The Services Revolution: Why Social Networks Turned Into an Instituion

Last month I gave a talk (pdf) on innovation timing at OpenWay Club. The presentation covered, among other topics, the unfolding technology revolution in services. The talk drew on several key sources, including the work of Oliver E. Williamson, a Nobel Prize winner in economics from UC Berkeley, Cesar Hidalgo's book "Why Information Grows", and our book with Max Shtein "Scalable Innovation."

My goal was to show that new technologies have fundamentally changed the nature of services because they commoditized "specificity" and "recurrence." (see figures below). That is, in a networked digital world knowing your customers and interacting with them on a regular basis is dramatically less expensive than in a "stand alone brick-and-mortar" world. To illustrate the main points, here's a screen shot of a relevant page from Hidalgo's book (with my annotations) and several slides from the talk.

(The recent purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon is another example of the shift to Groceries-As-Service model, where Amazon leverages its customer insights into recurring retail sales.)

Even more importantly, the new service models have become a major global institution because they addressed the fundamental issue that plagued service businesses since ancient times. Douglas C North (Nobel Prize in Economics, 1993), described the problem in game theory terms:

In the world of personal exchange (recurring-specific - ES), it pays for parties to an exchange to cooperate, because the parties have personal knowledge of the other players and there is the possibility for repeat dealings between the parties. But in a world of impersonal exchange, it pays for the parties to defect, ceteris paribus. With impersonal exchange, the world is one in which there is not an iterated game.... One does not know anything about the other players, and indeed there are a large number of players.

That is, in traditional transactions players on both sides have incentives to cheat because they don't know each other personally or through a personal network. Therefore, in 1999 North suggested that to make the global marketplace efficient and scalable a new model had to be invented:

...we are going to have to devise institutions de novo that attempt to confront and deal with worlds of impersonal exchange.

Remarkably, new service models, such as Airbnb, Uber, Amazon, Alibaba, Instaply and others provide a glimpse of the institutions to come. Since identities of sellers, buyers and recommenders are known, parties are less likely to cheat; therefore, the number and quality of transactions shows rapid growth.  Although the solution is not perfect, it is a lot more efficient than all attempts to introduce global regulations. It's exciting to see how social networking technologies are redefining the rules of commerce and provide a working alternative to law.

Creative Solution of the Day: the Publication Dilemma

Typically, inventors face a disclosure dilemma: on the one hand, you want to explain your idea to a potential investor or a customer; on the other hand, you don't want to explain it because the idea can be easily stolen. Researchers face a similar dilemma when they consider publishing their results that  might have valuable commercial implications.

In the 1840s, Samuel Colt used the US patent system to overcome the dilemma:

When Samuel Colt, of revolver fame, was trying to sell the U.S. government a system of naval mines, he had to establish that his device was original without giving away its secret. His imaginative solution was to submit the plan to the Patent Office, obtain a confirmation of its originality, and then withdraw the application before the patent was granted, thereby avoiding the publication of the patent specifications.*

The Colt's approach exemplifies a powerful problem-solving technique often called "Separation in Time." According to the principle:
- you perform the useful action first — in the Colt's case: explaining the invention via a patent application — at the time when your potential customer needs to be convinced;
- then you perform a reverse action — withdraw the patent application — at a different time, so that the competition doesn't learn about the idea.

Snapchat provides the most recent example of a successful application of the "Separation in Time" principle along the lines of Samuel Colt's solution. That is, a Snapchat picture or a post is published for a short period of time to a limited group of subscribers; then, the post disappears, so that the information doesn't leak out to the general public. Clearly, the technique can be used for a broad variety of "limited offers."

* Source: Alex Roland, "Secrecy, Technology, and War: Greek Fire and the Defense of Byzantium, 678-1204." 1992.

tags: dilemma, problem, solution, social, separation

Lunch Talk: (MIT) Problem Solving Process

This short video from an MIT engineering course provides a good example of a structured problem solving process when a problem situation is relatively simple.



tags: lunchtalk, problem, solution, process

Invention of the Day: Teleprompter

The teleprompter made live TV programs possible because it allowed news anchors and performers to deliver long speeches without spending days and weeks memorizing them.

According to a Smithsonian article:

“For those that had been either in theater or the movies, the transition to television was difficult, because there was a much greater need for memorizing lines,” says Christopher Sterling, a media historian at George Washington University. “At the time, there was a lot more live television, which many people today tend to forget.” Instead of memorizing the same batch of lines over the course of months, Barton was now expected to memorize new lines on a weekly or even daily basis. Cue cards were sometimes used, but relying on unsteady stagehands to flip between them could sometimes cause catastrophic delays.

Here, we can see how a new media technology — "the TV world" — lead to a 10X increase in demand for live content. During radio broadcasts, announcers could read long texts from a written or typed page. By contrast, live television required direct eye contact with the audience. In short, a successful TV program required the best of both worlds: lots of fresh content to compete with the radio, and direct contact with the audience like in the traditional theater. The invention of the teleprompter solved this problem.

As usually the case with major innovation, teleprompter was rejected by the convention professional thinking:

Although Schlafly, Barton and Kahn pitched the device to 20th Century Fox, the company was not interested. They promptly quit the company and started their own, founding the TelePrompTer Corporation.

A major refinement of the original invention came from Jess Oppenheimer, who invented an in-camera teleprompter.

Since then, the teleprompter's been a fixture in television, movies and political speeches. It'll be with us until, probably, somebody invents a brain-machine interface suitable for imitating direct human speech.

tags: invention, innovation, 10X, trade-off, dilemma, problem, solution

Invention of the Day: High-Speed Roller-Coaster

Inventor and entrepreneur J.A. Miller (Mueller) started working on roller coaster designs and implementations in 1893, when he was just 19. During his entire career, he kept creating installations that provided greater and greater thrills to the riding public. At a certain point, he hit a problem: the more exciting the curves of the coaster are, the less safe the roller coaster becomes for the riders. On vertical curves especially, the more abrupt the turn, the greater the chances that the ride will fly off the rails, injuring or even killing the thrill-seekers.
Here's how the inventor describes his challenge:

...vertical curves on pleasure railway structures have been limited on account of centrifugal force, the curves being` confined within limits which will permit gravity to overcome centrifugal force sufficiently to keep the cars on the rails and the passengers in their seats. More abrupt vertical curves will be more sensational as it will give the passengers the feeling of being lifted off their seats as the cars take the incline.

It seems like the only way to provide for user safety is to reduce the acceleration on the curve and the thrill, which would be a typical trade-off. As with many other breakthrough inventions, Miller found a solution that allowed a roller-coaster designer to escape the trade-off: the car would stay on a sharp vertical curve, held on the rails with three pairs of wheels: two vertical and one horizontal.

Before the Miller's solution, the force of gravity was not strong enough to hold the car in place when it accelerated along sharp curves, either vertical or horizontal. After the new side and bottom rollers were introduced, the car would stay on rails, compensating for centrifugal acceleration. Today, many roller-coasters use the 90 year-old solution to give the riders as much fun as they can bear.

tags: invention, trade-off, solution, problem

Solving the Life vs Glory dilemma - 2

Recap: In my earlier posts I described and analyzed in detail a typical dilemma situation: a person faces mutually exclusive choices. For example, the ancient Greek hero Achilles has to choose between dying young with eternal glory or living a long, uneventful life. The modern hero Neo from the Matrix has to chose between the Red pill and the Blue pill.

In art, heroes choose dilemmas. In real life, we try to get away from them by picking a reasonable trade-off - "the middle way." A fundamental characteristic of a dilemma or trade-off situation is the existence of "The Box." The Box represents a set of constraints, either visible or invisible. The first step to think outside the box is to discover what the box is.

In the Achilles example, we've established that he is locked in the box of personal mortal combat with an opposing fighter - Patroclus. Even if Achilles wins today, sooner or later a new fighter will be born to kill him. That is, once you've entered the dilemma box, the choices are unavoidable: Achilles wins some great battles, but he is eventually killed by Paris, who, in turn, dies in combat later.

At the first glance, the Achilles' Life vs Glory dilemma seems to have no happy outcome. On the other hand, we've established that another Greek Hero - Odysseus - had found a breakthrough solution: he reached eternal glory AND lived a long, fulfilling life. How did he do that?

First, let me say that the Achilles' box is version of a theoretical construct created by economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth in the 19th century. It serves as a foundational principle for the modern economics of free markets, where people make rational choices about allocation of limited resources. That is why the first principle of economics is often stated as "Everything is a trade-off."

In Sclalable Innovation (Prologue), we show that great innovations often happen when people break trade-offs and dilemmas, instead of strengthening them. Odysseus is no exception. As a creative individual, he sees outside the Achilles' box. In his thinking, a 3-rd dimension exists - gods and other people (fig below).

When Odysseus encounters a tough challenge he leverages this dimension to generate a broad variety of coordinated actions. During the siege of Troy, he finally defeats the enemy city by getting one group of Greeks build the Trojan Horse, another group to hide inside it, yet another to rush the city when the Horse is inside, etc. This pattern of problem solving repeats when Odysseus runs into trouble on his way back home to Ithaca. For example, he uses the help of his team to defeat the Cyclops and escape from the cave. (Even the Cyclops' sheep act as "members" his team.) Odysseus accomplishes the impossible feat of listening to the song of the Sirens and surviving it too. (I posted about his solution in detail in 2011). Odysseus returns home to Ithaca and restores himself as the rightful king, by craftily creating a coalition of players and arranging the circumstances to benefit his cause. As the result of his adventures, Odysseus achieves eternal glory AND ensures that he has a long life.

In short, Odysseus is a 3D strategist, while Achilles is a 2D tactician. Achilles thinks inside the box, while Odysseus thinks outside it, by discovering dimensions of the situation that Achilles cannot see. In these dimensions, he finds opportunities for novel actions and their novel combinations. To motivate his allies, he uses certain psychological effects, which I'm going to cover later.

tags: creativity, problem, solution, dilemma, trade-off, separation, breakthrough, luck, control

Solving the Life vs Glory dilemma - 1

In my earlier post, I quoted Achilles' dilemma from the Iliad. He has a difficult choice between 1) a short, but glorious life of a mortal combat hero; and 2) long, but uneventful life of a provincial king. I also noted a similar choice that Neo, the main character of the Matrix, faces in the virtual world of the all-powerful Mr. Smith(s). Morpheus, another rebel hero, offers him the choice between the Blue and Red pills. Neo chooses the Red pill, which leads him to a dangerous fight with the intelligent machines that rule his world.

Here's how we can diagram the dilemma. The horizontal axis is length of Life; the vertical - Glory. The curvy line is a typical trade-off trajectory, which can take extreme positions: Red = Eternal Glory and Early Death; Blue = Long Life and No Glory.

After posting the dilemma, I went on our regular evening dog walk with Dolce, the Giant Schnauzer. As we were walking, I started to think about Achilles' choices. Neither one of them felt really attractive. Nevertheless, I was sure that the dilemma must have a solution. That is, solving trade-offs and dilemmas is the bread and butter of the TRIZ methodology, which I studied back in college and still practice in my invention work.

The key principle we need to apply here is "Think Slowly!" That is, instead of making a quick choice based on intuition, we have to carefully consider the problem situation. Luckily, a dog walk is perfect for unhurried thinking.

The first step is to get rid of simple, meaningless labels.  For example, the phrase "Blue pill or Red pill" makes the choices easy to perceive in movies, but it tells us nothing about the nature of the situation. The contrasting colors can describe a conflict between all kinds of situations: from chess, to sports teams, to countries, etc. Since we don't know the relevance of colors, when offered the Blue or Red pill, we should say "Neither" and think hard.

How to think about dilemmas? Usually, a trade-off or dilemma is a sign of a constraint that we take for granted. It acts as a box that limits our choices. To solve the dilemma, we have to think outside the box. But how? First, let's try to identify the Achilles' box.

To find the box, we need to see the situation from a different perspective. We know that Achilles is the ultimate mortal combat fighter. He achieves his eternal glory by fighting other heroes to death. In the Iliad, he challenges a famous Trojan warrior - Patroclus. Therefore, we need to add a Patroclus' perspective to the picture (above). Now, we can see the box! Achilles and Patroclus are locked in mortal combat. If one lives, another dies.

In the Iliad, Achilles kills his adversary (the red circle in the figure above). Patroclus dies, but he achieves the eternal glory because he fights valiantly. In the mortal combat dilemma, he gets the Red pill. Although the Patroclus situation is clear, Achilles appears to escape his predicament. He gets the best of both worlds: 1) eternal glory for killing the best Trojan hero; 2) long life after the combat. Achilles lives with glory!

Unfortunately, the career of a mortal combat fighter doesn't end at the last fight he wins. On the contrary, it ends when he eventually looses to the next great hero. In the Iliad, Paris (the guy who stole Helen from the Greeks) shoots and kills Achilles with an arrow. Remarkably, the arrow hits Achilles in the heel, the only unprotected part of his body (thus, the expression the Achilles' Heel).

As the result, the original prophesy is fulfilled: Achilles dies and earns eternal glory (the red circle in the figure above). Given the mortal combat box, it's easy to predict the fate of Paris too.
The Achilles dilemma strikes again: Paris dies in combat, earning for himself eternal glory and, in the process, causing the eventual destruction of Troy.

By the time Dolce and I are halfway through our walk, the original dilemma looks totally unsolvable. Nevertheless, as we continue our problem analysis, we recognize that our favorite hero Odysseus, "the man of twists and turns," manages to escape the fate of Achilles and other mortal combat heroes. That is, he earns eternal glory and lives a long, fulfilled life. Moreover, his method of problem-solving is consistent throughout the Iliad and Odyssey. In each dilemma, he finds a way to think outside the box. How? I'll try to cover his method of problem solving tomorrow. Now, it's time for a dog walk.

Lab Notebook: the meaning of Bitcoin

Money has been around for thousands of years. Amazingly, people keep reinventing it over and over again. Money innovation (not invention!) is always a telltale sign of a deep, underlying change in large-scale commercial systems. It serves two vitally important tasks: value exchange and information diffusion. The growing acceptance of Bitcoin sends a loud and clear message:

Dear Government, we the People, no longer trust your ability to manage our money (The Fed). We also don't trust your shameless handling of our privacy (NSA). Therefore, we are going to create an alternative mechanism for commercial transactions and sharing information about them. The new computing and communication technologies give us the power to do so. 

In the 6th century BC, Lydians developed silver and gold coinage, which made them incredibly rich and powerful. In the 21st century AD, the first respectable government that will support a new trusted currency will have a once-in-a-thousand-years chance to create an economic miracle out of, practically, nothing. I hope it will be an American government.

tags: invention, innovation, deontic, payload, problem, money, solution, growth, economics, commerce

Lab Notebook: Strange connections between baseball and Netflix

I discovered another repeating pattern for problem solving in baseball scouting and ... movie classification. In baseball, scouts and managers have to process a lot of vague information about many prospects. Nate Silver writes how Billy Beane ("a phenom in baseball management" and the main character in Moneyball, one of my favorite movies about sports) addressed the problem:

...when we have trouble categorizing something, we’ll often overlook it or misjudge it. This is one of the reasons that Beane avoids what he calls “gut-feel” decisions. (The Signal and the Noise. 2013.)

In short, Beane developed an elaborate system and a large number of explicit categories that his brain could rationally handle instead of relying on subconscious, gut-feel decisions. Using lots of  categories enabled him to pick the right player among many candidates.

Where do people experience a similar problem? In "scouting" movies on Netflix! To help users solve the problem, Netflix engineers developed a detailed content categorization system with thousands of fine distinctions, so that people can select the right movie among lots of candidates. Here's an example of their movie subjects:

Source: Alexis C. Madrigal. How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood. The Atlantic. Jan 2, 2014.

A couple of learning points:
- In Scalable Innovation (Chapter 5), we talk about the concept of "Aboutness" - an element that facilitates decision making in systems. The Netflix chart above would be a great way to show how generating movie aboutness helps solve detection problems for the users.
- "Gut-feel" decisions are a poor substitute for systematic thinking about the problem. Fundamentally, they are limited by our working memory and don't scale to handle complex choice situations.

tags: aboutness, problem, solution, detection, control, pattern

Lab Notebook: Google Glass and 360-degree vision

Google Glass (or a similar connected, hands-off presentation device) should make a big difference in situations that require body-eye coordination and [related] learning of psycho-motor skills. For example, if I wear sensory clothing that talks to the device I should be able to see myself from any angle. The device might also provide an 3- or 4-D image of the desired position and help me adjust my posture closer to the ideal. Boys and girls would learn easily how to keep their backs straight and walk like models! :) Should also help the elderly to be aware of the need to exercise and improve their motor skills.
Eventually, it will become indispensable in sports, wellness, and all other applications requiring spatial dexterity, including surgical procedures.

In general, great innovations create new space and time (either real or virtual). The Google Glass (GG) project has a chance to do just that. In system terms (see Scalable Innovation, Chapter 2),

GG - Tool
sensor network - Source
reference db - Source
(wireless) communications  - Distribution
application - Control
brain - Control
encoded position info - Packaged Payload

tags: invention, space, time, problem, solution, innovation, pattern, system

Flue vaccine: a world-scale guessing game

According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),

It takes at least six months to produce large quantities of influenza vaccine. For vaccine to be delivered in time for vaccination to begin in October and November, manufacturers may begin to grow one or more of the virus strains in January based on their best guess as to what strains are most likely to be included in the vaccine.

 To improve the odds of guessing the right virus 6 months ahead of time, each flue shot contains a cocktail  of three weakened viruses. The hope is that at least one of them will trigger our immune system into anticipating the right flue. In essence, we force the immune system into overdrive (red alert state!) because we can't know the exact nature of the flu threat. When the guess turns out to be wrong, as that was the case with the 2009 H1N1 virus, we end up with a pandemic situation because our collective immune system is barking up the wrong tree.

Would it be possible to make a 10X improvement in the vaccine development process, so that the cycle takes 1-2 weeks instead of 18-20 weeks?

The current system is geared toward large-scale production and distribution, which requires government approvals, massive investment into manufacturing, etc. To deliver an order-of-magnitude improvement, we need a different system that produces the vaccine on the spot, bypassing the existing methods. Using 3D printing as an analogy, if we had a vaccine production kit that could be adjusted locally instead of globally, we would be able to kill two birds with one stone: make the right vaccine at the right time AND reduce vaccination costs.

Thoughts?

tags: healthcare, tradeoff, dilemma, problem, solution

The Problem Creation Problem: A Game of Thrones.

In "A Storm of Swords" (one of the fantasy novels that serve as a literary foundation for the popular HBO TV Show A Game of Thrones) the author creates a lot of problems for his characters to solve and for readers to enjoy. The more intractable the problem, the more entertainment value it provides because it requires ingenious solutions and plenty of opportunities for dangerous mistakes.
Personal intrigues about love, lust, and power aside, the novel poses interesting technical problems as well. For example, we find Jon Snow and less than a hundred of his fellow guards in charge of defending The Wall against more than a hundred thousand of Wildlings. The Wall itself is impregnable to the low tech assailants, but it has a narrow passage that allows people to get beyond the Wall. Jon Snow's biggest challenge is to prevent the Wildlings from getting through the passage.

In the book, both sides show great creativity in attacking and defending the passage. There's a king of giants who rips out its iron gate; there's a brave dozen of guards who kill him in the process, etc. The fight goes on for pages and its a lot of fun to read.

But when I put my inventor hat on, I wonder why have the passage at all. On the internal side of the Wall, the guards use an equivalent of a large elevator to get on and off the Wall. Since the guards on the Wall are in full control of the elevator, no enemy can get over the Wall. In short, the elevator is the safest method to get people "through" the Wall. You would think that the builders of the Wall should be smart enough to use the elevator on both sides; especially, on the dangerous side because the Wildlings would have no chance to penetrate the Wall when the guards lift or temporarily disable the elevator. Furthermore, according to the book, the passage is so narrow that its throughput capacity is no greater than that of the elevator. Then, why do we have the passage at all if it introduces a major design flaw?

Well, from a fun creation perspective, the passage is a "planted" intractable problem that allows the author to keep the struggle for the Wall going for pages and pages and pages. Not having the passage would be a great technology solution, but its entertainment value would be almost non-existent. As we discuss in the Prologue of Scalable Innovation, we humans prefer the entertainment value. That's why our discussions and practices of creativity are skewed toward fun and games, including games of thrones.

--
my earlier post on the Problem Creation Problem.

tags: problem, solution, entertainment, separation, bundle

A solution to the terrorism problem would be to make everybody wear Google Glass devices. If one sees or smells a bomb-making material, the device reports the incident to the authorities. With this setup everybody becomes a self-policing drone, with Google AI algorithms functioning as a giant external brain.

 Figure from: Intelligence: the eye, the brain, and the computer, by Fischler and Firschein. 1987. p. 18.

tags: problem, solution, detection, control, brain, mind

Growing new body parts.

The March 22 issue of the WSJ reports that biologists have found a working solution to the problem of creating "spare" body parts for transplantation. Before diving into the solution, let's consider the core problem first.

Traditionally, doctors took organs from healthy donors (live or recently dead) and used them to replace failed organs in their patients. The method had (and still has) two major problems: 1) high-quality body organs are rare and expensive; 2) other people's organs can be rejected by the patient's immune system.
Although creating biological organs from scratch from the patient's own cells can address both aspects of the problem, such method would be extremely difficult and take a long time. Besides, the vast majority of people don't require transplants during their lives. Therefore, growing organs that nobody needs would be a tremendous waste.

The new solution allows to create one's "own" organs on demand. It uses sanitized cadaver organs as a scaffold that supports the patient's own stem cells that grow around it. (The figure above shows steps involved in building a heart.) As the result, we have an abundant supply of cheap "prototype" organs that in combination with the patient's stem cells have a great chance to be compatible with the host body. The method would probably work for most functional body parts, except the brain.

tags: trade-off, dilemma, problem, solution, biology

Irresistible by Design and Science: Junk Food.

 The NYT (Feb 24, 2013) published "The Extraordinary Science of Junk Food," an article how over the years the food industry used sophisticated consumer studies to develop irresistible junk foods. Even the most health conscious people have hard time dealing with the temptation:

In 2011, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that shed new light on America’s weight gain. The subjects — 120,877 women and men — were all professionals in the health field, and were likely to be more conscious about nutrition, so the findings might well understate the overall trend. [The researchers] found that every four years, the participants exercised less, watched TV more and gained an average of 3.35 pounds. The researchers parsed the data by the caloric content of the foods being eaten, and found the top contributors to weight gain included red meat and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages and potatoes, including mashed and French fries. But the largest weight-inducing food was the potato chip. The coating of salt, the fat content that rewards the brain with instant feelings of pleasure, the sugar that exists not as an additive but in the starch of the potato itself — all of this combines to make it the perfect addictive food.

Food scientists and advertisers found a way to hack into our biology, exploiting the body's reliance on taste to provide quality nutrition. Nowadays, even pets started suffering from extra weight because their owners can't control the pets' diet.

tags: health, control, trade-off, problem, solution

Trade-off of the Day: Taste vs Convenience

A major problem with canned food is its lack of flavor (Popular Science, 5/10/1012):

What gets sacrificed to the public’s demand for convenience are flavor, texture and nutrients. For food to survive on a shelf for a year, it has to be free of nearly all microbes, and the most common FDA-approved method of ensuring that is fairly primitive. In fact, it is the same sterilization technique that Napoleon’s army used in 1810: Kill all the pathogens by heating food to 250°F in a pressurized vessel called a retort. Hormel Compleats Beef Tips, as a result, taste a bit like canned dog food smells.

The trade-off is based on the dominant process that kills both microbes and flavor by over-heating. Food companies solve the problem by adding artificial flavors. Although a breakthrough solution for the problem exists, the industry is in no hurry to apply it:

In France, the food manufacturer Knorr just introduced the first line of boxed soups that are sterilized with electric current—a more efficient approach that leaves the vegetables in the potage more firm and flavorful than a retort can. But new approaches like these, despite their advantages, take decades to make their way into the entrenched and conservative food industry.

In the example we can see the power of the dominant design/process. It's virtually impossible to displace it unless one is willing to create a different market.

tags: trade-off, problem, solution, dilemma

Green energy policies produce more greenhouse emissions.

Washington Post: Demand for coal in Germany has been rising since a May 2011 move to phase out nuclear power by 2022. The shutdown was spurred by the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan as well as long-standing German concerns about safety. But nuclear energy, which is low in greenhouse gas emissions, has been partially replaced by brown coal. Lignite supplied 25.6 percent of Germany’s electricity in 2012, up from 22.7 percent in 2010. Hard black coal supplied an additional 19.1 percent last year, and it was also on the rise.

A good illustration of the difference between a problem and a puzzle. Governments thought to solve the greenhouse gas problem as a fixed puzzle, i.e. substitute one of its piece with another (nuclear with renewables).
In reality, the situation is an open-ended problem where consumption, production, and technologies can change over time. A combination of the recession and shale gas discoveries/production in the US created a new situation, dramatically different from the original "puzzle" assumptions. As a result, the puzzle-based green energy solutions made the problem worse.

tags: problem, puzzle, solution, energy, control

In praise of procrastination

Nassim N. Taleb writes:

[T]he Romans revered someone who, at the least, resisted and delayed intervention. One general, Fabius Maximus was nicknamed Cunctator, “the Procrastinator.” He drove Hannibal, who had an obvious military superiority, crazy by avoiding and delaying engagement.

There is a Latin expression festina lente, “make haste slowly.” The Romans were not the only ancients to respect the act of voluntary omission. The Chinese thinker Lao Tzu coined the doctrine of wu-wei,“passive achievement.”

Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad. - Antifragility, 2012.

I've been thinking about discussing or — better! — solving the procrastination dilemma with the students during the Summer '13 Principles of Invention course at Stanford. On the one hand, procrastination is bad because it makes us miss important deadlines or waste time on unimportant rather than important tasks. On the other hand, as Taleb notices, procrastination helps us save the effort of reacting to events that might blow by harmlessly without any intervention.

My earlier posts on procrastination: 1, 2, 3

tags: dilemma, problem, solution, course

Lunch Talk: (@TED) Re-engineering mosquitos

In a single year, there are 200-300 million cases of malaria and 50-100 million cases of dengue fever worldwide. So: Why haven't we found a way to effectively kill mosquitoes yet? Hadyn Parry presents a fascinating solution: genetically engineering male mosquitoes to make them sterile, and releasing the insects into the wild, to cut down on disease-carrying species.

Youtube link.

Mosquito is the deadliest animal in the history of the world!


tags: lunchtalk, health, innovation, problem, solution,

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