Tag archives: MIT
John Maeda – too humorous
07May09Bias + Innovation
13Apr09…Once managers lock in on a certain picture, they will often reshape reality to fit into that familiar frame. (See “Missed Signals in Pearl Harbor.”) Humans tend to judge too quickly when presented with ambiguous data; we have to work extra hard to consider less familiar scenarios.
Whenever multiple pieces of evidence point in opposite directions, or when crucial information is missing, our minds naturally shape the facts to fit our preconceptions…
…In principle, groups should be better than individuals at detecting changes and responding to them. But often a group can fall victim to narrow-minded analysis, tunnel vision, a false sense of consensus and poor information gathering, resulting in groupthink. The true relevance of various snippets of information often can be fully appreciated only when they are debated with others and merged into a larger mosaic…
To know more of the article. LINK
Currently I have been reading “how we decide” and it is a good book to help a reader to start visualizing the idea of connecting the dots of social human information which we are experiencing within our society and economy. This article applies to my belief to present all bias and stereotypes “on the table” before the project starts… when creating strategies for the next field of product evolutions.
just off subject … One theory I think from time to time is to reevaluate our bias of “sharing.” The capitalistic world views internet sharing as illegal downloading. But no one is actually making a profit for copying media and posting it on filehost site. the profit they would actually get are from the ad banners on their website.
Think about emoticons… the creator came from carnegie mellon and if he wanted to make copyrights and profits, then it would not spread like wildfire as we have it today.
So what is innovation?
Well, there are a few of us thinking that innovation works when we “share” …So then, how do we scale innovation in terms of generating profits? Some of our most innovative ideas that exist today are really free. Of course profit will come later, but you must give for free first to get consumers to play it. And once you have them “hook” or addictive to the product then you place a price tag or pay for secondary features/addons to improve the freebie .
I know cigarettes are bad for you and nasty towards your health, but think about it. How did cigarettes became so popular? The companies gave it to our WW2 soldiers for “free” and after the war the soldiers continued by purchasing their products.
21st century business!
03Apr09THANK YOU! Sloan Review…
someone else has stated clearly about methods of the last century and this century. It could also explain why we are having an economic SHIFT! for those that are not designers – we designers have been saying “we are in a design shift” for so long within the academia world that it is now leaking into the other “bubbles” – business, industry, corporate, etc.
“The result is that many of the core businesses—involved with what may be boring old, mainstream, mature products and services that everyone has taken for granted—are themselves becoming more uncertain. As uncertainty increases, companies are finding themselves facing what we call a high ratio of “uncertainty to knowledge.” This is a problem because making decisions based on old assumptions often leads to unfortunate outcomes.
Human beings have a tendency to embrace information reinforcing their pre-existing beliefs, while challenging or rejecting information that calls these beliefs into question. At the same time, many established management tools, such as net present value, are built on a foundation of assumed certainty—that it’s realistic to forecast likely cash flows into the future and discount them to today. In volatile business environments, such thinking is no longer practical.”
the article – LINK
more battery news – charging in SECONDS
16Mar09
–MIT engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries — for cell phones and other devices — that could recharge in seconds rather than hours. The work led by Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, is reported in the March 12 issue of Nature. Using their new processing technique, Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering went on to make a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds (it takes six minutes to fully charge or discharge a cell made from the unprocessed material).
Siftables…..
23Feb09I have heard of this these tiny computer blocks but never seen in action. Go and watch. I especially like the end where you can make music, it is a completely new approach or is it old? cause techniquely we are operating the device in the olde fashion way. I like the humor twist. enjoy.