The science of biological timing

Today, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the 2017 Prize in Physiology or Medicine to three American scientists - Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm.
From the press release:

Off course, there's no "clock" in the body. Biological organisms use protein accumulation cycle to adapt to the rotation of the Earth. It took nature billions of years to develop this amazing adaptation. Now, we are figuring out ways to understand and and adapt to innovation timing, i.e. cycles of new ideas, including science and technology.

Stanford CSP. Business 152. Innovation Timing. Session 1, Quiz 1.

Background:

Timing is critical for innovation success. Sometimes, companies introduce new products and services when it’s too late. For example, neither Google+ nor Microsoft smartphone succeeded, despite their respective companies putting major resources behind them, both in money and development efforts.

On the other extreme, some innovations fail because they seem to appear too early. Social networks Friendster and Livejournal started gaining traction in the early 2000s, but never got to the scale of Facebook. Similarly, WebTV started in 1995, with the intent to provide users with a broad range of content over the Internet. In almost two decades that followed, the company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars, went through a major acquisition, but failed in the very same marketplace where NetFlix and other video streaming services managed to succeed a few years later.

Finally, certain products and services had perfect timing. For example, Gmail and Youtube spread like a California wildfire. The Apple iPhone succeeded where Apple Newton failed.

In preparation for the course, please answer the following questions:

1. List 2-3 novel products or services in each of the timing categories:
a) too late;
b) too early;
c) just perfect.

2. (Optional). Pick one example from the list and explain your reasoning with regard to innovation timing. Mention at least 3 factors that played a role in the success or failure of the innovation.

Lunch Talk: a cure for procrastination.

A UC Berkeley lecture (Lecture #10, UCB Econ 119 taught by

Daniel J. Acland) on short-term vs long-term trade-off ( the math is not critical for understanding of the implications.)

Bonus: a brief discussion in the beginning of the lecture about latent problem solving.

tags: creativity, trade-off, timing

Additional References: Ted O’Donoghue and Matthew Rabin (2000). Choice and Procrastination.

Inventing the future

Peter Norvig, the Director of Research at Google, sums up the 10,000-hour (10-year) rule for becoming an expert:

... it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas... The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again.

Now, if it takes 10 years to become an expert, one of the most important questions a would be expert faces on day one of his or her 10-year term is "In which area should I become an expert, so that my expertise will not get obsolete by the end of the full term?" One way (the best way?) to answer it is to create a new domain of expertise, as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, James Watson, Tom Perkins, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Zack Zuckerberg, and others had done before.



Another question, which arises on or beyond the 10-year expertise boundary, is how to avoid the curse of knowledge, a mindset that locks one's creativity within a set of "expert" assumptions.



tags: creativity, brain, system, mind, philosophy, technology, quote, timing, inertia, psychology

The chicken and its three eggs.

Philosophy of technology is a 2,500-year intellectual exercise, and according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Technology is a continuous attempt to bring the world closer to the way it is to be. Whereas science aims to understand the world as it is, technology aims to change the world.

This tells me that there should exist a fundamental difference between the logic of scientific discovery and the logic of invention, which most of the books on creativity completely ignore. Unfortunately, philosophy of invention doesn't exist. Though, there are some attempts to create a philosophy of creativity.

Just for fun, below are Google timelines for philosophy, invention, science, and technology.

tags: technology, science, invention, timing, evolution, system, greatest

Bloomberg provides a good example of the difference between invention and innovation. The article compares Amazon's Kindle DX and a 1990-s effort by Knight Ridder Inc to create an electronic newspaper reader:

In 1992, Knight Ridder Inc. set employees to work at a lab in Boulder, Colorado, to create its own portable newspaper-reading device to boost readership and revenue.

[they] spent about three years trying to create an electronic tablet that could download newspapers and magazines. With the death of James Batten, Knight Ridder’s chairman at the time, the project fizzled and the 10-person lab was shut down, according to Fidler.

On the 5-element Flag Diagram below, we can clearly see that the Knight Ridder team's solution was missing key system elements (P.Payload, Distribution, Control).

As for the amazon's solution, it has all the system elements in place and highly functional.

Despite its misleading headline, this NewScientist article gives a good description of a new type of user interface devices:

In the coming months, cheap headsets that let you control technology with the electrical signals generated by your firing neurons will go on sale to the general public.

Australian outfit Emotiv will release a headset whose 16 sensors make it possible to direct 12 different movements in a computer game. Emotiv says the helmet can also detect emotions.

Californian company NeuroSky has also built a device that can detect emotions: the firm says it can tell whether you are focused, relaxed, afraid or anxious, for example.

Assuming these devices do become successful, how can we come up with a good estimate on when it is going to happen?