in Innovation
Early next year there will be a brand new technology center across the border in Tijuana that aims, among other things, to provide office space to companies in the region. It’s the BIT Center, or Baja’s Innovation and Technology Center.
It’s intent (translated from Spanish):…
R.I.P. after 6 years of use
Yesterday one of the surge protectors in my house, the Back-UPS 500 from APC, finally gave up on me after 6 years. Since I’m using another surge protector from Belkin to protect other electronic devices already, I ran over to Office Depot to buy replacement for the APC.
I ended up buying a Belkin.
As I was driving home I started thinking about why I bought a Belkin surge protector and not another one from APC. My conclusion was that I think I got ‘primed’ to buy Belkin because I simply liked (looks and price) the other one I have at home more than my older one from APC. I also think that the fact that the APC one died one me affected my decision. A product that breaks down on you isn’t going to inspire you to buy the same one.…
in Innovation
The internet is killing newspapers right? Yes and no. What it is killing is it’s form (ink on paper), what it’s not is it’s function (sifting through everything that happens in a day and selecting what’s really important).
The form of the newspaper as we know it is slowly disappearing but it’s function is not.
If the newspaper companies, like the Washington Post, see themselves as being in the business of running printing presses and distributing newsprint, they are slowly disappearing. But if they see themselves as an event editors, they are surviving and thriving.…
in Innovation
Jonathan Fields posted this question in a Psychology Today article last week. Here is my answer and would love to hear yours.
It’s a great question and not at all difficult to answer, though it’s better said than done. First of all, mastery is never achieved. It’s a goal, but a goal we’ll never reach. As much as you think that somebody is ‘the master’ of something, it’s just a psychological illusion. It’s your human biases at work. It’s an illusion because you’re already thinking that it can’t be improved in some way. And that my friend, is your endgame.
In the world of sports this phenomenon is more obvious, and even the people who are considered the best at what they do will tell you they’re always improving because they know they’ll never fully master their craft.
In the business world it’s not all different. Companies have evolved since forever, some started as a completely different business than what they are today. You may master some process but that process will eventually become irrelevant. It will be replaced by either another process (incremental) or by an unforeseen evolutionary paradigm (disruptive).…
Connecting the dots. It’s all about connecting the dots. And it’s never been more important and more relevant than it is today in this information overload world we live in. Or is it?
I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to connect the dots but I recently received an interesting comment regarding this unknown activity and it got me thinking about it. My buddy basically says that those of us who engage in curation/filtering are crazy.
Why?
Because since we curate information that we find useful for others, we’ve got ideas to spare. We’ve got ideas about how to have ideas and then some. And if you curate information about diverse topics, we have ideas about stuff that doesn’t make sense to the majority of people. And this makes others feel overwhelmed because we can criss-cross from one topic to another.
On that last point is where a lot of ‘dot connecting’ happens.…