .

“Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do or what not to do.” Jonas Salk

As I was reflecting on the state of science in the modern world, I was called to remember these words. Bearing in mind that Salk went directly against the conventional wisdom of the age in order to produce his great achievement, I am prompted to ask what might inspire him. Such resilience and determination; one might question how he managed to do what everybody around him had told him was impossible and even wrong. Perhaps it is an example of how only unreasonable people are the only ones who change the world…
Really, he wasn’t that creative. He saw something that was working in one domain and simply applied it by analogy to another domain. What distinguishes him to me was that he saw possibility where others didn’t, and he had the tenacity to make that vision real.

Let us be grateful that most kids today don’t even know what polio is…

Daniel Smith

High achievers do this…

Published on 6 February, 2009 in High Performance and Purpose. Closed Tags: .

As I looked a little further into motivation, I came across Greissman’s interviews of highly successful people. He found the following commonalities:

  1. They love their work.
  2. They become highly competent in a speciality.
  3. They commit themselves to their work, giving it their time and even their life.
  4. They meet most of their needs through work.
  5. They long for recognition and self-fulfillment.
  6. They focus on their work to the point that they ‘flow’ with it, loosing themselves in the work.
  7. They have few regrets.

This is a post-hoc analysis, rather than being proscriptive, but I have to wonder how long it would take you to become highly successful if you were demonstrating these behaviours.

Talent matters… but not as much as determination.


Interesting note on Lincoln… whereas most Presidents since have chosen their supporters to be on their cabinet, Lincoln chose his rivals. Seward became Secretary of State, and had been governor and Senator for New York; Chase later became Treasury Secretary and had been governor of Ohio; Bates became Attorney General and was an accomplished judge. But to do this, he had to keep his ego out of the situations by focusing on the real goals…

Daniel Smith