Teams that win do so because they are winning teams first. The emphasis should be on creating the winning team, not on the winning.
Director’s Commentary: John Maeda
This latest Director’s Commentary on metacool is truly meta: it’s a designer being interviewed about what it means to design with simplicity in mind. In this simply awesome interview, NPR’s Ira Flatow talks to Professor John Maeda about The Laws of Simplicity.
I truly appreciate any opportunity I get to listen to Professor Maeda talk about his approach to the process of designing things. My favorite law of simplicty is Law 5: Differences. This law can be stated as follows:
Actually, that’s a big, fat lie on my part. If I put on my professional hat, then my favorite law of simplicity is actually Law 7: Emotion, which is:
If you decide to take a listen to Maeda’s interview, you’ll hear him talk about why desirability can make even a complex, cultish device such as the iPhone seem simple. Wanting something makes it easier to use. Think about that one next time you’re dealing with the Internal Revenue Service. I’m a big believer in starting and ending with desirability when it comes to designing for success in the marketplace, so you can see why I like Law 7.
By the way, he wrote a wonderful book about the subject, too. I highly recommend it.
Hello again, Déesse
Phil Patton has a nice story in the New York Times about the increasing recognition by the automobile industry that green cars more red, if you want them to be desired by a broad market:
Wordless
I’ve been tracking my usage of Word versus Google Documents over the past month, and for the first time I’ve done more work "online" than "ondisk". In many, many ways, working with text and spreadsheet documents online is a much better fit for the realities of my life. For example:
- I’m really wary of losing my data. I think Google takes better care of my data than I ever could.
- I’m wary of mechanical breakdowns. My last PowerBook got bent like a banana (wasn’t my fault). It could happen again. But I never want to lack access to my data again.
- I use multiple computers. I’m so over lugging my five-pound laptop to and from my work office and home and to classrooms at Stanford. Much better to be able to access things from any computer.
- I like to share. When it comes to thinking and creating, I’m an extrovert. I like to share, or to have the option to share, documents with other people. You can do that with Word, but the tracking and rev control features provided by Google are far superior, in my opinon.
Yes, I need an Internet connection to access this stuff. But, at least where I live, WiFi is almost as ubiquitous as clean, running water. And yes, Google has my data and it’s public (so I don’t put private stuff up there for now), but our government reads my emails and probably listens to my phone calls, so…
None of my reasons for liking software as a service are new. In fact, they’re exactly the talking points I used when I was responsible for marketing an accounting "software as service" offering — QuickBooks Online Edition — about six years ago, before this stuff was cool (by the way, QuickBooks Online has over 100,000 customers now… sweet!). But Google’s apps, as simple as they are, really hit a sweet spot for me. As does the Typepad service I use to put up this blog, the Gmail I use to talk to people who email me from this blog… and many other apps. It’ll only get better when I start (I hope) using an iPhone in a year or two.
I’ll be at the iMeme conference tomorrow, so I hope to hear more about where "software" is heading. But I’m convinced this stuff is for real. It has crossed the chasm, and Google is ready to seriously disrupt Microsoft’s Office. This is good for us users.
metacool Thought of the Day
"Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your
style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep
reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and
mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the
appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way
the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for
anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that
support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation.
Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from
inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may
be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a
work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in
reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you
get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience).
That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.
Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music."
Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness
More Garage Majal…
My Garage Majal post touched a nerve. Had a great discussion in comments, and received some strongly worded emails. Thanks for those — I learned a lot from the feedback.
Brendan Eich of Mozilla wrote a post back in April called Open Source and "Openness", and it sheds some good light on the argument I was trying to make about "brilliant networks". Here’s a quote:
Successful open source projects combine meritocratic leadership,
"doing" more than "talking", and breadth through well-scoped extension
mechanisms. It’s not enough to do great work by oneself: each committer
who has the stamina and remains engaged must spend time listening to
users and developers, grooming helpers and successors, and refactoring
or even redesigning to support what becomes, module by module, a platform.
I think we’re entering a period where a new style of leadership — let’s call it web leadership — is emerging. Brilliant networks aren’t bereft of great leadership. Far from it. It’s just that the leadership style required in a network is something quite different from what we’re used to. Something to ponder over the next few weeks.
Innovation Lessons from Garage Majal
Here’s an interesting article about Ron Dennis, the leader of McLaren. That’s him on the right in the photo above, accompanied by the author of the article, semiotician Stephen Bayley. It’s a fascinating walk through the McLaren Technology Centre, which is where wickedly beautiful and effective machines like McLaren F1 racers and the Mercedes SLR are wrought.
One can’t read about Ron Dennis without thinking about Steve Jobs. Both have created high-performance organizations which are able to innovate on a routine basis. Both run organizations which are hierarchical and honest about it. As Dennis remarks to Bayley, "Dust can be eliminated," and I think that’s as much an organizational metaphor as a statement about the level of hygiene found at McLaren.
How does one organize for innovation? I’m beginning to think there’s a bimodal answer at work: either build an organization around an exceptionally "right" individual like Jobs or Dennis, and have every aspect of it amplify their personal decision making abilities, or build a powerful network of individuals, a la Mozilla, which determines what is "right" based on the power of thousands of individuals — some talented, some not so — making deep bugs shallow. In other words, brilliant dictator, or brilliant network. Between those reigns the mediocrity of committees and task forces and focus groups.
What do you think?
metacool Thought of the Day
"A week or so ago or 10 days ago
he was in Eldora in a dirt car. How many guys have been on the Eldora
dirt and been on the streets of Monte Carlo? That just tells you the guy has the disease. He has the fever. He
likes the action and that’s what’s fun about working with him. It’s not
about the money. It’s about the action and that’s what’s fun. It’s easy
to work hard for a guy like that.”
– Chip Ganassi on why Juan Pablo Montoya is a racer. And why it matters.
Prophet of Innovation
I haven’t posted anything about innovation in the last week or so because I’ve been busy making my way through the wonderful pages of Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction.
Penned by Harvard Business School’s Thomas K. McCraw, Prophet of Innovation is an entrancing look at Schumpeter’s life and work. I’m less than a third of the way though its 736 pages, and I’ve already learned a great deal about this subject innovation which is so dear to my heart. It’s Schumpeter who lent shape to many of the ideas, constructs — even a worldview — which inform life here in Silicon Valley, as well as in any economic system where advancement is valued more than stability.
I’ve been hearing from a lot of folks that this "innovation thing" has peaked. As a fad, perhaps. But as a way of seeing the world, let alone a pragmatic way to improve the quality of life on this planet, innovation is much more than just the hottest management trend. What Schumpeter saw 90-odd years ago is still in force today, and though context may change, I believe he uncovered some basic truths about the way that macro and micro economic policies can create a fertile field for innovative behavior to flourish.
I love this book.