Ideas

  • Moneyball

    110925 Moneyball Moneyball is out in theaters. Lots of people consider it a sports movie; but, it is so much more.

    Yes, it is the film version of the book by Michael Lewis (which was a pretty good read).  Still, underneath the sports story, it is about finding and refining an edge (or sustainable competitive advantage).

    If you've ever thought "if I'm so smart and talented, how come I'm here"?  You're not alone.

    This is a movie about someone who "should" have been a star player … but never quite got there.  Instead, he moved up to the front office of a pro team – and made his mark there, differently than he expected.

    The big idea?  Rather than following conventional wisdom, find something that gives you an edge.  For example, If you ignore a lot of the obvious flaws that damage players in the eyes of professional scouts (bad legs, can't field, too thick in the middle, likes strip clubs or gets high too often), and you focus instead on a single, telltale metric — the percentage of times that they get on base — then tons of players who don't cost very much will turn out to be winners. What would happen if you built an entire team out of these green-diamond misfits?

    Where there are undervalued assets to exploit, there are by implication overvalued ones to avoid.  Sounds like business or trading, doesn't it?  In any case, the scope and scale of the overvaluation is often so large, learning to identify and exploit those situations can be a winning recipe. 

    Here is a video trailer of the movie.


     

    The underlying message is to focus a critical eye on everything you do and be vigilant about the process, reassessing, challenging assumptions and constraints to find a way that works for you.

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  • If a Wild Parrot Can Learn to Talk in the Wild, Imagine What Humans Pick Up From Each Other

    110918 Wild Parrot Imagine being lost deep in the woods, only to hear "Hello" or "What's Happening" come at you from afar.  Hikers in Australia have increasingly been surprised to find no one there.  Rather than hallucination, the calls have been coming from birds.

    "Some chatty pet parrots that have escaped back into the wild have taught wild parrots to talk.

    The learned behaviors could be integrated into the flock through generations. 'The evolution of language could well be passed on through the generations, says Ken. "If the parents are talkers and they produce chicks, their chicks are likely to pick up some of that," he says.

    This phenomenon is not unique; some lyrebirds in southern Australia still reproduce the sounds of axes and old shutter-box cameras their ancestors once learnt.'"

    The story of the 100th Monkey is similar, where island monkeys learned to wash sweet potatoes and supposedly began passing on the skill.

    These phenomena remind me of how human Culture becomes codified and spreads.  If a wild parrot can learn to talk in the wild, imagine what humans pick up from each other.

    The point: maybe it's time to notice what your organization (or team) is learning in the wild and passing-on to each other?

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  • A Humorous Look at Infographics on the Web

    Companies are spending more time, money, and resources analyzing data and creating meaningful visualizations. 

    With so many more examples, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that there are a lot more crappy infographics on display.

    Here is a chart showing the most popular infographics you can find around the web.

     

    Types of Infographics
     

    Of course, there is also the 'just for fun' infographic.  For example, here is one showing what helicopters do in action movies.

    110918 Infographic Helicopters in Action Movies 

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  • A Humorous Look at Infographics on the Web

    Companies are spending more time, money, and resources analyzing data and creating meaningful visualizations. 

    With so many more examples, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that there are a lot more crappy infographics on display.

    Here is a chart showing the most popular infographics you can find around the web.

     

    Types of Infographics
     

    Of course, there is also the 'just for fun' infographic.  For example, here is one showing what helicopters do in action movies.

    110918 Infographic Helicopters in Action Movies 

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  • Ray Dalio Shares His View of the World at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit

    Ray Dalio is the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates LP.  

    At the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit in New York, last week, Dalio discussed the European debt crisis, investment strategy, and his outlook for the global economy. Here is a video.
     

     

    Dalio’s funds have generated astounding returns since inception and continue to do so this year (see here for more details on how they’ve achieved this).  And here is a discussion of his “principles” (which can be found here).

     
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  • Ray Dalio Shares His View of the World at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit

    Ray Dalio is the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates LP.  

    At the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit in New York, last week, Dalio discussed the European debt crisis, investment strategy, and his outlook for the global economy. Here is a video.
     

     

    Dalio’s funds have generated astounding returns since inception and continue to do so this year (see here for more details on how they’ve achieved this).  And here is a discussion of his “principles” (which can be found here).

     
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  • Reflecting on Steve Jobs’ Words of Wisdom and Insightful Questions

    Steve Jobs deserves credit. He is a world-class innovator and showman.

     

    110829 We Have an App for That - Cartoon Beeler 
    Despite what the cartoon says, there is not an app for that.  Replacing Steve Jobs will not be easy.  He was one of a kind.

    His latest accomplishment is that he figured-out how to get everyone to eulogize him while he's still alive.

    Brilliant.

    To be fair, these may be the last years (or days) of Jobs' life. But, as HBR points out, if so, Jobs no doubt knew that something needed to change. Perhaps it really is time for Jobs to go home, as he put it, to a "wonderful family" and an "amazing woman" and re-reflect on a few of the provocative questions (slightly altered) that he posed to the world in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.

    Here is the video.

     

     

     

    Here are some of the questions he posed. (click here for the complete text version of the speech)

    • Have you found "what you love" to do in life?
    • Are you wasting your life "living someone else's?"
    • Do you "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition?"
    • Are you nurturing a "great relationship," one that "just gets better and better as the years roll on?"
    • Do you tell "your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months" or days?
    • Do you make "sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family" when "the single best invention of Life" takes its toll?
    • Do you say "your goodbyes" before it's too late to say them?

    For almost four decades Steve Jobs has certainly tried his best to "put a ding in the universe."

    If you are looking for more on Jobs' wisdom and insights, Umair Haque has a nice post on the Harvard Business Review site; it is called "Steve's Seven Insights for 21st Century Capitalists".

    He highlights lessons that jumped out at him while looking through this compendium of Jobs quotes.

    Here are two examples.

    It Matters that it Matters. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water — or do you want to change the world?" That's what Steve famously asked John Sculley. Translation: do you really want to spend your days slaving over work that fails to inspire, on stuff that fail to count, for reasons that fail to touch the soul of anyone?

    Do the insanely great. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it." We're awash in a sea of the tedious, the humdrum, the predictable. If your goal is rising head and shoulders above this twisting mass of mediocrity, then it's not enough, anymore, to tack on another 99 features every month and call it "innovation." Just do great work.

    Those aren't the only lessons, nor probably the best lessons. There are lots to choose from.

    Umair Haque challenges: Steve took on the challenge of proving that the art of enterprise didn't have to culminate in a stagnant pond of unenlightenment — and won. In doing so, he might just have built something approximating the modern world's most dangerously enlightened company. Can you?

    What a great thing career he had.  He ends his Stanford speech with a quote that sums it up well. "Stay Hungry … Stay Foolish."

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  • Reflecting on Steve Jobs’ Words of Wisdom and Insightful Questions

    Steve Jobs deserves credit. He is a world-class innovator and showman.

     

    110829 We Have an App for That - Cartoon Beeler 
    Despite what the cartoon says, there is not an app for that.  Replacing Steve Jobs will not be easy.  He was one of a kind.

    His latest accomplishment is that he figured-out how to get everyone to eulogize him while he's still alive.

    Brilliant.

    To be fair, these may be the last years (or days) of Jobs' life. But, as HBR points out, if so, Jobs no doubt knew that something needed to change. Perhaps it really is time for Jobs to go home, as he put it, to a "wonderful family" and an "amazing woman" and re-reflect on a few of the provocative questions (slightly altered) that he posed to the world in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.

    Here is the video.

     

     

     

    Here are some of the questions he posed. (click here for the complete text version of the speech)

    • Have you found "what you love" to do in life?
    • Are you wasting your life "living someone else's?"
    • Do you "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition?"
    • Are you nurturing a "great relationship," one that "just gets better and better as the years roll on?"
    • Do you tell "your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months" or days?
    • Do you make "sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family" when "the single best invention of Life" takes its toll?
    • Do you say "your goodbyes" before it's too late to say them?

    For almost four decades Steve Jobs has certainly tried his best to "put a ding in the universe."

    If you are looking for more on Jobs' wisdom and insights, Umair Haque has a nice post on the Harvard Business Review site; it is called "Steve's Seven Insights for 21st Century Capitalists".

    He highlights lessons that jumped out at him while looking through this compendium of Jobs quotes.

    Here are two examples.

    It Matters that it Matters. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water — or do you want to change the world?" That's what Steve famously asked John Sculley. Translation: do you really want to spend your days slaving over work that fails to inspire, on stuff that fail to count, for reasons that fail to touch the soul of anyone?

    Do the insanely great. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it." We're awash in a sea of the tedious, the humdrum, the predictable. If your goal is rising head and shoulders above this twisting mass of mediocrity, then it's not enough, anymore, to tack on another 99 features every month and call it "innovation." Just do great work.

    Those aren't the only lessons, nor probably the best lessons. There are lots to choose from.

    Umair Haque challenges: Steve took on the challenge of proving that the art of enterprise didn't have to culminate in a stagnant pond of unenlightenment — and won. In doing so, he might just have built something approximating the modern world's most dangerously enlightened company. Can you?

    What a great thing career he had.  He ends his Stanford speech with a quote that sums it up well. "Stay Hungry … Stay Foolish."

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  • TED Talk: How Algorithms Shape Our World

    Booting up SkyNet.

    Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for — and increasingly controlled by — algorithms.

    In this thought-provoking talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: stock prices, espionage tactics, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control.

    Here is a TedTalk by Kevin Slavin.

     


     

     

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  • Twitter Results from Obama’s Town Hall

    Have you seen TwitSprout's Obama Dashboard?

    Obama held a Town Hall via Twitter in early July.  You can see the full analysis here; or look take a look at how the infographic breaks-it-down and highlights some interesting details.

     

    image from s3.amazonaws.com

    Here is the link for the interactive version.  The infographic was created by Dan Holowack at TwitSprout.

    This is an interesting use of Twitter, data-mining, and the real-time analysis of big data.  I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more of services like this.

     

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