Quote of the Day: information vs data

Seek truth from facts.

- Deng Xiaoping

tags: information, data, quote, tool

Dilemma of the Day: Making Money vs Influencing Debate

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, says:

The reason that we [academics] write these things [books] is not to make money but to influence ideas [that] influence the shaping of the intellectual debate.

Source: Joseph Stiglitz. The Sixth Annual Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property.February 16, 2007 at Duke Law School. (12m.45s).

In contrast, major Silicon Valley innovators, both companies and VCs, break this dilemma by making money AND influencing the world. The Stiglitz' view highlights the difference between invention (i.e. production of concepts) and innovation (implementing concepts on a large scale). In innovation, the goal is to shape the debate for the sake of changing the world and making lots money in the process.


tags: dilemma, quote, business, invention, innovation

Quote of the Day: Bad Talent Management.

Here's a 3,000-year-old recipe how NOT to run your company or country:

The man who stays put gets the same share as the man who fights his best. Cowards and brave men are given equal respect. The same death awaits the man who does much, and the man who does nothing.
All I have suffered by constantly risking my life in battle has left me no better off than anyone else.

- Homer. The Iliad.

tags: quote, control, management, startup 

Creativity quote of the Day: Elon Musk on problem-solving

"Ask them about the problems they worked on and how they solved them. If someone was really the person who solved the problem they would be able to answer on multiple levels... Anyone who struggled hard with a problem never forgets it." (Business Insider, December, 2013).

For once, I agree with Elon Musk. We should not confuse the feeling of an "aha" moment with real-life problem solving.

Creativity quote of the day: a simple good idea beaten to death.

A couple of quotes from Eugene Fama's Nobel Prize lecture:

- That's characteristic of everything I do: It's obvious on hindsight, but it was not obvious before the fact.

- When I come up with a [good] idea I beat it to death.

- The cute little insight we had was that if you want to aggregate this information across all of the stock experiencing splits [processes under investigation] you change the way you measure time. You measure time relative to the event.

The last point is similar to the approach of another Nobel Laureate, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who emphasizes the deliberate, systematic nature of creative thinking.

tags: creativity, quote, system, psychology

Creativity Quote of the Day: the World Wide Web.

In preparation for The Greatest Innovations of Silicon Valley course (BUS 117, Stanford University CSP, Fall '13), I'm re-reading Weaving the Web, by Tim Berners-Lee et al (Harper. 2000). Here's what he had to say about the process of invention:

Journalists have always asked me what the crucial idea was, or what the singular event was, that allowed the Web to exist one day when it hadn’t the day before. They are frustrated when I tell them there was no “Eureka!” moment . . . Inventing the World Wide Web involved my growing realization that there was a power in arranging ideas in an unconstrained, weblike way. And that awareness came to me through precisely that kind of process. The Web arose as the answer to an open challenge, through the swirling together of influences, ideas, and realizations from many sides, until, by the wondrous offices of the human mind, a new concept jelled. It was a process of accretion, not the linear solving of one problem after another.

This is very similar to the events that resulted in Edison's "invention of the light bulb." There's no historical evidence that the famous "light bulb moment" occurred in his head. Instead, it was a steady progress toward finding a suitable light bulb filament.

Another major invention process that followed the "no eureka moment" pattern was the Integrated Circuit (Robert Noyce, 1959).

tags: creativity, quote, invention

Quote of the Day: Simplicity vs Complexity

Nassim Taleb in his new book "Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder"

A complex system, contrary to what people believe, does not require complicated systems and regulations and intricate policies. The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects. Because of opacity, an intervention leads to unforeseen consequences, followed by apologies about the “unforeseen” aspect of the consequences, then to another intervention to correct the secondary effects, leading to an explosive series of branching “unforeseen” responses, each one worse than the preceding one.

Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession.

Steve Jobs figured out that “you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

Essentially, he talks about one of the basic differences between problems and puzzles: problems are open-ended, while puzzles have pre-defined solutions. A typical school test is a puzzle. Over the years, we are trained to solve increasingly sophisticated puzzles using increasingly sophisticated solutions. By contrast, solutions to open-ended problems lead to new problems: the more complex the solution, the more complex the resulting problem.

tags: problem, solution, quote, puzzle, quote

Quote of the Day: Model-Dependent Realism

 Stephen Hawking (and Leonard Mlodinow) write:

we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. (The Grand Design).

In Scalable Innovation, Max and I introduce a system model (my Stanford students know it as 5-element analysis) and multiple case studies that connect the model to observation. Part I of the book briefly introduces the model and shows how to make the connections. Part II discusses methods for navigating system levels and their connections to reality. Finally, Part III shows the system dynamics: how it evolves along the S-curve and its correspondence to observations.

tags: book, quote, model, five element analysis,

Quote of the Day: Geoffrey Moore about the invention of the Integrated Circuit.

The Integrated Circuit (IC) invented in the late 1950s is one of the greatest inventions of all time. We'll be discussing the impact of ICs on the world in Lecture 2 of the Greatest Innovations of Silicon Valley course John Kelley and I will be teaching this quarter at Stanford University CSP.

Today, all computing devices — from tiny brain implants to giant data centers — use the technology for running a myriad of applications. Nevertheless, according to Gordon Moore, the author of the famous Moore's Law, at the time of the invention it was extremely difficult to envision the future importance of IC. Here's an excerpt from an interview Gordon Moore gave to Michael Wolff in 1976,

Wolff:
You didn't realize at the time how significant this would be?
Moore:
Absolutely not. Even after a family of integrated circuits was introduced, we didn't have the remotest idea that this was truly a major difference in the way electronics was going to be done in the future.

In my view, the moral of the story is, when you've made an invention use your imagination to see how the invention can scale up to revolutionize the world. Several tools would be particular applicable in this situation: the STM operator, 10X diagram, 4Q diagram, a system diagram in combination with the S-curve (to check for Synthesis).

tags: quote, invention, innovation, example, technology, 10X, imagination, creativity

Quote of the Day: Somebody Else's Problem.

The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what is more can be run for over a hundred years on a single flashlight battery. This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting or can't explain. - Duglas Adams. The Life, Universe and Everything.

tags: quote, reverse brainstorm

Quote of the Day: Fish in the water.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"  - David Foster Wallace (source).

 tags: quote, detection

Quote of the Day: A Network of Times.

...your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.  -- Jorge Luis Borges.

This quote would be a good epigraph for a separate chapter on the difference between calendar time and innovation time. In the Scalable Innovation book and Reverse Brainstorming sessions we talk about this important concept very briefly.

tags: quote, time, innovation

Quote(s) of the Day: iPod and iPhone.

Steve Wozniak and Jonathan Ive on Apple's breakthrough products:

It’s funny, because the products people credit with bringing Apple back to life—the iPods and the iMacs—all of them were in the design phase back when Apple was in trouble. Their main designer, Jonathan Ive, was already working on them. But the way Steve [Jobs] presented those new products was amazing. He made sure the press leaks were cut down, too, so when these new products came out—the colorful iMacs and, of course, the digital music iPods—they seemed to be totally new and surprising.  -- Steve Wozniak, "iWoz."


"There were multiple times where we nearly shelved the phone because we thought there were fundamental problems that we can't solve," said Sir Jony, speaking at a British Business Embassy event to coincide with the Olympics. One problem involved an early prototype "where I put the phone to my ear and my ear dials the number"... accidentally. -- Jonathan Ive, The Independent, 7/31/12.

tags: innovation, quote, apple

Quote of the Day: Steve Wozniak on Inventing.

In the last chapter, Steve Wozniak talks about seeing the world as an inventor,

There will be people—and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet—who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong.

But the world isn’t black and white. It’s gray scale. As an inventor, you have to see things in gray scale. You need to be open. You can’t follow the crowd. Forget the crowd. And you need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you’ve heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would. You don’t want to jump to conclusions, take a position too quickly, and then search for as much material as you can to support your side.

tags: invention, quote

Quote of the Day: Steve Wozniak on GUI.

In iWoz, Steve Wozniak writes about seeing for the first time the Graphical User Interface (GUI) at Xerox Park,

The minute I saw this interface, I knew it was the future. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. It was like a one-way door to the future—and once you went through it, you could never turn back. It was such a huge improvement in using computers. The GUI meant you could get a computer to do the same things it could normally do, but with much less physical and mental effort. It meant that nontechnical people could do some pretty powerful things with computers without having to sit there and learn how to type in long commands. Also, it let several different programs run in separate windows at the same time. That was powerful!

tags: quote, interface, software, evolution

Quote of the Day: The Luck of Silicon Valley.

Gordon Moore:

I never fail to credit the element of luck.

My personal success stems in part from the fact that Fairchild’s timing and direction were extremely fortuitous. Semiconductor science and technology were evolving rapidly. Fairchild invented the planar technology that provided the basis for the integrated circuit. Intel made a lucky choice of a new version of the MOS technology using a silicon layer for the gate of the transistors.

The luck of this valley stems from the fact that it began with a fairly clean slate in a wide-open technology space.

Moore's insight about luck gives us an important attribute of a possible successful innovation: wide-open technology space. We should also realize that when Moore talks about technology he means the business of technology, not just the technical side of a specific implementation.
Similarly, when Steve Jobs introduced PC and, later, iPod he targeted a wide open business-technology spaces.

This aspect of luck can be captured by using my 4Q diagram approach (one of the topics of today's class at Stanford).

tags: 4q diagram, strategy, quote, innovation, business, model

LunchTalk: Dr. Regina Dugan, DARPA Cyber Colloquium

During the Colloquium, more than 700 cyber experts from industry, academia and the hacker community learned how since 2009, DARPA has been steadily increasing its cyber research. Its budget submission for fiscal year 2012 increased cyber research funding by $88M. Over the next five years, the Agency's proposed cyber research investment expects to grow from 8 to 12 percent of its top line. These investments are shifting to activities that promise more convergence with the threat and recognize the unique needs of DoD. Dugan explained, "in the coming years DARPA will focus an increasing portion of its cyber research on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs."

link

- More video is uploaded in 60 days that's been created in 60 years by 3 major US TV networks combined.
- 29 chemical companies were subjects of computer attacks to extract data on formulas and manufacturing processes.
- in 2004 proceeds from cyber crime exceeded proceeds from selling drugs.

tags: lunchtalk, quote, security, growth,s-curve

Quote of the Day: Patent as a Slingshot.

The David Co. v. Goliath, Inc. kind of competition is dependent on investment in David Co. — the small new competitor. And few men will invest in such a competitor unless they think it has a potential patent monopoly as a slingshot.

Picard v. United Aircraft. 128 F.2d 632 (1942). Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. May 28, 1942.

Quote of the Day: Turing Machine.

It was also disappointing that when in January 1937 Computable Numbers at last appeared in print, there was so little reaction. Church reviewed it for the Journal of Symbolic Logic and thereby put the words "Turing machine" into published form. But only two people asked for offprints.   -- Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges.

As we can see, one of the major discoveries of the 20th century that set up the computing revolution went largely unnoticed not only for the general public, but for professional mathematicians as well.

tags: detection, creativity, computing, quote

Quote of the Day: Facts and Distortions

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

- Mark Twain.