The webpage with that graphic is titled “Music Makes You Smarter” and is targeted at college students, saying “…a little music therapy … might be the key to acing that next exam” and “Studies show that music has a strong effect on your mood levels and emotions, and also on how you think and your general intelligence.” Check out that webpage for more information about the benefits of music, particularly on taking music lessons and playing a musical instrument.

One statistic there that I got a kick out of was that listeners of Beethoven had higher SAT scores than listeners of Pop, Rock, and Country music styles. I’ve written about Beethoven in this blog and spoke about him a couple of times in podcasts attached to this website; type “Beethoven” in the Search box at the top of this page for more. In fact, in my very first blog entry and podcast, Episode 0: Introduction, I discuss why I use Beethoven music in the intro and outro of the podcasts.

As a related personal note, when I was going for my MSEE back in the 1980s, I would take notes in class in my “scratch” notebooks, scribbling as much as possible, and as part of studying the material at home, re-write my notes in my “clean” notebooks. I tried to present the information in the clean notebooks as clearly and correctly as possible, using different colored pens and pencils, straight edges, and drawing templates, filling out mathematical calculations, using headers and footers, correcting mistakes in my scratch notes, etc. One of the things I’d do while rewriting my notes and doing homework was put a classical album LP on the turntable (this was before CDs) and just let it play over and over while I worked. My Beethoven symphonies and other Bethoven albums got by far the most play.

I loved that. Honestly, I never tired of listening to Beethoven. I don’t know if doing that made me smarter, but as that onlinecollege.org graphic says, I think it did help me study longer and retain more.

Thinking generically is a way of breaking out of a functional fixedness cognitive bias in which the traditional way of using something is seen as the only way to use that thing, thus limiting new, different, and possibly novel uses for an object.

For example, if someone needed a platform on their charcoal grill in order to cook corn on so the corn is higher from the hot charcoal and won’t burn, someone with a high degree of functional fixedness wouldn’t see that their metal mesh grilling basket that they use to roast vegetables and seafood in could be turned upside down and used as a platform. (Yes, this is a real example of what I needed and did last weekend, and it worked beautifully!)

The Scientific American Mind article describes the two-step technique that Tony McCaffrey developed:

1. Break down the items at hand into their constituent parts, then
2. Name the parts generically so that the name doesn’t imply a specific meaning or use of the parts.

One example used in the article is breaking a candle down into wax and string, the trick being that string does not convey the same use as the name wick. A wick is something you light; a string is something you use for a wider variety of things.

If you receive such an email, DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINK.

This past week I’ve been getting a number of bounced email messages indicating that the original senders are from the explodingcreativity.com domain. The last three emails were sent by Sung <Robt6133B3@explodingcreativity.com>, Ivory <KirbyFAF70@explodingcreativity.com>, and Gordon <Marlon94DC3@explodingcreativity.com>. There is only one defined email address for the explodingcreativity.com domain, there are no Sung, Ivory, or Gordon users or Robt6133B3, KirbyFAF70, or Marlon94DC3 email addresses for explodingcreativity.com, and no email was sent from the explodingcreativity.com domain.

It looks like the originating IP addresses are different and from various places around the world. The emails being sent all have the subject line of Newsletter and are Rich Text formatted. They contain the text “Make a good profit. Get discounts here.” Above that is the line, “If you can’t see this email, click here”, which is linked to various Russian URLs (with the .ru domain extension), which all are for the same website hawking various drugs.

The links to the Russian websites contain identifying information so that the website can track how the person came to the website. Please do not click on any link in these emails.

• Educational toys? Try DIY science experiments instead, USA Today article by Liz Szabo, 13 December 2011. Szabo gives some simple, inexpensive experiments you can do with your kids aged 3 to 10.
• Simple gifts of learning spark creativity, curiosity in kids, USA Today article by Liz Szabo, 13 December 2011. Szabo gives suggestions for some inexpensive gifts that will spark creativity and curiosity in young children.
• This Year, Give Them Brains, Scientific American article by Anna Kuchment, December 2011. Scientists’ and educators’ picks for fostering inquiry for younger and older kids.

April Joyner in the Tapping Customers for Product Ideas article in the November 2010 issue of Inc Magazine describes how Volusion has set up a formal process of soliciting and vetting customer suggestions and the product development based on them. Volusion:

• Sends out a monthly survey to its customers which includes questions on customer loyalty and which improvements the customer would like to see.
• Built its own online forum that lets customers submit ideas and vote for the suggestions they like, modeled on Digg.
• A group of employees from different departments meets each week and evaluates the ideas.
• Once the group has approved of a new feature, sales and customer service employees follow up with those who made the suggestions and gather additional information for the software developers.
• Then the software developers start development.

• People whose work involves complex relationships , setting up elaborate systems, or dealing with people or difficult problems tend to perform better on cognitive tests.
• New tasks stimulate the brain most.
• Training that involves switching mental tasks quickly aid in cognitive tests. I’m absolutely not a fan of multitasking, but I guess it does have some kind of benefit, at least to the individual, if not the tasks.
• Music lessons are linked to higher IQ throughout life.

The December 3-4, 2011, Wall Street Journal article To Sleep, Perchance to Dream–But Why?, by Matt Ridley, answers why.

Ridley writes that recent research on dreams has shown that dreaming is a symptom that our brains are transforming new memories into more permanent memories, giving the memories mental context and extracting their meanings. He writes that people dream throughout sleep, not just in REM sleep, and that non-REM dreams are more literal than REM dreams.

The bottom line is that sleeping improves memory performance.

• Original Sinners from the Wall Street Journal’s December 3-4, 2011, edition
• Innovation’s Hard Part from Fortune Magazine’s December 6, 2010, issue

The Original Sinners article was about ethics, describing a study that ‘probed’ students’ creativity and intelligence, and then gave them a test in which cheating was an option. The study found that the high scorers on creativity were more likely to cheat than the lower scorers, whereas there was no link between general IQ and the likelihood of cheating.

Hmm…so what are we to think of this?? Are creative people really more prone to be ethically challenged? Are creative people more likely to be risk takers, and cheating a risk they are more likely to take if given the chance? Are creative people creative about their concept of ethics and more likely to bend their ethics under certain circumstances? Is the experiment described really even valid?

As I was pondering these questions, the Fortune Magazine article caught my attention. (I save magazines for a year and then re-read them before tossing them in to the recycling container.) Innovation’s Hard Part is a book review of The Other Side of Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. I’m sure they make more points in their book, but the very thin book review says the authors show that innovative ideas get more attention than they’re due, and the hard part is executing on them.

So that got me thinking that maybe the creative students considered cheating a short-cut to execution (the end result, in this case being filled-in bubbles on a question form). Or maybe creative people are more lazy than others and instead of expending the energy to master something and execute on something, when the end-result appears they’re more likely to take the short cut. I don’t know.

I do know, though, you have to be careful who you do business with. Diversification is fine, but it’s important to have the same values.

Lehrer writes that people experience two distinct reactions to failure. The first one is a mostly involuntary reaction, called Error-Related Negativity, that appears about 50 milliseconds after the failure. The second one is called Error Positivity, and happens when we dwell upon the disappointing result.

We learn most from failure when our Negativity response is large, meaning the reaction to the failure was strong, and when our Positivity response is consistent, meaning we focus on the failure and are trying to learn from it.

Our Negativity response may be more automated, but how we think of things greatly controls our Positivity response. If our mindset is one in which we think we can learn from failure (a growth mindset), obviously that helps us in this type of situation. If our mindset is one in which we think mistakes happen as a result of stupidity and nothing can be done about them (a fixed mindset), that does not help us learn from failure.

Lehrer writes about an interesting experiment that showed that if people were praised for being smart, they tended towards a fixed mindset, and if they were praised for their effort they tended towards a growth mindset. That reminded me of a company I worked at years ago where a senior manager told everyone at the company that the company would not reward people for their efforts, only for their results. That company no longer exists today.

The information in this article is geared towards someone taking an exam, like in high school or college, and it’s easy to see how this information can apply to someone going on a job interview. A good deal of this information also applies to our creative endeavors, and will be familiar with those familiar with this blog.

Shellenbarger writes that a growing body of research on study techniques shows that to do optimally on a test, you should:

• Repeatedly test yourself before the exam, like with practice tests, to teach the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory and to help with test-taking skills. I used this technique years ago, first when studying for the GED to graduate high school a year early, then for the SAT, then for the EIT and PE exams. Back in the day, I just went to a general bookstore or technical bookstore and picked up a book on practice exams. Now, I would assume these can all be found on-line.
• Get enough sleep
• The night before the exam, review the toughest material right before going to bed. Presumably this helps in recalling the information the next day. I bet it also gives you a restless sleep.
• Don’t wake up earlier than usual the day of the exam in order to study, as that could interfere with REM sleep that aids in memory retention.
•  Don’t do the “all-nighter.” This practice is linked to lower grades and impairs reasoning and memory for as long as four days. I’ve never done an all-nighter…never had the stamina, actually, and just on the face of it it always seemed like a bad idea. People will do this for work, too, working long hours, but I always wonder if they wind up creating more problems than they solve.
• Sleeping and napping and have been discussed in this blog elsewhere. Search for it.
• Eat right
• High-carb, high fiber, slow-digesting foods are best
• Eat breakfast the morning of an exam. Oatmeal is good. I like mixing it up with crushed wallnuts, wheat germ, a cut-up apple or banana, and if it’s unflavored oatmeal a dollop of maple syrup.
• What you eat a week in advance of the exam matters, too. Eat a balanced diet with fruits and vegetables.
• Avoid distractions, like music, text messages, TV, and email.
• Reduce anxiety on the day of the exam as that can impair performance
• If taking the exam in an unfamiliar place, visit the room or location in advance, if possible.
• Set aside 10 minutes before the exam to write down your fears and anxieties.
• Before the test, envision yourself answering questions calmly and with confidence.

Korn writes of a new report by Booz & Co showing little correlation between the amount a company spends on R&D and the perception of the company as being innovative by other companies. For example, out of 1,000 companies, Apple ranked 70th in terms of R&D spending but was perceived as the most innovative company; Google ranked 34th in R&D spending but was rated 2nd most innovative; and 3M ranked 86th in R&D spending but was rated 3rd most innovative.

Korn also gives examples of how companies encourage creativity:

• Involve employees company wide to help generate ideas.
• Hold interdepartmental brainstorming sessions.
• Provide a Web forum for recommendations. In this regard I’ll provide a shameless plug for Web2Intranet.com.
• Pfizer, which ranked 2nd in R&D spending and was rated 16th for innovation, invites researchers to attend business meetings and encourages employees on the commercial side to attend scientific reviews.
• 3M, mentioned in the podcast episode on Serendipity and in my book review of Built to Last, allows employees spend 15% of their time exploring side projects and offers seed grants to encourage innovation.

The guide opens with certain points about finding creative people, like it can be time-consuming and that a creative person in a non-creative job will be frustrated. All well and good, but then it quotes someone saying:

It’s most important when it’s going to cost you a lot of money if the new hire makes a mistake.

As has been written & spoken about in this blog & podcast and elsewhere, tolerance for failure and mistakes, and even expecting and embracing them, is inherent in the cultures of creative organizations. Let’s just tolerate the above quote as a mistake.

The guide continues with the steps in finding innovators, starting with the basic managerial decision making process of defining what it is you want. (Brought to mind Episode 4: Decision Making and Creativity.) This part mentioned breadth creativity—seeing the big picture—vs. depth creativity—ingenuity within a specific realm. This part discusses how many companies find it difficult to integrate truly outside-the-box thinkers, but also says that if you find your organization has a limited acceptance of creativity, then you may need to “refurbish the company culture,” and offers advice for that in a side panel (see below).

The next step is to attract the talent. Convey the organization’s goals and values in each communication medium, and add some flair to your job postings. The job postings can also be used to filter for specific kinds of creativity, like asking the candidates to submit samples of their work or asking for proposed solutions to a specific challenge they may face on the job. And consider looking outside your organization’s industry to perhaps find someone with a different perspective (which brought to mind Episode 5: Diversity and Creativity…ah, the memories…). This part ended with the statement:

Expertise can be acquired; creativity generally can’t.

I guess I’ll have to tolerate that as another mistake. I certainly hope this website is helping people in their pursuit of acquiring greater creativity. If nothing else, just click on the Creativity Tips and Techniques link in the Categories section on the right hand side of each webpage here; that should help in picking up tools to help make you more creative.

The last step in finding innovators deals with the interview process. Behavioral interviewing is discussed (“Tell me about a time when you…”, “Describe an experience when you…”). You can ask the candidate to describe a time when they faced a new situation and how they dealt with it, or ask them to respond to a situation your team recently faced and how they would have approached it. The key here is to evaluate the candidate’s thought processes; look for alternatives and trade-offs, taking into account different perspectives and stakeholders, coming up with development plans, or whatever you think is appropriate.

Other interviewing techniques written about were having the candidate create sample work (writing, art, design), putting the candidate in a role-playing scenario, and giving them a writing exercise, like coming up with a marketing plan in 30 minutes.

The end of the guide contained two sidebars. One was on Building a Creative Culture, making the point that you’ll need to find ways to inspire and motivate a creative team (really, any kind of team), and for creative people:

• Inspire with work, as work itself is a primary motivator. I find this to be exceptionally true: when I’m tired and not feeling well, when I’m working in the groove I don’t notice feeling bad at all, but when I stop to take a break, that’s when the feelings of being sick & tired set in.
• Compensate with care. You don’t want your people feeling manipulated, and you don’t want them to feel unappreciated.
• Create happiness, as people felt more creative when they were happy. Or at least don’t create unhappiness, if possible.

The second sidebar gave suggestions for specific questions on how to probe a candidate for creativity. I’ll let you read article on Inc.com for that.

Cognitive Psychologist Robert Sternberg in his book, College Admissions for the 21st Century, argues that standardized tests, like the SAT and ACT, overvalue analytic abilities at the expense of leadership, creativity, and wisdom, and as Dean of Tufts instituted Project Kaleidoscope aimed to test high school applicants on such qualities.

Seems like a great idea to me. If that catches on, you’d think high schools would start emphasizing those qualities in their education programs. Pipe dream? I hope not.

The article discusses that if you feel your employees are getting more conservative, perhaps slower, playing it safe in order to not make mistakes, and you want more innovation, then you must realize that higher innovation also involves more failures, so you need to tolerate and even encourage and reward risk taking and the inevitable failures that come with it. I think an analogy can be found in baseball, in which the home run kings are also the strike-out kings (or at least can be—don’t hold me to baseball stats).

The idea here is not to reward just any failure (don’t reward failure as the result of laziness of sloppiness, for example), but to reward “Heroic Failure”, for taking a big, edgy risk. Likewise, this kind of failure is not to be hidden, but to be shared, discussed, and learned from (a tuition of sorts).

The article gave some other ways companies try to foster innovation:

• No meeting times or days
• Creating a team or a division for innovations
• Game or nap rooms
• Art-filled atriums
• Hiking trails
• Meditation rooms
• Limiting teams to a small number, like 5 people
• Encouraging trust and open communication and discussion

The article also had a sidebar on other facets of creativity:

• Being last in the family, as opposed to the first-born, tends to help in being more creative
• Being aggressive, egocentric, or antisocial helps in being creative, while being resistant to change or giving up easily tends to inhibit creativity
• Taking time off and letting ideas gel helps creativity, whereas working doggedly on a goal tends to inhibit creativity
• Having the freedom to take risks, working on a variety of assignments, and multiple projects at once helps creativity, while pressure to play it safe will have the opposite effect

The first cut of the video is what I had originally envisioned. On reviewing it for the upteenth time, it seemed to me to sound too plain so I added background music. And then the ending of the video seemed too “cute” for a business related website, so I produced it without that ending.

And the waffling continued. Did the background music and that original ending distract from the information I was trying to convey or did they add entertainment value to it? I produced four versions of the video with all the combinations: background music present and not, the ending present and not. In the end I chose distraction-free information over entertainment, so the video I presented on the website does not have background music and does not have the ending I originally envisioned.

However, I thought for ExplodingCreativity.com I’ll present two versions here, one with background music and the ending, and the other as given on Web2Intranet.com. Let me know which you like better –

Here’s the one with background music and the alternate ending.

Here’s the one without background music and without the above one’s ending.

A man, a camcorder, and a green screen…it’s a beautiful thing. Well, may not be overly beautiful, but it sure is a fun and creative thing to do. I’m thinking now of creating a Video Setup page that details my setup and process for producing these videos, like my Podcast Setup page does for the ExplodingCreativity podcasts. As interesting as it may be for someone else, it would actually be helpful for me so I don’t forget something after a long time from doing the last video. If I don’t write it down, I’ll forget, or at least have to re-learn something the hard-way as opposed to the easy-way of reviewing my notes on it.

Fisher writes that three new studies have found that, in the business world, creativity is seldom rewarded with promotions, effectively filtering creative people from leadership positions, and that this may be due to an ingrained expectation that creative people are unpredictable whereas people want their leaders to give a sense of security by maintaining the status quo.

Is this good or bad? I think it’s bad if this means that being regarded as creative is used as a disqualification of being in a leadership position, which is how I read Fisher’s blog. However, being creative should not be the sole qualification for being in a leadership position, either.

And then there’s always entrepreneurship, which I’m certain many frustrated creative people have turned to to create their own leadership position.

Clive Thompson writes about drawing in his article, Think Visual. Thomson writes that the best way to solve a complicated problem may well be to use drawings and pictures, that such visual techniques allow people to more quickly understand an issue and have the same mental model of a problem, and that images provoke a creative leap (the “aha moment”) more often than verbal or writing techniques.

Thompson’s article points out that drawing, unfortunately, is considered childish, and that people with higher verbal skills are thought more highly of, including in our school systems.

Related to education and drawing is a company named Smart Technologies which sells large interactive screens to schools, as profiled in a Forbes October 9, 2009, article, Getting to The Top of the Class. These screens replace the old whiteboards and even older chalkboards. The screens can be attached to the Internet, providing a “portal to the digital world,” students and teachers can manipulate what’s on the screen with their fingers, and they can be used as a blackboard, too. The founders of Smart Technologies believe these screens increase student participation and enjoyment in their learning and so decrease behavioral problems and help the students to achieve more. I sure hope so.

• Refresh talent often. Genentech has a postdoctoral program where up to 120 Ph.D holders are awarded fellowships for up to four years. These postdoc fellows are not assigned to any particular project, but work on the research of their own choosing, and that research might later be applied to future products. This results in a constant flow of new, diverse people and ideas moving through the company, keeping the “real innovative, entrepreneurial, creative spirit” around the company.
• Encourage risk taking. Most high-risk projects fail, but those that don’t often provide true breakthroughs.
• Share results. This is through papers in scientific journals.

Genentech’s creative processes tie in well with an October 2010 article in Wired Magazine, Where Ideas Come From, where authors Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson are interviewed. Kelly and Johnson discuss how innovation typically comes not from an isolated lone genius, but rather from environments in which diverse, passionate creators interact and influence each other. These environments produce an increasingly diverse number of things, resulting in an increase of “crap” but also of great things.

So here we have the creativity concepts of diversity, risk taking, and collaboration.

Another interesting point Kelly and Johnson make is that an innovation will only be valuable if it’s not too far ahead of its time. If too many intermediate steps need to be taken, then the innovation will languish. For example, the computer had to be invented before the internet could be developed; inventing the internet before the computer would not have been valuable. The most valuable inventions are usually those that take the smallest possible step to generate the most change.

We’re all familiar with user-generated content: anyone who posts a YouTube video or adds to their Facebook wall creates that. User-generated innovation, of course,  is where users of a product or service drive that product’s or service’s (or company’s) innovation. This could be from utilizing Wisdom of the Crowds techniques, like forums in which users suggest features they’d like, or observing closely how users use (or try to use) your product or service, to having users actually design and implement the innovative feature, new product, or service. Netflix did the latter by offering a $1 million dollar prize to anyone or any group that could develop software that improved customer movie recommendations by at least 10%.

Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, said that most business problems can’t be solved by outsourced committees, but if you try to do that, “the trick is finding problems in your business that you can package cleanly, where you can provide a sample data set and a very clear evaluation metric.” This is really part of good project management—who does what by when, where the who is whoever steps up, the what is the clearly defined problem definition and expected results, and the when is whenever the problem is solved or the end limit is reached, whichever comes first.

Here’s another article on daydreaming and creativity from the November 2009 issue of Wired Magazine: Why an idling mind is the mother of invention, by Clive Thompson.

Thompson discusses a study that shows how often people lose concentration (a full one-third of the time), and that when our minds drift the parts of our brains associated with memory and problem solving become busier, thus facilitating creativity. He makes an interesting point about how a focus on productivity tries to minimize mental drift, and how that may actually be counterproductive. And finally, he writes that maybe the distractions provided by social networks (Facebook, YouTube, and the like) and games might actually be a good thing.

There is another concept associated with creativity that is the antithesis of daydreaming and distraction, called Flow, in which a person is fully immersed in a task, where concentration on the task is effortless, they feel real joy in performing the task, and they lose an awareness of time (“time flies by”) and even their own needs of resting and eating. The Wikipedia article on Flow is very interesting, especially the section on Group flow, which seems almost identical to how a brainstorming session should be setup.

Flow may be difficult to achieve. People who are very skilled in their tasks and whose tasks challenge them may be able to enter the state of flow easier than others in different circumstances. Perhaps the bottom line is that if you’re not flowing, then daydreaming isn’t bad; if you are flowing, then daydreaming isn’t even an option.

References mentioned in this episode:

• Web2Intranet Home Page
• Francine Mancini, Consulting and Coaching Services
• Episode 1: Notebooks
• Episode 7: Brainstorming
• Episode 2: Introduction to Creativity
• TED Talk on Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky
• Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, by Clay Shirky
• Episode 10: Dark Side of Creativity
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoffrey Colvin

This book is about high performance and achievement, whether in a sport, music, art, science, engineering, medicine, chess, etc. The title comes by Colvin first explaining how there has been no discovery of any genetic component to talent; i.e., there is no scientific evidence that any person is born with an inherent talent for anything.

Colvin describes the process by which people do achieve high performance. This is called Deliberate Practice. This is a process by which someone continually stretches their abilities, through a repetitive process with a lot of feedback.

Colvin goes into what deliberate practice does to a person and where the motivation comes from for a person to dedicate themselves to the practice.

Now, if I can only get my kids to read this book.

Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent, by John C. Maxwell

After reading “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin, I felt I had to read “Talent is Never Enough” by John C. Maxwell. Whereas “Talent is Overrated” takes the perspective that God-given talent may not really exist and then gives a study of Deliberate Practice that leads to high performance, “Talent is Never Enough” starts with the assumption that God-given talent does exists, but, as the title states, it is never enough for achievement. Maxwell writes that what is needed is:

- Belief
- Passion
- Initiative
- Focus
- Preparation
- Practice
- Perseverance
- Courage
- Being teachable
- One’s personal character
- Relationships with others
- Responsibility
- Teamwork

There’s a chapter for each of the topics with plenty of examples.

For me, the book started out as a “rah-rah” book, cheer-leading one on to self-help. However, a couple of the points in the book did personally resonate strongly with me, and I suspect there would be a point or two or more most other people would strongly resonate with.

If you only wanted to read one book about talent, I would recommend “Talent is Overrated”. But you couldn’t go wrong reading this one, too.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins

A great book, and very popular. The company where a friend of mine works uses this book as the corporate philosophical guide (their “€œbible”). Collins previously wrote Built To Last about companies which started out and historically remained great. Good To Great describes companies that were historically mediocre or good and which became great, and discusses the commonalities of how they did that:

Leadership: humble, modest, fearless, with extreme professional will, who channel their egos and ambitions to the companies, not themselves; as opposed to a celebrity, larger-than-life type of leader. They train successors, do what needs to be done, give credit, and take responsibility.

Selection: they focused first on getting the right people in the company and then on vision and strategy. This is a common thread in business books: selection is key, as with the right people, you can do anything. Character traits (work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to commitments, and values) were focused on more than specific knowledge and skills (which are teachable).

Having unwavering faith that they will prevail AND confronting the brutal facts of their situations head-on. This is one reason the right leadership is so important, as people may not give a leader with a coercive or corrosive personality hard facts in fear of being retaliated against or labeled pessimistic. The right leader will confront the hard facts and do what needs to be done.

Working in an area that they are deeply passionate about and that they can be the best in the world at, and knowing exactly what drives cash flow and profitability and maximizing that. Collins calls this the Hedgehog Concept.

Combining a culture of discipline (while avoiding bureaucracy and hierarchy) with an ethic of entrepreneurship. Have a framework with clear constraints consistent with the Hedgehog concept, and give people freedom and responsibility to act within it. As important as knowing what to do, it is also important to know what to stop doing.

Use of carefully selected technologies that support the companies’ Hedgehog concept. Technology by itself cannot create momentum, but the right technology can accelerate it.

Continually, gradually implemented transformations. Sustainable transformations never happened in one big change, but rather by a cumulative, incremental process that added up over time.

Of the 11 good-to-great companies profiled in the book, two have since gone down in flames in the current economic climate: Fannie Mae and Circuit City. I wouldn’t let that discourage reading of the book, though. From looking at long-term stock charts on Yahoo Finance, it looks like most of the other companies, including Wells Fargo, would still fall into Collins’ good-to-great model, and there’s certainly plenty of good take away here.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras

An excellent book on what Collins calls Visionary Companies, companies that have been around for many decades, and in some cases a couple of centuries, and have been much more successful (over the long term) than companies started around the same time in the same industries. Some of the companies discussed are 3M, Boeing, Ford, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Sony, and Walt Disney. The authors describe what these companies did differently than their comparison companies:

They had very strong strategic intent, meaning very strong core values and core purposes (beyond just the making of profit) that were used in guiding them, and built-in many mechanisms into their companies (selection processes, reward systems, etc.) that reinforced their values.

Many of them used Big Hairy Audacious Goals, in some cases betting the entire company on them, to strongly motivate and inspire their people and to continue the company making progress. They would also try a lot of stuff (exemplified by 3M) and keep what worked. In order to keep making progress, these companies would try anything and everything, except those things that would be contrary to their core values.

As a general rule, these companies would grow their management teams, hardly ever hiring anyone from the outside, in order to maintain their core values. And they also built in mechanisms for constant improvement so complacency wouldn’t settle in and they’d lose their competitive edge.

The authors argue that the biggest achievement of these companies were in the architecting and building of the companies themselves in such a way that could endure and prosper for so long, across generations of different leaders, different products & services, and across the many changes in technology and society.

The things the visionary companies did not do as a rule was start with a great idea nor have the larger-than-life charismatic leader. In fact, in the comparison companies, early success and “great” leaders tended to work against the companies in the long run.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham

This is a Management 101 book, highly recommended. The authors describe what Great Managers do and how they do it: selecting the right people, defining the right outcomes, focusing on peoples’ strengths, and finding the right fit for the people they manage.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series), by Patrick Lencioni

A good book laying the foundations of teamwork, starting with the most fundamental building block of Trust, which leads to Healthy Conflict, which leads to Commitment, which leads to Accountability, which finally leads to Attention to Results. Lencioni writes most of the book in a fictional, or fable, form, which I didn’t appreciate until the second time I read the book, at which point I couldn’t put the book down. If you just want to get to the meat of the book first, start towards the end on the chapter titled The Model, then go back to the beginning of the book.

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials), by Peter F. Drucker

A Management 101 book, highly recommended. The title has Executive in its title, and Drucker defines an executive as a knowledge worker — someone whose contribution materially affects the capacity of an organization to perform and to obtain results, so this book is not just for the C-level folks. Drucker describes how to manage oneself for effectiveness:

- Manage your time effectively
- Focus on what you can contribute that will significantly affect the organization’s performance and results
- Focus on your and others’™ strengths, as opposed to focusing on and trying to improve weaknesses, though an executive with a corrupted character or integrity should not be in any position of power
- Do first things first and one thing at a time — no multitasking!
- Make effective decisions, covered in two excellent chapters

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by William L. Ury, Roger Fisher, Bruce M. Patton

Excellent book on negotiating. Ury has written two other books since, which he advises to read in reverse order, starting with “The Power of a Positive No”, then “Getting Past No”, and finally “Getting To Yes”. But you can’t go wrong reading this first in any case.

Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Sales:

Getting To Yes is a book on a method of negotiating that the authors call “principled negotiation.” It is a method they describe as being soft on people, but hard on the problem (the issue(s) being negotiated). This method is obviously appropriate for formal negotiations, but also for conflict resolution in general, as well as being directly applicable in sales situations other than formal negotiations; it can be used when negotiating for a raise, in determining the price of a house, in deciding where to go to dinner with your spouse, or in deciding a nuclear arms treaty. The authors argue that if agreement is possible, then this method will more likely produce an agreement that meets the legitimate interests of both sides to as great an extent as possible, in as an efficient a way as possible, while improving, or at least not damaging, the relationship between both sides.

The method consists of four propositions:

1. Separate the People from the Problem. This means dealing with “people problems” directly and separately from the negotiation issues so as to help build a relationship based on trust, understanding, respect, and friendship, which will help in future dealings. One skill needed here is emotional intelligence: understand the other side’s point of view, don’t assume the worst from or about them, don’t blame them for your problem (even if justified), recognize and deal appropriately with your and the other’s emotions, and make your proposals consistent with their values. Another important skill here is communication: listen actively and acknowledge what is being said, speak to be understood, and speak for a purpose (some things are better left unsaid).

2. Focus on Interests, Not on Positions. Interests are a side’s needs, desires, concerns, and fears, whereas a position is something decided upon to meet the interests. Uncover the other side’s interests by being empathetic and asking questions. Discuss your interests so the other side understands their importance and legitimacy, and acknowledge their interests.

3. Invent Options for Mutual Gain. This is a creative process where various options are thought of to satisfy both sides’ interests. One must be careful here to not jump to a premature judgment and to not narrow down the options — ”the idea is to first brainstorm (with or without the other side) to create as many options as possible in order to “expand the pie,” and then afterwards make a decision. The end result of this step is to present the other side with an option that meets their (and your) interests such that it makes their decision easy.

4. Insist on using Objective Criteria. When faced with clear conflicting interests, in order to produce wise agreements amicably and efficiently, this part of the method says to insist on using independent objective criteria to decide between different options or a compromise, as opposed to deciding based on the will of the sides. There are many different standards that can be used, like tradition, reciprocity, and professional standards, so the key is to decide, based on the issue, which one(s) apply. Even deciding based on a coin toss may be a fair way to decide an issue when no other fair way exists.

The rest of the book discusses developing your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Alternative (BATNA), how to handle the other side if they won’t behave in a principled manner, and other miscellaneous issues in principled negotiation.

The book emphasizes the importance of preparation, which applies whether one is preparing for a negotiation or a sales call. In one’s preparations, they definitely need to determine what their interests are, they need to try to determine what the other side’s interests are, and with that information invent as many options as possible and determine which objective criteria and/or processes can be used. And perhaps the most important thing one can do in preparation is to develop their BATNA, especially if the other side has more power.

Getting Past No, by by William Ury

Another excellent book on negotiating. Ury has written two other books, which he advises to read in reverse order, starting with “The Power of a Positive No”, then “Getting Past No”, and finally “Getting To Yes”. I recommend all three.

Getting Past No discusses how to deal with difficult situations and difficult people by controlling your own emotions and handling the other side’s negative emotions, positional behavior, dissatisfactions, and power.

Of course, the first thing you’ll want to do before negotiating with another is to ”understand your interests, the other side’s interests, invent options for mutual gains, figure out which fair standards can apply to resolve issues, and know and develop your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (your walk-away alternative).

The Power of a Positive No: Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say No, by William Ury

Another excellent book on negotiating. Ury has written two other books, which he advises to read in the order of this book, then “Getting Past No”, and finally “Getting To Yes”. I recommend all three.

The Power of a Positive No discusses a framework for saying No in a way that’s respectful to the other side and that can maintain, if not improve, your relationship with the other side. This framework involves first understanding what your own core values, needs, and interests are; saying No to the other side in a positive manner; and then offering a suggestion for a more positive behavior or negotiating a deal that satisfies both sides’ interests.

Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One (4th Edition), by Julie C. Meloni

I found this to be an excellent introductory book on PHP and mySQL (as well as Apache), which is why I bought it. I’ve had in mind for a while now a website service I’ve wanted to implement, and used this book as the starting point in PHP programming a mySQL-based website (starting with zero knowledge in either PHP or databases). It was very helpful in creating and configuring a Linux and Windows web server, and the projects in the book became the starting point for the development of my own web service. I still refer to the book every now and then, though for PHP questions I typically use the PHP Manual at http://us3.php.net/manual/en, and for MySQL questions I’ve graduated to needing the “SQL For MySQL Developers” book.

SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference, by Rick F. van der Lans

After developing my own MySQL-based website for a while, I got to the point of needing a more advanced MySQL reference than the introductory “Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache” book that I had been using. “SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference” has been that reference and has worked out quite well. It has helped me in constructing complicated search queries, in modifying database tables (without uninstalling and re-installing my application), and in dealing with multi-user/multi-threading issues. I don’t think I would necessarily use this book to start learning about MySQL, but once you are doing hard-core MySQL development, this book would definitely be handy. When I have a MySQL question, I start with this book, as I have found the MySQL Reference Manual at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en to be difficult to use.

Management Powertools, by Harry Onsman

I really liked this book. The various management, leadership, and marketing ideas in this book can be found in many other sources, but Onsman brings them together and productizes them as tools you can use in your business.

The book is divided into two parts, one with 10 tools to manage an organization and the other with 10 tools to manage people. The organizational part includes tools for strategic intent (use of vision, mission, and values statements), measuring performance (the balanced scorecard), changing culture (competing values framework), marketing (the four P’s), and others. The people part includes tools for managing performance (goal setting), developing self-awareness (360 degree feedback), selecting people (behavioral interviewing), project management techniques, situational leadership, coaching, and others.

Death March (2nd Edition), by Edward Yourdon

A very interesting project management survival book on “death march” €projects – projects in which the time, resources, and/or features of a development project are severely constrained, as compared to “normal” projects, thus giving the project an unusually high likelihood of failure, while putting the people within them an unusually high degree of stress, leading to bad health, broken marriages, broken families, etc.

Yourdon’s book provides advice on how you should manage a death march, should you volunteer for one or, more likely, find yourself roped into one and decide not to quit. Yourdon discusses negotiations, staffing and team-building issues, and processes to follow.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials), by Robert B. Cialdini

Cialdini has written a number of books on Influence, and based on what I read in this book, I’m sure you couldn’t go wrong with any of them.

This book, as the title says, discusses the psychology of persuasion: how we as human beings have set up short-cuts in our decision making in order to effectively deal with information overload, and how the “compliance practitioners” exploit these and cause us to unwittingly agree to something we wouldn’t ordinarily agree with. Cialdini notes that as the world gets more complex, we rely on these short-cuts more and more, and thus are becoming even more prone to be victims of the practitioners. This book was written to help people defend themselves from being exploited by teaching what the short-cuts are and how to say no to the exploiters. Cialdini also writes about how these short-cuts can be used for helpful purposes, too, not just for exploitation. I think it’s also true that there’s info here that can ethically be used by people, for example, for their sales, marketing, and negotiation purposes.

The short-cuts/psychological persuasion principles Cialdini writes about are:

Expensive = Good. Increasing the price of something may increase its sales, as people will believe it now has higher quality.

Contrast principle. If the most expensive item is sold first (e.g., a car), then follow-ons will seem less expensive and are now more likely to be bought (e.g., extended warranty). If a trashed house is shown first, the nicer and more expensive house shown next is more likely to be bought.

Reciprocation. One person gives up something of low value (e.g., a free sample) causing the other to give up one or more things of high-value (e.g., buying a product they wouldn’t ordinarily).

Commitment and consistency. People will behave in a way that is consistent with what they have already done, even if the continued behavior is unreasonable. One may commit to a small matter and then to act consistently, agree to larger and larger matters, at their own detriment. E.g., agreeing to a low-ball price for something, and then when that can’t be delivered to then agree to a higher priced item that they would not have originally bought.

Social Proof. If we think other people believe something, we’ll more likely believe it. Think laugh tracks, pre-loaded tip-jars, and advertising that emphasizes how popular something is, not how good it is.

Liking. We tend to say Yes to people we know and like. Relationships matter, first impressions matter, referrals matter. Watch for salespeople who mirror you or claim similar backgrounds, who flatter. Think of car salespeople who “battle” with their boss to get you a good deal; good cop/bad cop.

Authority. People have a sense of duty to authority, and are likely to conform to their dictates, even when it doesn’t make sense. Think of “I was only following orders”, actors being hired to play doctors to sell something. People will misrepresent themselves with what they wear, with a self-given title, in order to seem more authoritative than they really are.

Scarcity. People will give something not prevalent a higher value. Think of “for a limited time only” and “while supplies last”, or being pressured to make a decision right away because there’s another buyer.

The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, by Michael Treacy

Very interesting book bringing together many business concepts (value discipline, organizational structure, corporate culture, marketing, recruiting, and others) and how they apply to different types of businesses. Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Sales:

For this book, the authors did a “comprehensive, three-year study of more than 80 corporations in more than three dozen markets”, collecting data on market leaders as well as not so successful companies in order to determine why one group of companies was so much more successful than the other group. This book was used as the philosophical guide (the “bible”) of a company I worked at a few years ago, which is when I first read it. It is an interesting book and worthwhile reading. It brings together many business concepts (value discipline, organizational structure, corporate culture, marketing, recruiting, and others) and how they apply to different types of businesses.

The major idea in The Discipline of Market Leaders is that no company can be all things to all people; that a company’s resources are finite and limited, and that a company will be more successful if it chooses a specific value discipline and focuses its resources on achieving leadership in that discipline, while maintaining “threshold standards” in the other disciplines. Three value disciplines are explored: 1. Operational Excellence, in which best overall cost is focused on, defined as the delivery of reliable products or services at competitive prices, delivered with minimal difficulty or inconvenience, 2. Product Leadership, defined as “providing products that continually redefine the state of the art”, and 3. Customer Intimacy, defined as “selling the customer a total solution”. The authors found that companies that excel in the same value discipline are remarkably like each other, in terms of operating processes, business structures, management systems, and culture, even if the companies are in completely different industries. In contrast, mediocre companies within the same industry are remarkably like each other.

This book does seem to make good business sense, and it would be good to recognize different types of companies, how to create a successful company, and to properly match one’s personality type and needs to the appropriate business type. For example, in terms of personal relationships, the authors state that operationally excellent companies do not cultivate one-to-one relationships with their customers, that product leadership companies are very focused on innovative marketing strategies in order to capitalize on their product innovations, and that customer intimate companies, by their very nature, must be highly competent and focused on cultivating relationships with their customers. Therefore, if one is highly motivated by relationship building and personal selling, a company focused on the customer intimate model would seem to be more appropriate than a company focusing on a different model.

Though the customer intimate model is highly focused on relationships with customers, personal selling and relationships are obviously important for all business models. Operationally excellent companies must sell to (get buy-in from) their suppliers, distributors, and partners in the operationally excellent model in order to get product to flow freely with maximum efficiency and low prices to the end customer. Product leader companies must develop relationships with their customers and the end-customer in order to prepare markets and to educate people to accept their innovative products (or services) and to learn from them what kind of products (or services) to develop. And of course, no matter what kind of company, relationships are important with employees, advisors, directors, consultants, and other types of people a company depends upon.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

Great book on right-brain thinking and intuitive decision making. Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Entrepreneurship:

Gladwell describes two types of problems: logic and insight. Logic problems are solved by lots of information and analysis (left-brain thinking), whereas insight problems require an intuitive approach (right-brain thinking). Gladwell discusses how trying to solve an insight problem with a logical process winds up destroying one’s ability to solve the insight problem, at least for non-experts.

Interestingly, Gladwell writes that for less-important decisions, it is fine to be analytical and consider the decision from many perspectives, but for more important issues, like which mate to select or which career to pursue, to let intuition take over. Larger issues will likely have a larger emotional impact, and so intuition is more appropriate as intuition follows emotion.

Applying this to business planning, some people will say you absolutely have to have all your plans (financial, marketing, operational, etc.) ”in order before venturing forward with a business (the left-brain thinkers). Others say business planning is a waste of time, as your actual execution will never be what was planned, plus writing of the plan very likely will destroy your initial passion and confidence for the venture as you’ll never have enough information or enough of a competitive advantage (the right-brain thinkers). Perhaps there’s a happy medium here in which a lesser amount of planning is initially done (e.g., fully defining the business concept and some marketing and financial planning), and if the business still looks promising, implement the venture for an initial stage, and then iteratively do more planning and implementation.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell

A very interesting book on how small changes can have a huge effect. Gladwell discusses the kinds of people that can cause a tipping (“Connectors” who know a tremendous amount of other people, “Mavens” who are information specialists and who pass their information along to others, and “Salesmen” who very effectively persuade others), the characteristic of something that helps make it tip (stickiness, which makes something memorable, actionable, irresistible, compelling), and environmental factors that help make something tip (conditions, circumstances, situation, context, the size of a group; slightly changing one of these can cause a tipping). Gladwell ties these ideas to products, technology, children television shows, crime rates, suicide rates, infectious diseases, smoking, and more.

Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, by Steve McConnell

This is an older book now, but I still refer to it from time to time and like it a lot. Lots of good info here not just on rapid software development strategies, but also on efficient strategies. As McConnell writes, do well at efficient development before you dive into rapid development — you’ll probably find efficient development will be fast enough, at least a whole lot faster than the thrashing development too many of us experience too often.

Good info here on software development fundamentals, classic mistakes to avoid, risk management, lifecycle planning, estimating and scheduling, motivation and teamwork, rapid development best practices, and more.

I think a lot of the info in this book is compatible with, or at least not contradictory of, today’s agile development practices, and some of the best practices approach agile strategies, like Evolutionary Delivery and Evolutionary Prototyping.

Software Project Survival Guide (Pro — Best Practices), by Steve McConnell

This book was written a couple of years after McConnell wrote “Rapid Development”. There’s a fair amount of overlap with his earlier book, and if I had to choose just one, I’d choose Rapid Development.

This book discusses the Staged Delivery Plan, which is an iterative type of lifecycle, in which each stage of a project is fully designed, implemented, and released. There’s some good info here and you could do much much worse than follow McConnell’s advice, but I think Agilists will find this book out of date.

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, by Steve McConnell

A really excellent book on the nitty-gritty of software construction, discussing things such as cohesion and coupling, naming conventions, defensive programming, modularization, and much more. I’d say a must read for those producing code. I have the original 1993 version, and I see McConnell wrote a second edition in 2004, which is what I’€™d get now, of course.

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

I’d say this is a MUST read for anyone in a leadership position or who wants to be in one. Fascinating book, discussing various leadership styles (Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, Commanding), when to use them, when not to, how they tie in to various emotional intelligence domains, and how you can improve your leadership repertoire. Do your followers a favor and read this.

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright

This is a really interesting book that describes five different types of groups, or tribes, within an organization that people naturally fall into, and how a leader can help a tribe move up to better performing type of group. This book is based on years of extensive research by the authors, and I think the authors did a great job of boiling things down and making a very readable book.

Stage 1 is characterized by people feeling alienated from others with their behavior expressing despairing hostility. Life is a rat race, where anything is fair game. People express this as “Life sucks.”

Stage 2 is characterized by people behaving as apathetic victims. They feel their life sucks, but others are doing ok.

Stage 3 is characterized by individual high performance, but low collaboration. People express “I’m great…but you’re not.” Information is hoarded and not freely shared, and a person in charge will feel threatened if information doesn’t flow through them or if relationships are developed between others. Almost half of all workplaces are like this.

Stage 4 is a high-collaboration tribe, with tribal pride and strong values. People express “we’re great…but they’re not.” Information is freely shared and relationships among others are encouraged and facilitated.

Stage 5 is the highest performing of tribes. People express “life is great” and instead of competing against another organization, they are completely driven by a noble cause and form ever growing networks of people, even in different organizations.

This book was published in 2008 and I’ve heard it mentioned several times now in various situations. It seems to me this book is like “Good To Great” by Jim Collins, in which people see a lot of wisdom in it and for leaders who are interested in these things, will read it, and take it to heart, improving their organizations. In fact, Tribal Leaders mention Good To Great and how their concepts mesh with Good To Great’s concepts.

Leaders, by Richard M. Nixon

Nixon gives a master’s leadership class here, writing about the leaders he personally knew while Vice President and later on: Churchill, de Gaulle, MacArthur, Khrushchev, and many others. I’d start with the last chapter, “In The Arena”, and then go back and read the entire book from the beginning. Nixon deals with political leaders, but there’s a lot to be gained for business leaders, too.

We Shall Not Fail: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill, by Celia Sandys

This is in the genre of leadership books that’s part history, part biographical, and part leadership treatise (“to be a better leader, do like X did and do …”). I really liked this book, as Churchill is a larger than life iconic hero, but I’d start with Goleman et al’s Primal Leadership and Nixon’s Leaders first, and then make my way to this book and others like it.

George Washington’s Leadership Lessons: What the Father of Our Country Can Teach Us About Effective Leadership and Character, by James Rees and Stephen Spignesi

This is obviously a copy-and-paste of my review for the “We Shall Not Fail” Churchill leadership book…

This is in the genre of leadership books that’s part history, part biographical, and part leadership treatise (“to be a better leader, do like X did and do …”). I really liked this book, as Washington is a larger than life iconic hero, but I’d start with Goleman et al’s Primal Leadership and Nixon’s Leaders first, and then make my way to this book and others like it.

I picked this book up at the gift shop at Mount Vernon in Virginia…highly recommend touring there, and this book is a nice little memento.

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes

Great book! Part biography, history, science, and entrepreneurship book. Here’s an excerpted essay about this book I wrote for a UCSD Course on Entrepreneurship:

Empires of Light is the story of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla inventing the modern electric power industry, taking place in the last two decades of the 19th century.

Starting in the 1840s, illumination on a large scale was done with a gas distribution system and arc lights. Gaslights gave off ammonia and sulfur as they burned, blackening a room and making people sick. Arc lighting was an electric technology, in which the two electrical outputs of a battery or generator were each attached to a carbon rod and the two rods placed close together with the resulting electric discharge igniting the carbon in a bright blaze.

The book opens with Edison, excited by arc lights, desiring to make an electric light appropriate for smaller areas, like a room in a house. Edison eventually invented the incandescent light bulb, but he also worked on inventions related to electricity generation and distribution that would supply the light bulbs and other electrical equipment.

Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878, consciously setting out to replace the gas lighting industry. This was the first company with the intent of generating electricity remotely, distributing it to a geographic region, and installing the electrical hardware in homes and buildings needed to make use of electricity. Edison’s technology was DC based, as Edison thought that was much safer than an AC system.

Tesla at this time invented the revolutionary induction motor whose rotor was spun by rotating magnetic fields. This kind of motor could only be used with AC electricity.

Westinghouse formed the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1886. Westinghouse preferred AC, as significantly more power could be distributed over a much greater distance than with DC and more economically, requiring less copper wiring than DC. Westinghouse licensed the rights to many of Tesla’s patents, including his induction motor, in order to get a competitive edge over Edison.

By the early 1890s, Westinghouse’s technology completely won out over Edison’s. Ten years after Edison formed Edison General Electric, J.P. Morgan combined Edison’s company with AC-related electric companies, and renamed the new company General Electric, the dominant electric company of the time.

There is no doubt that we are living in the vision that Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse had. Electricity powers our lights, computers, air conditioning, and all other electronics and appliances in our homes and businesses. Without electricity, industry would halt and our quality of life plummet.

Today, as in Edison’s and Westinghouse’s day, most of the engines, or turbines, used to drive the generators that make electricity are coal and oil fed, though one of the chapters in the book details the building of the Niagara hydropower plant. The resulting pollution from the burning of fossil fuels has become one of the most important concerns world-over.

Empires of Light covers many of the major concepts of entrepreneurship: visionary thinking, breakthrough innovation, international entrepreneurship, and ethics. Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse were all extremely visionary and entrepreneurial, though their monetary successes were varied.

One important lesson of this story is that even though one is first in an industry, that does not mean that that person will be the de facto winner in that industry. And conversely, just because other people are first in an industry does not mean there’s not room for another competitor that has some unique advantage.

The importance of cognitive adaptability was also underscored. Edison would not use other people’s inventions, whereas Westinghouse would not hesitate to use other’s superior technology. Also, Edison refused to see the advantages of AC technology, which was obviously a more powerful and expandable technology than his DC technology. Had Edison chosen AC and expended his efforts into making that technology more safe, history could well have shown Edison the hands-down winner in the race to electrify the world.

Much has changed in business regulations and practices, culture, and technology since the 1880s. But even today, the right visionary leader at the right time and place with the right resources can implement change on a societal scale.

With the push to go Green, the electric power industry continues to evolve and innovate. Light bulb technology continues to evolve so that the newer bulbs use less energy and last longer. Photovoltaic and wind turbine technologies are being further developed and increasingly used both in the central station concept but also in a distributed manner, where businesses and homes generate their own electricity.

Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko

Great book on specific creativity techniques, and there a lot of them here. I actually have the 1st edition, “A Handbook of Business Creativity”, which are what these comments are based on. The first edition does not have an index, but on Amazon I see the second edition does, which can be really helpful.

Michalko wrote another book, “Cracking Creativity, the Secrets of Creative Genius”, and there is a lot of overlap between the two books. I’ve always found getting at least two books on a subject is better than just one, even with overlap, and you would do well getting both of these books.

Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko

Like his other book, Thinkertoys, this is a great book on specific creativity techniques, and, again, there many of them here. As I wrote for Thinkertoys, there is a lot of overlap between the two books, AND you would do well getting them both.

The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray

This book gives a good introduction to creativity. Apparently, there was a PBS Television Series on this, and this book is a “companion” to the series.

You won’t find much in the way of creativity techniques, but there’s some really good background information on creativity and tips on how to stimulate creativity in children and the workplace, and our own lives.

This one was difficult. My hard drive crashed in the middle of recording this one, so there was about a week lost between stopping at that point and getting a new drive up & running. Then I had to re-type the script and re-screen capture the Power Point presentation.

Installing a new hard drive turned out to be an exercise in Serendipity:

• One of the things I had to do was reinstall the software development tools I use for developing the Web2Intranet.com website. I downloaded a more recent tool, which showed some software problems that the older version did not, so this has helped improve the quality of the software.
• A long-standing problem I’ve had with my laptop’s video driver was solved.
• The new hard drive has a much larger capacity than  the one it replaced, so I no longer have to shuffle videos around to an external drive just so I don’t run out of room on my internal drive.

Jacobs writes how fMRI shows a reciprocal connection between the emotional area of the brain, the amygdala, and the seat of our consciousness, the prefrontal cortex, that ensures our decisions are made with emotions, not pure logic and objectivity. It’s more the case that we make decisions based on emotions, and then justify, or rationalize, the decision with logic.

Our emotions are a shorthand for all our previous experiences in our memory, so we can quickly access our stored knowledge when making decisions. I would call this using intuition in decision making. In fact, the more we use processes that remove emotions out of decision making, the more we lose access to our stored knowledge, and the more risky our decisions can be.

As discussed in the podcast episode, part of decision making is the implementation of the decision, which may involve others. Jacobs writes that trying to influence others with logic may not be successful, as everyone is unconsciously driven by emotions, and offers other ways to more successfully influence people that deals with empathy.

What added extra motivation for me to write this blog post was an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Emotion Drives Many Defaults, which deals exactly with peoples’ emotions when making a very important decision of walking away from their homes. The article says “many of the Americans defaulting on their mortgages are doing so out of anger, fear or despair rather than making a purely sensible decision about their best financial interests.” Some people default on their home loans because they’re struggling financially, of course, but a trend is occurring in which others are furious at their banks or the government for helping others but not them, they feel they’re being treated unfairly, and so feel justified in defaulting. There is also a contagion effect, or what Robert Cialdini defined as social proof in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, in which people who know others who have defaulted feel like they can, too.

Coincidentally, I’ve started reading Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science, by Charles S. Jacobs, and it seems to me there’s some good correspondence. Jacobs writes about how functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is giving us a better understanding of how the brain works and the resulting consequences of that. (For a contrary opinion on the use of fMRI and brain studies, see Jonah Lehrer’s Wired article, Lost in the Details: How Breaking Everything Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to the Big Picture.)

I’ve only just started reading chapter 3 of this book, but one of the things that has been emphasized so far is the importance of stories on how we think and act; to change the way we and others think and act; and to better understand ourselves and others and even the way things work (e.g. natural processes and businesses). The difference is between the statement of a fact, theory, or belief and the telling of a story that describes who you are, how you got to where you are, and why it is you believe in the fact, theory, or belief, which is much more persuasive.

Both Jacobs and the good folks of the evolutionary spirituality audio casts discuss evolution. And the evolutionary spirituality folks do a good job in telling stories to help the listeners change their thinking from what Jacobs would describe as a Aristotelian view, looking at everything as purely objects, to a more mental or higher reasoning view, which the evolutionary spirituality folks would describe as a spiritual viewpoint.

Stories, metaphores, and paradigms, all discussed in Management Rewired, directly relate to creativity, which I’ll either write about in a future blog entry or talk about in a future podcast episode. Stay tuned!

I’ve had a Twitter account for a while now, but didn’t do anything with it. Like many of my friends whom I’ve recently looked up on Twitter, I was curious, signed up for an account, and then didn’t do anything with it for, I don’t know, a year or two. Periodically I’d get an email indicating someone had started following me, which inevitably turned out to be a person with a link to the adult site xxxblackbook.com.

So anyway, with Web2Intranet.com, I thought I’d be more social network active, and this past weekend started being active with Twitter. I must say, I do see the appeal now. I look at it more like a focused RSS feed, where you pick the individuals and organizations to get info from. And info is what you make of it–news stories from local, national, and international news organizations; personal updates; marketing messages and customer service support from organizations; calls for help on personal and business issues; etc.

It is odd, though. You’ll find people following thousands of others, tens-of-thousands and hundreds-of-thousands of others. How can that be? People are spending a LOT of time on Twitter and I’ve read where companies hire staff whose job is to maintain their Twitter presence. Interesting stuff.

For both of them, I go through a script-writing process, first deciding the topic and then outlining the points I want to make. This part of the process is actually a bit more time consuming for an Exploding Creativity podcast episode, as I guess it’s a bit more “scholarly” in its research. When I actually sit down and start writing, it takes 2-4 days to finish a script.

The production process for both takes a single day to record the content, edit it, and produce the final image — an MP3 file for an Exploding Creativity podcast and a WMV file (Windows Media Video) for a Web2Intranet.com video. The production of the video is more time consuming with the addition of video files and titling, plus the fact I can’t flub up my lines and heavily edit the content as I can with an audio-only file (the video would probably look pretty jumpy). I also use the same microphone for the videos that I do for the podcast episodes, and the same audio software (Audacity) to massage the audio (compress, D-ess, and normalize) for the videos so the audio quality is consistent, or at least as consistent as I can make it, throughout the video.

If you have any problem viewing the video, please go to Web2Intranet’s YouTube page. To see the text within the video more clearly, click on the button that expands the video to full screen. Enjoy!

I’ve planned for a long time now to create a webpage for ExplodingCreativity detailing my podcast setup and procedure–for those who are interested in such things and those who might be able to use it themselves for producing their own podcasts, but also for me as a reference when I go months and months between podcast episodes. Maybe now I’ll plan on also creating a page for how I do videos, though I’m still learning a lot as I go along.

I have a huge amount of fun creating a podcast episode and it was certainly a lot of fun to create the video, which is a characteristic of creativity–a sense of joy or play–or at least should be.

If you have any problem viewing the video, please go to Web2Intranet’s YouTube page. To see the text within the video more clearly, click on the button that expands the video to full screen. Enjoy!

It’s an interesting article on some of the innovations in emerging markets, particularly China and India. Reading the article, however, seemed more like an exercise in SCAMPER. For example:

• Combination: “Nokia’s cheapest mobile handsets come equipped with flashlights (because of frequent power cuts), multiple phone books (because they often have several different users), rubberised key pads and menus in several different languages.”
• Put to Other Uses: “… use existing technology in imaginative new ways. TCS is looking at using mobile phones to connect television sets to the internet. Personal computers are still relatively rare in India but televisions are ubiquitous.”
• Put to Other Uses: “… apply mass-production techniques in new and unexpected areas such as health care.”
• Adaptation: “… his most important contribution to medicine is not his surgical skill but his determination to make this huge industry more efficient by applying Henry Ford’s management principles.”
• Substitution: “… BYD has radically reduced the price of expensive lithium-ion batteries by using less costly raw materials and learning how to make them at ambient temperatures rather than in expensively heated “dry rooms”.”
• Combination: “Some of the more exotic phones are designed to look like watches or packets of cigarettes (they even have room for a few real ones) and often have striking new features, such as solar chargers, superloud speakers, telephoto lenses or ultraviolet lights that make it easier to detect forged currency.”

When we encounter something unexpected or unintended, our natural first instinct is to assume we did something wrong. We’ll ignore the unexpected occurrence, and repeat the experiment or test looking for our preconceived intended results. This must be recognized and resisted.The unexpected, unintended event may be perceived as a failure of some sort, but from that failure, a different or more nuanced opportunity may become apparent and success follow from that. Failure, accidents, and unintended variations are an important aspect to innovation and success.

For serendipity, we’re looking for:

• A surprising mental association; an association between ideas we wouldn’t have thought of if it weren’t for the unexpected occurrence.
• Achieving a desired objective in a surprising way, in a way we weren’t intending to.
• Something useful when we were looking for something else.

Part of serendipity is luck. We can be more lucky by:

• Being more observant.
• Improving our Interpersonal Intelligence.
• Asking for things we might not have asked for before.
• Don’t think of a failure as a failure, but rather as an opportunity.

When encountering a failure, accident, or unintended variation, to take advantage of serendipity:

• Reconsider your assumptions. Maybe the experiment didn’t fail, but the assumptions behind the experiment are wrong.
• Use someone as a sounding board. Frequently trying to clearly explain something to someone else actually helps us to better understand what the issue is and to gain insight into it.
• Discuss the issue with others in your field. This may provide additional questions for you to consider or avenues to pursue to gain a better understanding.
• Use diversity to get different perspectives on the issue. Maybe this will lead to the use of different metaphors describing the problem and thereby lead to an innovative solution.
• Try not to filter out any of the information that contradicts your preconceptions.

For an organization to take advantage of serendipity, it should hire creative people and give them new, unexpected assignments;  expose them to diverse experiences and new ideas; encourage them to keep an open mind, to not dismiss their so-called failures, and to keep an eye out for accidents and unintended results of all types. Organizations should encourage risk taking and take steps to lower the cost of experimentation and invention.

References used in this episode:

• How to Make Your Own Luck
• Be Lucky – it’s an easy skill to learn
• Are You Lucky?
• Wall Street Journal Article on Innovation: Oops! Accidents lead to innovations. So, how do you create more accidents?
• Jeff Bezos on the importance of failure on entrepreneurial growth. James Dyson of the Dyson vacuum cleaner also emphasized the importance of failure on innovation in a July 7, 2008, Fortune Magazine article.
• Wired Magazine articles on How To Fail.
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins and Jerry L. Porras.
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Web2Intranet provides services commonly found on Intranets for for-profit and non-profit organizations and for individuals who don’t have the resources to rent or build and maintain their own Intranet infrastructure, or who just don’t want to bother with that so they can focus on their primary business and not on IT.

My hope for Web2Intranet is that it will help unleash the creativity of folks in small and lean-run organizations and for individuals starting out. In software engineering, organizations likely have a programming style specification, one of the ideas of which is that instead of the engineer focusing his/her creativity and effort on developing their own coding style, they use the existing predefined style so they can focus all of their creativity and energy on solving the problem at hand. And now with Web2Intranet, instead of folks focusing their time, money, and effort on developing and maintaining an IT infrastructure for managing and sharing their information and to collaborate, they can use the services of Web2Intranet and focus more of their resources on their primary mission.

One of my strengths has always been organization, so creating tools for information management has been a good, natural fit. These tools include:

• Blogging
• Forums
• Wikis
• Issue Management
• Project Management
• Email
• Search
• RSS for easily tracking changes

Check it out if you can, and please pass the website on to others you think could benefit from it.

Anyway, I’ve been collecting a lot of notes for my next podcast on Serendipity and Creativity. Stay tuned!

Lemelson Center home page

Prototype newsletter archive

This month’s prototype newsletter