aqualung's small pieces

How do you invent vaccines? An interview « Scott Berkun

2011-07-29T13:46:59+09:30

We all are able to generate the most creative ideas. The question is, Do we dare? We don’t need more innovation, we need less resistance. Our own, internal resistance, that sometime blocks you, and prevents you from asking that crazy question at a meeting. Missed opportunity for you, for the company, for the world that might be desperately awaiting your idea. And external resistance, when your colleagues, your boss, the whole organization does not seem to understand the greatness of your idea.

via www.scottberkun.com

"Less resistance" … too often we are stymied by the fear of change, in ourselves and others. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of ridicule - all contribute to suppression of ideas. The ideas still happen, but they're never executed, so innovation doesn't happen.

Phillip Toledano - Days with My Father

2011-03-16T22:39:04+10:30

via www.dayswithmyfather.com

It would be easy to feel resentful about an opportunity lost for this sort of time with my own father, but this is too beautiful for such a mean thought to survive

Is the internet ad model unravelling?

2011-02-01T13:24:23+10:30

Newsflash: I don’t need you to tell me what I want to buy. I already know, and anything I need is a web search away.

… Go find a better business plan. One that doesn’t coopt me as your marketing R&D department.

… If you want me to buy your merchandise, then spend your money making something really good. If it’s good and I decide I need it, I’ll find you.

You won’t need to sneak up on me.

via www.newsome.org

Kent's rant about targeted ads struck a chord - I ignore them whenever possible. However - much of what we receive for free on the internet is financed by advertising. If a significant proportion of us in some way "tune out" the advertising, and click rates start to drop off, what happens next? Do the ads become MORE intrusive, better "targeted" via even more privacy violation ... or do we start paying for services more often? My preference is to vote with my wallet for services I find useful, and avoid ads that way - but I suspect I'm in the minority here (I'll have Kent for company though!).

Longer term, the answer possibly lies with VRM and related personal data management ideas, but these will be a hard sell to people who only look for easy ways to interact on the Web, unless it can be made almost as unnoticeable as the ads we're trying to get rid of. Now there's a challenge ...

If it's not impossible, maybe it's not worth trying ...

2011-01-24T12:18:05+10:30

It’s time to wake up and smell the axle-grease: industrial age organizations are finely-tuned engines of efficiency and productivity—but the price is a smallness of ambition, a paucity of purpose, a terminal deficiency of daring to challenge the status quo.
... On the other hand, it is the appetite to cultivate what the status quo considers thoroughly impractical and hopelessly impossible that is the cornerstone of enduring prosperity.

... So here’s my suggestion: this coming year, if it’s possible in the eyes of the status quo, it’s not awesome enough—go back to the drawing board. If your goal is creating an enduring, meaningful advantage, consider a new principle: if your rivals (and some of your peers) don’t think it’s impossible, don’t bother attempting it.

via www.managementexchange.com

Ouch. A strongly-worded version of the Innovator's Dilemma, Umair takes 'thinking outside the square' to its logical extreme - if you want to differentiate your company or product, then you have to BE different, which will usually means doing something that nobody else is, or wants to ...

Does the web change everything - at work?

2011-01-23T21:49:52+10:30

The biggest challenge with deploying Sharepoint isn't that the technology isn't great but that it doesn't challenge deeply held assumptions about what it takes to run a business. It really is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

via www.euansemple.com

Apart from being an interesting point about Sharepoint, the deeper point is true - as Euan points out, all the technology in the world (even the stuff that's better than SP) won't change old habits and rapidly-deteriorating assumptions about business and how it works these days - changing process, practice and people is required.

Facebook wants to be your Internet ID Card

2011-01-21T08:31:32+10:30

It’s bad enough that Facebook is such a security mess, but to trust it to be my universal Internet drivers’ license? No. Just no.

via www.zdnet.com

ZDNet artice on the increasing spread of Facebook Connect as the defacto login/security mechanism on websites. Two big problems: Facebook's well-documented privacy and security problems; and the under-the-covers sharing of so much of your personal details on Facebook with the other web sites, and the potential for tracking your Web history. I'll pass ...

The state of the labour market

2011-01-04T11:23:07+10:30

Stutchbury, of course, ignores the inconvenient truth that productivity peaked in the 1990s, when the Keating-era industrial relations system was dominated by collective bargaining at the enterprise level underpinned by strong awards. The rate of productivity growth has been declining ever since: declining through the era of rottweilers on the wharves, declining through the era of near-compulsory AWAs in higher education, the public service, and Government-funded construction projects; declining through the era of a building tribunal with coercive powers; declining through the era of AWAs that could undermine award conditions; declining through an era in which minimum wage setting was given to a new body entirely unsympathetic to the idea of minimum wages’ very existence.

via mattcowgill.wordpress.com

It's a unionist's viewpoint, but still a very neat pricking of the Australian's bubble of discontent with the Fair Work Act, and a hint that maybe happy workers might lead to productivity growth ...

Umair Haque is bored

2010-12-10T17:03:18+10:30

nothing characterizes industrial age business like the Five P's. Business is Pedestrian (in its vanishing smallness of ambition), Predictable (in its furious obsession with the trivial), Predatory (in it's hyperaggressive selfishness), Pompous (in its unvarnished self-importance), and Pointless (in its lack of usefulness to people and society). What it really excels at is pumping out inauthentic, unsustainable, illusory value--instead of the real thing.

via www.managementexchange.com

Boom, boom ... say no more. This is Umair's Howard Beale moment, and he's moving from querying business-as-usual to actively plotting its downfall (or at least its "path to significance").

From Judith Miller to Julian Assange » Pressthink

2010-12-10T13:30:51+10:30

Simon Jenkins got at some of this in a Guardian column on Wikileaks: “Accountability can only default to disclosure. As Jefferson remarked, the press is the last best hope when democratic oversight fails.” But at the nadir the last best hope failed, too. When that happens accountability defaults to extreme disclosure, which is where we are today.

via pressthink.org

When governments keep too many secrets, the accountability pendulum is taken to an extreme. When media in democratic society fails in its task to hold governments accountable, the pendulum will likely swing to the opposite extreme, where potentially everything is exposed. This is about where we are with Wikileaks now ...

Democratic governments need to remember that information belongs to the people that put them into office - it's not "theirs" to hide from us. Yes - some things DO need to remain confidential, but those things should be the exception, not the rule. When the default is concealment, someone or something will force what is concealed into the open, and the effort involved may expose more than is desirable. Chances are, if we trust our governments to hide only what is absolutely necessary, we won't be inclined to force disclosure.

The Internet's Voltaire Moment - Simon Says...

2010-12-06T11:57:54+10:30

It's crucial we echo Voltaire's ancient defence of the distasteful. I don't like Wikileaks, but we must collectively defend their ability to exist or face all we find that's good on the Internet being made illegal.

via blogs.computerworlduk.com

It's bigger than a bunch of embarrassing diplomatic cables - what Wikileaks has done has exposed to governments more used to command-and-control authority that the mesh structure of the Internet isn't under their control. This is an inevitable but perhaps unforeseen consequence of its original design to be a resilient communications network for (you guessed it) the people who are now most opposed to it.