Time for Everything: Letting Go to Find Flow

Filed Under Analysis, Perfect Virtual Manager, Productivity, Successful Blog, Trends | 26 Comments

A Time for Everything

To everything there is a season,
A time to drive, a time to eat,
A time to type, a time to hear,
A time to connect, a time to reflect,
A time for phones, a time for elevators.
To everything, there is a season — paraphrased from Ecclesiastes 3

A few days ago, Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users wrote about a product called Twitter.

For those of you who don’t know about Twitter, it has one purpose in life–to be (in its own words)–A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? And people answer it. And answer it. And answer it. Over and over and over again, every moment of every hour, people type in a word, fragment, or sentence about what they’re doing right then. (Let’s overlook the fact that there can be only one true answer to the question: “I’m typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now… which is typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now.” Or something else that makes my head hurt.)

Click the title to see the product page

twitter

Why would anyone want to do that?

Twitter also a tool for

  • Social Networking System
  • Chatroom
  • Microblogging
  • Multiplexer
  • Group Communicator
  • RSS Feed
  • Salon
  • Meme
  • MLM

For me, that makes it worse. I had seen Twitter, and frankly I hoped that it would just go away. I see it as one of the weird worm holes of an overly plugged-in culture that I’m trying fiercely to avoid.

Kathy Sierra makes fun of twitter for the same reason that I avoided it. We both see it as one more way to fragment our attention in a world that already does a great job of doing so.

Finding focus is impossible when we live in a state of constant interruption. Call me cold and unfeeling, but I don’t care about some stranger’s cat named Fluffy — and it irritates me when that stranger makes a call in an elevator to find out about Fluffy, invading my space, my thoughts, making me virtually invisible — practically screaming that I don’t exist. Exactly how rude is that?

I’m all about finding Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“>Flow.
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Brats: The Highly-Adapted, New Model Human!

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Trends | 6 Comments

Not Just Kids at Heart

Trendspotters 101 logo

Have you bumped into full-grown adults lately who seem to have missed the maturity train? Maybe you’ve been one. I know I have. I’m not talking about kids at heart. I mean kids in most all behaviors including these.

  • short attention spans
  • unexplainable sense of fashion
  • heightened need for fast action, novelty, and sensation
  • lack of respect for tradition
  • unpredictability, and lack of balance in priorities
  • a tendency to overreact

When I was a kid, we had a name for when we acted too much that way.

I found out his week — we’re no longer brats!

Now at least one scientist, B.G. Charlton, is saying that immature behavior is the best thing going for the human race.
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Don’t Design for Comments: Design to Give Readers an Experience

Filed Under Analysis, Customer Think, Design, Great Finds, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

The Right Thought, Not Far Enough

Customer Think Logo

I talked about design and comments in a post Friday. My theory, based on my experience and continuous conversations with readers, was that design has an impact on whether we leave a comment in response to what we read. I was on the right track, but my thinking was just short of where it should have taken me. I should have gone deeper. I also should have left more room for other folks to add their experiences. Details in such conversations are the the nuggets and the takeaways.

We Break Stuff Said It Better

This morning I read an article from We Break Stuff on design.

What We Break Stuff says is crucial and brilliant.

I’m not talking about large type, gradient and rounded-corner design, but the understand user needs, develop meaningful experiences design. I’m talking about the art of tailoring products to the necessities of the user, creating emotional connections and building compelling solutions.

Emotional Connection — I felt that thought, I recognized it when I read it. We Break Stuff had nailed it.

Let’s take a look at how they propose we give readers a complete and compelling experience.
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Booz Allen Hamilton on Money and Innovation

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Productivity, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

I Agree, But I’m Not Surprised

BusinessWeekONLINE

On November 13, Booz Allen Hamilton released the 2nd Annual Global Innovation 1,000 Survey. Business week’s Jesse Stanton summarized the study in an article “How to Turn Money Into Innovation,” on November 14.

The study, which analyzes the relationship between R&D spending and performance, focused on the 1,000 public companies located anywhere in the world that spent the most on Research and Development in 2005. The study by Booz Allen Hamilton found that

  • R&D spending is on the rise, but as a percentage of overall sales it is falling. Companies are finding ways to optimize their investment in R&D.
  • Gross profits as a percentage of sales is the ONLY PERFORMANCE VARIABLE THAT SHOW A RELATIONSHIP.
  • No correlation exists between R&D spending and the number of patents that result.
  • Sales growth, financial performance, operating profitability, and earnings growth show NO STATISTICAL RELATIONSHIP to R&D spending.
  • An increase in outsourcing to and funding in Research and Development in China and India is being fueld by a need to be closer to fast-growing markets

The Booz Allen Harrison study showed that some companies have learned how to successfully underspend in R&D and overperform in providing innovation — their spending on average half as much on R&D as their peers in industry, but their performance is as much as three times higher. The companies that stand out in the study include Kellogg, Apple, Boston Scientific, Tata Motos, Christian Dior, and Kobe Street.

High innovating companies each follow their own unique model.

  • Black and Decker coordinates design from its worldwide headquarters, but aligns R&D closely with individual business units.
  • SanDisk strategic decisions are made by a small group of executives who meet biweekly.
  • Google generates ideas as part of its distinct skills set.
  • Toyota develops products and processes effectively and efficiently.
  • Apple understands customers and product selection.

The similaries found in the Booz Allen Hamilton Survey weren’t surprising.These common factors included what Booz Allend called a “value chain.” The value chain speaks to four key areas in which highly innovative companies exhibited strong competency: ideation, project selection, product development, and commecialization. Innovation is a company-wide investment.

Sustainable innovation depends on having the tools and processes to move from ideation through commercialization. Second, successful companies link R&D with C—customers. At Illinois Tool Works (ITW), for example, R&D engineers are required to spend time working in customers’ plants — Business Week Online on the Booz Allen Hamilton Blogal Innovation 1,000.

Mr. Stanton asks for more concrete answers. I find the value chain confirmation here is powerful enough model. Innovation thrives in a culture that values innovation beyond the simple action of throwing money in the direction of generating new ideas. The investment of currency in innovation has to be considered, thought through as any sound business venture does. Such an invetment recquires thoughtful process from ideation through the decision to move forward on a project, through every customer centered decision that drives the development, to each piece and parcle that introduces and informs the public about the new product during the commercialization phase.

In other words, innovation must be based in quality thinking that that stands on a firm and deep intimacy with the customers’ experience and understanding of the customers’ needs. That is the key driver to productive and useful innovative change that fuels growth.

How new is that idea?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Click the title to read the Business Week article
How to Turn Money into Innovation

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Adventure Mode and Airports . . .

Filed Under Analysis, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, Writing | 12 Comments

I've been thinking . . .
Thanksgivng is the busiest travel time of the year.

I used to travel a lot — not as much as some, but way more than most. For almost three years, the longest time I spent with my pillow was 21 days and that only happened once. Several times I was away over 40 days. I got good at traveling.

What I learned was to go into adventure mode. I bet you remember adventure mode from childhood. It’s that way of looking at the world as if everything is an adventure — a game, something fun and exciting.

When a plane was delayed, adventure mode would kick in. I would start looking for where the story would begin. Everyone knows that no matter how awful a traveling delay can get, if you get a good story, it’s not a total and complete wipe out.

My best story is when I was stuck in an airport for four days.

If you travel over the holidays, be safe, travel well, and come back to us. If you run into delays, remember adventure mode . . . and bring back a story to tell us.

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