The Five Discovery Skills of Innovators
In a post on the HBS blog titled How Do Innovators Think?, a pair of professors who interviewed 3,000 creative executives riff on the five skills common to all: The first skill is what we call...
View ArticleObtaining Honest Feedback
Earlier this year I was lucky to participate in a group dinner with five accomplished, interesting people. One guy at the table you’ve probably heard of — let’s call him Unaware Big Man — began...
View ArticleHow to Kill It: Passion and Patience
Gary Vaynerchuk delivered a highly entertaining 15 minute "keynote" at last year's Web 2.0 conference which is ostensibly about "how to build a personal brand" but is really about passion, hustle,...
View ArticleHow to Dodge a Difficult Question
Econ blogger Steve Waldman, who recently participated in a meeting with Treasury Department officials, takes note of the technique employed by officials to dodge difficult questions: In response to a...
View ArticleGoal: More At-Bats Per Unit of Time and Money
From Gary Hamel’s CliffNotes version of how to “outrun change”: Yet to outpace change, every organization is going to have to master the art of rapid prototyping. Here the goal is to maximize the ratio...
View ArticleReason is the Steering Wheel. Emotion is the Gas Pedal.
Good decisions require a mix of dispassionate, rational analysis and emotion. Though we often hear of emotion and passion clouding the decision making process, research shows that feelings help us make...
View ArticlePeter Thiel on Baby Boomers and Bailouts
Peter Thiel did a 25 minute video interview on Big Think, a wonderful site if you're looking for video brain food. He answered questions from Scott Summers, Will Wilkinson, Arnold Kling, and others....
View Article14 Thoughts on Advice Giving and Receiving
Tyler Cowen discusses the economics of advice and makes two interesting claims: You don't know what a person really thinks until you hear his or her advice. Along these lines, if you really want to...
View ArticleThe Myth of Efficiency
James Kwak's excellent post The Myth of Efficiency is rooted in the idea that for most professionals "the length of their workday isn’t set by a clock, but by their sense of when they’ve done enough...
View ArticleThe “Easy Out” Email Technique
Life is a sales call. Every day we're trying to sell something to somebody — from as little as convincing someone to join you for dinner to as big as selling a potential employer on your credentials....
View ArticleThe “It” Quality
In the business world investors are looking for TheGuy, according to Randall Stross: The guy. No special emphasis on either the or guy, but no intervening pause, either. TheGuy. That’s the person...
View ArticleThe Difference Between Banality and Profundity
Generally a few billion dollars, Daniel Gross says, in a short Slate piece: The real alchemy of finance is to endow those skilled at finance to wield authority in adjacent or even unrelated areas....
View ArticleRobert Solow on Markets and Their Limitations
His review of Cassidy’s book How Markets Fail in the New Republic a couple months ago is superb. He clearly describes basic economics, what a free market can do, and where it falls short. Excerpt: …in...
View ArticleThe Two Schools of Strategy
…the history of strategy as a struggle between two definitions, strategy as positioning and strategy as organizational learning. The positioning school, led by Harvard’s Porter, sees strategy making as...
View ArticleTime Allocation Goals vs. Output Goals
When people set goals they usually define clear, measurable outputs. E.g.: “Today I’m going to write 1,000 words” or “This afternoon I’m going to finish QA testing this version release.” But this...
View ArticleThe Procrastination Risk in the Maker’s Schedule
Paul Graham wrote a popular essay a year ago contrasting the "Maker's Schedule" with the "Manager's Schedule": The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book,...
View ArticleAgainst Occupational Licensing
Matthew Yglesias discusses the follies of occupational licensing, citing the case of whether barbers ought to have licenses to set up shop: If you just assume optimal implementation of regulation, then...
View ArticleHiring and Business
This week Steve Newcomb and Ben Horowitz both wrote dynamite posts on hiring and business. In Steve's post, he sets up the topic this way: What happens when founders try to sleep at night is this:...
View ArticleAsking About a Person’s Weaknesses
Austrian entrepreneur Hermann Hauser, in an interview in yesterday's FT, was asked about his three worst features. His answer: "I am impatient, I don't suffer fools gladly, and I am too demanding."...
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Sometimes It’s Faster to Do It Yourself
When it comes to delegating or outsourcing small tasks, the question always is, "Would it be faster if I just did it myself?" I was struck by this thought when I saw the following picture of Barack...
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