Picking up on yesterday’s post and Seppo’s comment, another topic that has been coming up in my conversations is the idea of “social technology”. This doesn’t mean social software, where technology is applied for social purposes like Facebook or LinkedIn, but instead the idea of creating better social patterns that we can use. In this […]
Social capitalist
I’ve been playing with this idea for a few weeks, and it’s not quite coming together, so I’m going to ramble for a bit and see whether it starts to solidify as I go. It started with a quip I made to a friend last month where I claimed that the winners of the last […]
Intelligence in Google world
In a comment on my strategic intuition post, Seppo asked the interesting question, “How will Google change the way we *think*?” In particular, he notes that sheer accumulation of facts once was a metric of intelligence, but in a world where Google is accessible from our pocket phones, mere facts don’t have the value they […]
Playing the Lost Sport
I’ve been a fan of Jane McGonigal for a few years now, and enjoyed playing her Cruel 2 B Kind game in the Come Out and Play festival two years ago. So when she said she was running another game in this year’s festival, I signed up. The game ties into the Olympics in that […]
Strategic Intuition and Expertise
On Monday night, I went to a talk by William Duggan, a Columbia business school professor who studies strategy, on a concept that he calls strategic intuition. Duggan has written a book on the subject, and has set up a blog to discuss the concept. Duggan started by discussing the differences between expert intuition and […]
World-Systems Analysis, by Immanuel Wallerstein
Amazon link A friend suggested that I learn more about Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis, as it is also derived from the Annales historical school that spawned Bruno Latour’s work that I like so much. This is a brief 90-page introduction to the concept which nonetheless provides a good overview of the field. Let me quote from […]
New York vs. the Bay Area
I’ve been out of touch for a bit (I officially graduated from Columbia as evidenced by the happy cap’n’gown icon to the left, then ran off to California to marry my sister off and see some friends afterwards, and then was struck down by a bug from all the excitement), but it’s time to get […]
Adversarial vs. collaborative communication styles
Continuing on my recent theme of zero-sum vs. non-zero-sum thinking in management, today I want to discuss two different communication styles, which I am calling adversarial and collaborative. The adversarial style is essentially the Thunderdome approach to communication: “Two ideas enter, one idea leaves.” The default assumption of the adversarialist is that the other person’s […]
Management lessons from ultimate frisbee
As those of you who follow my other feeds know, I’ve taken up playing ultimate frisbee again with the Manhattan Ultimate league. While the main benefit is getting back into shape after two years of class-induced neglect, I also really enjoy playing ultimate because of the philosophy baked into the rules of the game. If […]
The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley
Amazon link I’ve heard great things about Ideo, often called the leading product design firm in the world. Last year, in my “Managing Innovation” class, we watched a Nightline special called the Deep Dive, where Nightline gave Ideo one week to re-design the shopping cart. It was a great look inside the company’s innovation process, […]
