Etiqueta: Henry Ford

How Remix Culture Fuels Creativity & Invention: Kirby Ferguson at TED


Brain Pickings

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From Bob Dylan to Steve Jobs, or how copyright law came to hinder the very thing it set out to protect.

Remix culture is something I think about a great deal in the context ofcombinatorial creativity, and no one has done more to champion the popular understanding of remix as central to creativity than my friend and documentarian extraordinaire Kirby Ferguson. So I’m enormously proud of Kirby’s recent TED talk about his Everything is a Remix project, exploring remix culture, copyright and creativity — watch and take notes:

The Grey Album is a remix. It is new media created from old media. It was made using these three techniques: copy, transform and combine. It’s how you remix. You take existing songs, you chop them up, you transform the pieces, you combine them back together again, and you’ve got a new song, but that new song is clearly comprised of old songs.

But I think these aren’t just the components of remixing. I think these are the basic elements of all creativity. I think everything is a remix, and I think this is a better way to conceive of creativity.

[…] Leer más “How Remix Culture Fuels Creativity & Invention: Kirby Ferguson at TED”

Why Innovations Are Arguments

How can a company “get it”? The only way is to hang out with people obsessed with some conclusion about empowering the human experience. To understand early the empowerment that personal computing represented, one would have had to hang out with the members of the Homebrew Computer Club, which spawned Apple Inc. along with about 26 other companies. Similarly, to understand what the empowerment of the automobile would mean, one would have had to hang out with those who made up the inner circle of the early Detroit auto industry. To “get it” means having both the staunchness and the humility to join the dialogue and contribute something — hopefully, an original argument — to the debate; and, if a company cannot contribute even a flawed, or rough, but original argument to the debate, then it can never “get it.”
A company has to do more than look for applications of its technology, acquire technology or just make knock-offs. It has to own a paradigm — a conclusion to an innovation argument. Every business must understand how what it is doing empowers humans. This, plus operational excellence, can make a company almost unstoppable.


 

 

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/
By Randall S. Wright 

Too many executives confuse what an innovation is with what an innovation would do for them if they had one. The solution? Think of innovation as an if-then argument.

ATTEND ALMOST ANY conference on innovation, and one will hear someone in the audience ask, “Yes, but how are you defining ‘innovation’?” Why is there no clear, shared meaning of “innovation”? I believe it is because most executives confuse what an innovation actually is with what an innovation would do for them if they had one. For example, most companies think of an “innovation” as something that wins a sale with a better solution, increases revenue or takes market share from a competitor. But those aren’t definitions of innovation. They’re outcomes executives would like to get from innovation.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth D: All ...

The problem is a serious one, not the least because companies send engineers, “technology entrepreneurs” and “technology scouts” in search of innovations when a shared understanding of what they are looking for may not exist across the organization’s people and functions or between “scouts” and managers. More significantly, to “innovate” means to “regenerate” — and most companies decline or fail because they fail to regenerate.

I propose that all true innovations are arguments. By this I mean that all innovations are composed of three elements: a proposition and a conclusion linked by an inference. I further propose that this is not merely a convenient or workable definition that covers most instances of innovation. Far from it: Stating that innovations are arguments is not just stating a definition — it is an identity, an equality. Innovation = Argument.

Let me explain. When the late Steven Jobs went to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in December 1979 to kick around the lab to see what was up, he made an argument — an innovation. He stumbled on a proposition — the graphical user interface — and inferred that this interface would be the way that everyone would experience computing. Jobs later told Rolling Stone, “Within 10 minutes, it was obvious that every computer would work this way someday. You knew it with every bone in your body.” Steve Jobs was an innovator because he could make inferences between technology propositions and conclusions about human experience. Leer más “Why Innovations Are Arguments”

Self-Image Is The Key To Success In Business And In Life

“There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.”–Napoleon Hill

It has been conclusively demonstrated that individuals who expect to succeed at a given venture are more likely to do so than those who expect to fail. Positive expectations work as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy–those who expect to succeed are more likely to do so, thus maintaining and reinforcing their expectation for success.

Today, we are going to take this analysis one step further and address the underlying cause of these expectations.

The expectations we have for ourselves are largely determined by our self-image. The opinion you have of yourself directly impacts your expectations and thus your chances for success in ventures of all sorts.


http://www.fastcompany.com
BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER ETHAN HALE
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.

“There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.”–Napoleon Hill

It has been conclusively demonstrated that individuals who expect to succeed at a given venture are more likely to do so than those who expect to fail. Positive expectations work as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy–those who expect to succeed are more likely to do so, thus maintaining and reinforcing their expectation for success.

Today, we are going to take this analysis one step further and address the underlying cause of these expectations.

The expectations we have for ourselves are largely determined by our self-image. The opinion you have of yourself directly impacts your expectations and thus your chances for success in ventures of all sorts.  Leer más “Self-Image Is The Key To Success In Business And In Life”

The CEO’s Innovation Nightmare – BusinessWeek


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What is to be done?

Some Helpful Tips

We know this column could come across as a bit cynical. But we are truly hopeless optimists, so let’s get to some solutions. If you are a bullish CEO or a bullish innovator within the ranks, here are few tips that will absolutely make your corporate life better—and more fulfilling.

Let’s start with counsel for the CEOs:

Recruit believers. Henry Ford said, “If you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right.” If you have people on your staff who don’t really believe change is possible or that the old way is good enough, for God‘s sake, release them to find a more fulfilling destiny. If you don’t have the guts to do it, then please stop saying you are going to change the world. Because your people simply won’t let it happen, and you are going to look like a fool.

Hire objective senior managers. This is a nice way of saying you should bring in leaders from outside your industry.

Full article:
The CEO’s Innovation Nightmare – BusinessWeek.

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Rethinking Failure

Tried anything recently that didn’t quite work out? Congratulations! You’re on your way to a breakthrough.

Bottom line, there is no innovation without “failure.” If your perception of failure is “something to avoid,” you can kiss innovation goodbye. Failure comes with the territory. If the word puts you in a foul mood, use another one — like “experiment,” for example.

* “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.” — Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM
* “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” — Miles Davis
* “99 percent of success is built on failure.” — Charles Kettering
* “I have not failed once. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” — Thomas Edison
* “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” — Charles Kettering
* “Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
* “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F. Kennedy
* “Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.” — Horace
* “When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to laugh at ourselves.” — Katherine Mansfield


by Mitch Ditkoff

Rethinking FailureTried anything recently that didn’t quite work out? Congratulations! You’re on your way to a breakthrough.

Bottom line, there is no innovation without “failure.” If your perception of failure is “something to avoid,” you can kiss innovation goodbye. Failure comes with the territory. If the word puts you in a foul mood, use another one — like “experiment,” for example.

  • “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.” — Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM
  • “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” — Miles Davis
  • “99 percent of success is built on failure.” — Charles Kettering
  • “I have not failed once. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” — Thomas Edison
  • “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” — Charles Kettering
  • “Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
  • “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F. Kennedy
  • “Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.” — Horace
  • “When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to laugh at ourselves.” — Katherine Mansfield Leer más “Rethinking Failure”

John Maxwell y las 21 Leyes Irrefutables del Liderazgo

Una persona muy querida me regaló un libro de John C. Maxwell llamado “Las 21 Leyes Irrefutables del Liderazgo”. El prólogo de ésta edición es de Stephen R. Covey, que se sitúa en el puesto número 16 de la Lista de Accenture de los 50 Gurús más Importantes del Management. Les dejamos con un resumen y análisis de las Leyes Irrefutables de John Maxwell, aunque algunas opiniones, conclusiones y apostillas son propias. Gracias Vicky, por el regalo de éstas navidades..


Una persona muy querida me regaló un libro de John C. Maxwell llamado “Las 21 Leyes Irrefutables del Liderazgo”. El prólogo de ésta edición es de Stephen R. Covey, que se sitúa en el puesto número 16 de la Lista de Accenture de los 50 Gurús más Importantes del Management. Les dejamos con un resumen y análisis de las Leyes Irrefutables de John Maxwell, aunque algunas opiniones, conclusiones y apostillas son propias. Gracias Vicky, por el regalo de éstas navidades.. Leer más “John Maxwell y las 21 Leyes Irrefutables del Liderazgo”