Month: April 2016
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ZigZag Inventions
'In 1875, Thomas Edison invented the electric pen. It was a motorized stylus that worked like a stencil: it could punch words through a stack of up to 100 pages. This was supposed to replace copying, which back then was really time consuming. Edison said “There is more money in this than telegraphy.” But users…
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Drink Before You’re Thirsty, Eat Before You’re Hungry
One of my (experienced) cycling friends once told me that on longer rides it was really important to be drinking or eating well before you get thirsty or hungry in order to keep yourself well-hydrated and you’re energy levels high. It was good advice, and something I was reminded of reading Ben Evans’ post on…
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‘Dark MarTech’
I liked the phrase 'dark martech' (not least because, like 'dark social' it is suggestive of things that are in reality quite notable but less talked about) that Seth Ulinkski, an analyst at tech research business TBR, uses over on Scott Brinker's blog to describe the mass of home-grown marketing technology that companies build themselves internally.…
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Building the Culture to Move Fast
I think it's very easy when we're trying to move fast as a business to over-focus on the process and under-focus on the environment that enables speed to happen. And here I'm really talking about the culture in which a team is operating. If it's culture that is characterised by trust, which enables a greater…
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Generative Design
Sometimes the whole people and technology debate can seem somewhat polarising, particularly when they're represented as mutually exclusive opposing forces when of-course the most interesting scenarios to work through are how one can augment the other. IA rather than AI. Intelligence Augmentation rather than Artificial Intelligence. With machines beginning to demonstrate not only an increasing ability to…
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Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners
After posting about the composition of multidisciplinary teams, (friend of ODF) Mike Baxter sent me a link to Simon Wardly’s post on Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners, which describies a unique combination of characteristics needed to bring products and services to life. The concept, says Simon, is adapted from Robert X. Cringely's book Accidental Empires which describes companies…
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On MultiDisciplinary Teams
"To work through the whole business stack at high velocity and not explode, you need a cross-functional workflow delivered through truly multi-disciplinary teams." Tim Malbon One of the interesting aspects that Tim talked about in his post on the solution to Design Thinking (which was shortlisted for Post of the Month) is the composition of…
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We See What We Want To See
Speaking of biases, I loved this example from (Firestarters speaker) Tim Harford of our delusions of objectivity and how this shapes what we see: '“Have you ever noticed when you’re driving,” the comedian George Carlin commented, “that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” True…
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Post of the Month – March 2016 – The Winner
Quite a close fought battle in this month's vote between Toby Barnes' view on designing everything as a service, Ramzi Yakob's post on the machine in the middle, and Gareth Kay's ode to small. But in the end it was Toby's piece that (just) won through. So well done to Toby. You join the hall…
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Post of the Month – March 2016 – The Vote
Thanks for the nominations. So our vote this month is between: On Designing Everything as a Service by Toby Barnes In Praise of Small by Gareth Kay The Machine in the Middle: Are You Operating at the Pointy End of the Industry? from Ramzi Yakob The Solution to Design Thinking from Tim Malbon Working Differently…