- Pushups. Target of 100 consecutive pushups with a minimum of 75 pushups.
- Running. Target of 3km in 12 minutes and a minimum of 2.75km.
- Running. Target of 2 runs per week (average from now up until end of year) with a minimum of 1. To constitute as a run, the running time must be at least 30 minutes and the distance must be at least 5 kilometers.
- Gym. Target of 2.5 gym visits per week (average from now up until end of year) with a minimum of 2.
- Misc. Finish orthodontics and post-operation aspects by end of year. Due to difficulty in measurements, the target is to comply with expert guidance as strictly as possible.
- Misc. Finish treatment as planned with PA/Mehiläinen.
- School. Finish Physics 1B.
- School. Finish Accounting & Profitability intro course.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Targets, 2H08
Well, I recently finished planning my targets for the second half of 2008 at work, and I guess to get things moving on other parallels as well, I should be setting my personal targets as well. So, in another test of my last year's method of listing my New Year's resolutions online, I'll try to put my targets for this half in my blog and also try to weekly report on how things are going. So, here goes...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Why big companies matter not
Just about every person who has read anything related to business in the past five or so years will not have been able to miss Clayton Christensen, the guy behind the concept of disruptions and disruptive technologies. His idea is that good companies fail because they are too good at serving their best customers and are not able to give proper value to underlying disruptions, which eventually dethrone said company.
He may have an idea, possibly because he's from Harvard but also possibly because it seems true in quite many cases. Now, I'll extend the trail of thought on why big companies fail. Or not necessarily why they fail but why they become uninteresting. It's related to physical attributes, namely the fact that by definition, big companies are BIG. That is, big as in fat. And fatness is not a good thing, since it makes moving difficult and all so slow and you break a sweat just by thinking of any type of action. Fat also attracts parasites. Parasites are especially annoying in big companies because they dig in and fortify themselves. They have their own nice sandbox via which they can suck wealth from the company and justify their existence.
Big companies also require tons of administrative positions. Management. The issue here is that when professional managers step in, they lose all touch with reality. Who the hell even knows what the customer wants. In some cases, entities from within the company start living a life of their own, doing things for the sake of doing things. Not because it increases customer value or because it increases shareholder value. But perhaps because when idle people are idle long enough, they get an urge to actually do something. And if they can't do anything intelligent, then they do the next best thing: type up Powerpoint slides and manage technologies. People start attending more and more meetings and becoming more busy and all the while, reality turns upside down and becomes distorted. This doesn't matter in a big company because the cash cows from yesteryear are still bringing in the cash and papers can be shuffled around at ever increasing speeds.
A total farce are the meetings which are attended by fortysomething people who are all management and who start making decisions. At some point they figure out that making technical decisions might require some understanding, and that it might just be better to make a rule saying that the meeting will not discuss any sorts of technical details. Only high-level stuff. Not that it would matter, since technology is now created in a vacuum, again not for the sake of the user or the customer but for the sake of doing things.
So, the big company starts living a life of its own. It does the same thing that it has always done, but it will not renew itself without massive layoffs and a strict diet and exercise routine. But it doesn't matter, because money keeps coming in and people can feel secure by pushing papers around. It may be that the company won't be able to understand or identify the disruptions. But it may also be that even though upper management says that it is committed to change, nobody really gives a damn. Hell, you might actually have to do something tangible if the status quo rocks.
But fear not, big companies are useful because while they once were cutting edge companies and on the edge of cool, they are now still able to provide commodity platforms. Somebody has to provide the base on which small companies can create the new cool. And the new cool is where there is no fat, because fat is not tolerated and extreme pragmatism is king. You solve a concrete problem with a tangible solution and demonstrate end-user value or you die. No safety nets, no Powerpoints, only solutions, services, and products. Responses are sharp and the small company can rapidly realign itself and reinvent itself without too much drama. And it is this reason why mid-management in established companies is afraid of the lean and mean approach. To cite Gordon Gekko, the norm in large corporations seems not to be survival of the fittest, but instead survival of the unfittest. Since the fit ones have already left to exploit the potential provided by the fat companies.
It is very simple: when the fat guy gets stuck in the door, you merely remove his wallet and go in through the window, leaving him to ponder about the greater things in life. But at least he won't die since he has plenty of nutrition around his stomach region...
He may have an idea, possibly because he's from Harvard but also possibly because it seems true in quite many cases. Now, I'll extend the trail of thought on why big companies fail. Or not necessarily why they fail but why they become uninteresting. It's related to physical attributes, namely the fact that by definition, big companies are BIG. That is, big as in fat. And fatness is not a good thing, since it makes moving difficult and all so slow and you break a sweat just by thinking of any type of action. Fat also attracts parasites. Parasites are especially annoying in big companies because they dig in and fortify themselves. They have their own nice sandbox via which they can suck wealth from the company and justify their existence.
Big companies also require tons of administrative positions. Management. The issue here is that when professional managers step in, they lose all touch with reality. Who the hell even knows what the customer wants. In some cases, entities from within the company start living a life of their own, doing things for the sake of doing things. Not because it increases customer value or because it increases shareholder value. But perhaps because when idle people are idle long enough, they get an urge to actually do something. And if they can't do anything intelligent, then they do the next best thing: type up Powerpoint slides and manage technologies. People start attending more and more meetings and becoming more busy and all the while, reality turns upside down and becomes distorted. This doesn't matter in a big company because the cash cows from yesteryear are still bringing in the cash and papers can be shuffled around at ever increasing speeds.
A total farce are the meetings which are attended by fortysomething people who are all management and who start making decisions. At some point they figure out that making technical decisions might require some understanding, and that it might just be better to make a rule saying that the meeting will not discuss any sorts of technical details. Only high-level stuff. Not that it would matter, since technology is now created in a vacuum, again not for the sake of the user or the customer but for the sake of doing things.
So, the big company starts living a life of its own. It does the same thing that it has always done, but it will not renew itself without massive layoffs and a strict diet and exercise routine. But it doesn't matter, because money keeps coming in and people can feel secure by pushing papers around. It may be that the company won't be able to understand or identify the disruptions. But it may also be that even though upper management says that it is committed to change, nobody really gives a damn. Hell, you might actually have to do something tangible if the status quo rocks.
But fear not, big companies are useful because while they once were cutting edge companies and on the edge of cool, they are now still able to provide commodity platforms. Somebody has to provide the base on which small companies can create the new cool. And the new cool is where there is no fat, because fat is not tolerated and extreme pragmatism is king. You solve a concrete problem with a tangible solution and demonstrate end-user value or you die. No safety nets, no Powerpoints, only solutions, services, and products. Responses are sharp and the small company can rapidly realign itself and reinvent itself without too much drama. And it is this reason why mid-management in established companies is afraid of the lean and mean approach. To cite Gordon Gekko, the norm in large corporations seems not to be survival of the fittest, but instead survival of the unfittest. Since the fit ones have already left to exploit the potential provided by the fat companies.
It is very simple: when the fat guy gets stuck in the door, you merely remove his wallet and go in through the window, leaving him to ponder about the greater things in life. But at least he won't die since he has plenty of nutrition around his stomach region...
Friday, August 22, 2008
Regarding last miles
As I mentioned before, I ran the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon, earlier this year. It was an experience that taught very many things, and is still teaching on some parallels. One of the biggest mistakes I made was when I started off too quickly. If you're not in a decent enough shape, starting off too quickly will be the end of you, as it was for my run. The last miles were pure torture.
Similar things hold true for other parallels, e.g. work. Right now I'm sort of running up against a wall with a work project. As was the case for the half-marathon, I have a more or less good idea about what the route looks like and how to get to the finish. But I'm running out of energy and it feels that the road has turned into a swamp. In this case I think the biggest issues were that initially I didn't have that good an idea about what I was getting involved in. In hindsight the picture is always a lot more clear, but this has been a decently steep learning process in which I set off too quickly without thoroughly understanding the landscape and the routes.
This is also applicable to relationships. Running too fast in light of your physical condition and abilities will only cause cramps and a severe drop in energy levels as well as a possibility for not finishing at all, or at least in an unsatisfactory manner.
Similar things hold true for other parallels, e.g. work. Right now I'm sort of running up against a wall with a work project. As was the case for the half-marathon, I have a more or less good idea about what the route looks like and how to get to the finish. But I'm running out of energy and it feels that the road has turned into a swamp. In this case I think the biggest issues were that initially I didn't have that good an idea about what I was getting involved in. In hindsight the picture is always a lot more clear, but this has been a decently steep learning process in which I set off too quickly without thoroughly understanding the landscape and the routes.
This is also applicable to relationships. Running too fast in light of your physical condition and abilities will only cause cramps and a severe drop in energy levels as well as a possibility for not finishing at all, or at least in an unsatisfactory manner.
It's funny...
It's funny, people can firmly stand by some principle and be a cheerleader for an idea, yet at the same time it is not even that difficult to do precisely the opposite. And it's even more funny how anyone and everyone is capable of that. You. Me. Everyone. Very deceptive, very annoying, very despicable.
I'm having a bad week, a bad month, and a seriously bad year. But not so much bad that not something good, too. At least the skin is getting thicker and I'm getting more cynical.
(Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, if you were thinking about driving around town drunk this weekend while also high on crack and stark naked while masturbating with a prostitute you picked up and ending up crashing into a parked car... Sorry, you're apparently too late, according to this article.)
I'm having a bad week, a bad month, and a seriously bad year. But not so much bad that not something good, too. At least the skin is getting thicker and I'm getting more cynical.
(Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, if you were thinking about driving around town drunk this weekend while also high on crack and stark naked while masturbating with a prostitute you picked up and ending up crashing into a parked car... Sorry, you're apparently too late, according to this article.)
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Religion
Religion is a widespread mental illness, of which the defining feature is delusional belief in a powerful invisible being who is always watching you and will punish you if you don't follow their will (the paranoid delusions found in schizophrenia are often similar).
Part of the definition of religion, according to the Uncyclopedia.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Will to act
While listing shortcomings in key areas, another that easily comes to mind is the will to act. A strong will is often considered a good trait in people, with the exception of some special cases (the army comes to mind; strong-willed individuals may not be as easy to sculpt and fit into the standardized mold that a person has to fit if he is to succeed in armed service--this all is also applicable to areas where strict conformance to a certain model is required and where individualism is not rewarded). But where will is general, the will to act is more specific. It is one thing to know what to do and roughly how to do it, but it is a separate thing to motivate oneself to move. The reasons for not moving might be many.
Martial arts have different dimensions and to be a good combatant, the person should excel in as many of these dimensions as possible. Off the back of my head, these dimensions might include technique, strength/agility/physical attributes, and of course the will to act. Technique is crucial when facing situations where raw strength might be overwhelmed. How does one fight multiple attackers if one has not mastered the technique and learned the skills required for surviving such a situation. Mastering the technique, however, is sort of pointless if one is lacking the required physical strength and other similar attributes and cannot execute the technique. But thirdly, all of this is pointless if the person freezes and for one reason or another won't execute any sort of action at the crucial moment.
This all is, of course, at a high enough abstraction level that it is applicable to many different areas. In war, one must know how to wield a weapon efficiently and precisely, be able to execute the technique, but all is lost if at the crucial moment the soldier is not capable of pulling the trigger. In a business environment many projects fail due to hesitation. In night clubs, many men leave alone as they have failed to act (or if they have acted, they have failed in other areas, in this case they typically leave with the help of the bouncer at the end of the night).
Interestingly enough, people are unhappy quite often, but are not willing to do anything about it. I can identify this in myself. It is as if I'm at the slope of a mountain. I know in which direction the peak is, but I have stopped moving. I am unwilling to take risks to get to the peak in fear of falling or getting lost or overall shaking the status quo. Many students are unwilling to graduate for the fear of having to change their life, go outside their current comfort zones and move onward. Many people stay in violent relationships for the fear of provoking even more violence or for the fear of being alone. Others fail projects because they fear failure. The common attribute here is fear. Of course there are other things also inhibiting people from the will to act, but fear is one of the more prominent ones.
In the early 1990s I was living in California and a prominent brand, at least in some circles, was No Fear. No Fear has since been attached to extreme sports, but the idea of advocating a No Fear approach to everything was a good one. The company was based in Carslbad, very nearby, which might explain the reason why I still own two or three No Fear baseball caps. If previously fear was on an individual level, I would say that the collective fear of different things, as embodied in the United States of America these days, is even worse. When an individual fears, it is terrible, but when a whole nation is gripped by fear, history changes directions. Americans might wish to take a look towards Carlsbad and find their No Fear attitude yet again, step up, and demand their freedom back from the oppressors, who ironically can be found very close to home, this time round. From Washington.
Martial arts have different dimensions and to be a good combatant, the person should excel in as many of these dimensions as possible. Off the back of my head, these dimensions might include technique, strength/agility/physical attributes, and of course the will to act. Technique is crucial when facing situations where raw strength might be overwhelmed. How does one fight multiple attackers if one has not mastered the technique and learned the skills required for surviving such a situation. Mastering the technique, however, is sort of pointless if one is lacking the required physical strength and other similar attributes and cannot execute the technique. But thirdly, all of this is pointless if the person freezes and for one reason or another won't execute any sort of action at the crucial moment.
This all is, of course, at a high enough abstraction level that it is applicable to many different areas. In war, one must know how to wield a weapon efficiently and precisely, be able to execute the technique, but all is lost if at the crucial moment the soldier is not capable of pulling the trigger. In a business environment many projects fail due to hesitation. In night clubs, many men leave alone as they have failed to act (or if they have acted, they have failed in other areas, in this case they typically leave with the help of the bouncer at the end of the night).
Interestingly enough, people are unhappy quite often, but are not willing to do anything about it. I can identify this in myself. It is as if I'm at the slope of a mountain. I know in which direction the peak is, but I have stopped moving. I am unwilling to take risks to get to the peak in fear of falling or getting lost or overall shaking the status quo. Many students are unwilling to graduate for the fear of having to change their life, go outside their current comfort zones and move onward. Many people stay in violent relationships for the fear of provoking even more violence or for the fear of being alone. Others fail projects because they fear failure. The common attribute here is fear. Of course there are other things also inhibiting people from the will to act, but fear is one of the more prominent ones.
In the early 1990s I was living in California and a prominent brand, at least in some circles, was No Fear. No Fear has since been attached to extreme sports, but the idea of advocating a No Fear approach to everything was a good one. The company was based in Carslbad, very nearby, which might explain the reason why I still own two or three No Fear baseball caps. If previously fear was on an individual level, I would say that the collective fear of different things, as embodied in the United States of America these days, is even worse. When an individual fears, it is terrible, but when a whole nation is gripped by fear, history changes directions. Americans might wish to take a look towards Carlsbad and find their No Fear attitude yet again, step up, and demand their freedom back from the oppressors, who ironically can be found very close to home, this time round. From Washington.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The difficulty of casual
Dressing well for formal occasions or business is in fact surprisingly trivial, unlike most people would have you believe. It isn't difficult to pick out a suit or a tie or decide which knot to use. In fact, everything related with dressing well while being in a city is more or less simple: using common sense and the rules set forth by the more knowledgable dandies of the past will allow anyone to look stylish.
The difficulties start emerging when one does not go to the office. Or to the theater or the opera. What does one wear on the weekends, when sporting a spiffy pinstriped suit is not really an option? That, I guess, is one of the key questions which separate well dressed men from the rest. And as of now, I have no clue as to what a well dressed man should wear outside the office. Depends on the weather, depends on the activity. The choices are endless and closet space is finite. So in short, according to this definition and distinction, I am not really in any way a knowledgeable dresser.
The difficulties start emerging when one does not go to the office. Or to the theater or the opera. What does one wear on the weekends, when sporting a spiffy pinstriped suit is not really an option? That, I guess, is one of the key questions which separate well dressed men from the rest. And as of now, I have no clue as to what a well dressed man should wear outside the office. Depends on the weather, depends on the activity. The choices are endless and closet space is finite. So in short, according to this definition and distinction, I am not really in any way a knowledgeable dresser.
Friday, August 08, 2008
On Deltas
Delta commonly refers to the Delta Air Lines, the second largest airline in the world in terms of passengers. I personally haven't had the pleasure of enjoying their services, but if other airlines are to be considered when plotting a trend, I don't really feel that bad. Hopefully no more flying for a while. Except for a possible trip to Oktoberfest as Luftwaffe seems to be offering dirt cheap tickets to Munich in September.
Beside those horrid jet-propelled sardine cans, delta should also bring back to mind the math and physics classes from school (you know, that place you go to get certified...). Delta signifies change or difference in a value and quite often absolute change. I never really did get around to switching my mindset to completely embrace relative change. Absolute change was always a lot more concrete: you invested 1k at 10e per share and the share price is now 11e, meaning that the delta is 1e in share price or 100e in your total investment's value. Of course +10% would've also worked, but then it gets tricky when you're mentally tracking values and one day it goes +5%, then -0.47% and then +1.53%. A lot easier to just remember that it was at 11e and now it's at about 11.67e.
The problematic thing with looking at absolute change is that, because it's absolute, it sort of makes you lose perspective. An increase of 1e from 10e is only a 10% increase whereas it's a 100% increase from 1e to 2e. Meaning? Instead of the 1.1k, you would now have 2k. But because of this absolute mindset, a conscious effort needs to be made to grasp this as it's not embedded directly into the way the world is perceived. At least not for me.
As is so often the case, the "real" world applications and implications are also sort of interesting. When things are going well, you demand relatively high successes. But after a crash, you're still in the same mindset and demanding similar absolute increases in your well being, without realizing that in a relative sense the demands are entirely ludicrous. Gyms, for instance, are nice places if your intent is to obtain the physique of Christian Bale (who we're incidentally going to see in the new Batman movie later today, and who makes an absolutely brilliant Patrick Bateman). The problem is that while you're pumping iron, you slowly gain strength and mass. Well, that's not really the problem. The problem arises when you go on a break, maybe because of a surgical operation which requires you to take a couple of months off from physical exercise. Now go back to the gym and demand similar absolute values and perform the routines from a couple of months back. The result? You guessed it: moving your arms or squatting down will, well, cause pain.
But to summarize, one thing that I should take away from this is that I need to learn to look at things from a relative perspective. Small absolute increases my be large relative increases and always going for the absolute highest payoff may not be realistic or even feasible. But I guess age will also correct this flaw...
Beside those horrid jet-propelled sardine cans, delta should also bring back to mind the math and physics classes from school (you know, that place you go to get certified...). Delta signifies change or difference in a value and quite often absolute change. I never really did get around to switching my mindset to completely embrace relative change. Absolute change was always a lot more concrete: you invested 1k at 10e per share and the share price is now 11e, meaning that the delta is 1e in share price or 100e in your total investment's value. Of course +10% would've also worked, but then it gets tricky when you're mentally tracking values and one day it goes +5%, then -0.47% and then +1.53%. A lot easier to just remember that it was at 11e and now it's at about 11.67e.
The problematic thing with looking at absolute change is that, because it's absolute, it sort of makes you lose perspective. An increase of 1e from 10e is only a 10% increase whereas it's a 100% increase from 1e to 2e. Meaning? Instead of the 1.1k, you would now have 2k. But because of this absolute mindset, a conscious effort needs to be made to grasp this as it's not embedded directly into the way the world is perceived. At least not for me.
As is so often the case, the "real" world applications and implications are also sort of interesting. When things are going well, you demand relatively high successes. But after a crash, you're still in the same mindset and demanding similar absolute increases in your well being, without realizing that in a relative sense the demands are entirely ludicrous. Gyms, for instance, are nice places if your intent is to obtain the physique of Christian Bale (who we're incidentally going to see in the new Batman movie later today, and who makes an absolutely brilliant Patrick Bateman). The problem is that while you're pumping iron, you slowly gain strength and mass. Well, that's not really the problem. The problem arises when you go on a break, maybe because of a surgical operation which requires you to take a couple of months off from physical exercise. Now go back to the gym and demand similar absolute values and perform the routines from a couple of months back. The result? You guessed it: moving your arms or squatting down will, well, cause pain.
But to summarize, one thing that I should take away from this is that I need to learn to look at things from a relative perspective. Small absolute increases my be large relative increases and always going for the absolute highest payoff may not be realistic or even feasible. But I guess age will also correct this flaw...
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Schools and certifications
Schools are starting again in Finland shortly and many school-goers are having a difficult time to motivate themselves to do their best. Not so with my cousin, who is very eager to get to first grade, but alas, I fear that even she will wake up one morning and decide that school is annoying. Of course the parents are always going on about how important it is to go to school and do your best, and as is typical, they are right. The motivation, however, may sometimes be borderline despotic: "You'll go to school because the law says so, as do I."
This morning I actually got around to wondering what it is that you actually get from schools. Of course when you look at grades 1-6, you're taught to read, write, do basic mathematical operations. Then of course the long process of conditioning the child to adhere to authorities and to just follow instructions is started. But the further along the road you go, the less important things become. Now, don't get me wrong, learning the history of the egyptians is important, as is learning that F=ma and that you can derive many interesting other formulas from it. But if I reflect what I'm doing in school, most of the lectures are about topics that can't really be applied to real world things, at least not without experience. It's nice to listen to smart people drone on and on about competitive advantage or corporate strategy, but then what? You won't really learn anything as such, nor does the exam grade really tell anything either. The topics are such that you need to go the extra mile yourself and think about them. And even then they'll require years of experience before you can really say that you're starting to understand them.
So, if in primary school you are taught discipline and given a basic set of tools with which you can search for information and process information with, what's the rest about? In some way I can't help but think that it's all a very long and tedious certification process. Sort of like when company XYZ decides that it wants start shipping products that utilize technology ABC as part of a network. XYZ needs to obtain a certificate for their implementation to show others that they know how to talk ABC. Of course XYZ may also skip the certification and just implement the specification and it will still work, even without the certification.
What is the point of a certification, then? As is the case with technology certifications, the lack of school certifications does not necessarily mean that a person is somehow lesser. And from the other side, possessing a certificate that certifies that XYZ's product complies with the ABC spec does not necessarily mean anything, as the certification process may also be flawed. But if the product displays the logo of the certifying organization, it certainly goes a long way to suggest that it should work. It decreases the risk involved. Same goes for schools. Schools ram students through a pipeline, more or less. Some are especially efficient and have a good reputation. Their graduates go on to brilliant places, further enhancing the value of the certifier in the eyes of the clients, in this case the employers who are highering the graduates.
The employer is naturally trying to minimize the risk associated with new recruits, and certificates are one easy way to screen people. If you hold an engineering degree from MIT and it is commonly known that degrees awarded by MIT require quite a bit of work, then the expected value increases as the associated risk for negative outcome decreases and the risk for positive outcome increases. Of course, a person may not be MIT-certified, meaning that the risk increases. But it may be that the person is very brilliant too. But the issue is still that even though every company says that they are highering the top 5%, that can't be true, since then the other 95% of the workforce would be unemployed. So regardless of the fact that rockstar employees are very nice, in the long run you'll end up also employing people who are average, or even below average. And situations like these increase when the company grows. And all of a sudden the fact that you are able to decrease risk, decrease the volatility of candidates, becomes very attractive.
So from one perspective schools can be seen as certificate awarding institutes. Their interest, typically, is to keep up churning out very competitive people. This serves both of their customer groups: the students and the companies employing the graduates. If the graduates are of high quality, the companies will compete more for the graduates. This in turn signals the students that the school has a good reputation and that the graduates from the school are often recruited into good positions. Interestingly enough, though, some schools have to be worse for the other schools to be better. Only 50% of schools can be above average schools, after all.
In light of this, it seems, a rationale player should optimize her studies to be able to obtain certificates with high enough marks to gain access to better schools and earn more certificates. This is at least the route of a risk-averse player. A risk neutral or risk-seeking player, however, may be more satisfied with skipping the certificates and aiming to provide good expected value by looking for unlimited upsides, however unlikely they are. In fact, this trail of thought would lead us to a discussion about how engineers and other boring people are often clustered very closely into the average of a Gaussian distribution whereas artists and other more free-spirited people tend to not follow a Gaussian distribution and instead have more people cluttered at both ends of the scale (i.e. some become very successful and others never break even near to success--think about actors).
This morning I actually got around to wondering what it is that you actually get from schools. Of course when you look at grades 1-6, you're taught to read, write, do basic mathematical operations. Then of course the long process of conditioning the child to adhere to authorities and to just follow instructions is started. But the further along the road you go, the less important things become. Now, don't get me wrong, learning the history of the egyptians is important, as is learning that F=ma and that you can derive many interesting other formulas from it. But if I reflect what I'm doing in school, most of the lectures are about topics that can't really be applied to real world things, at least not without experience. It's nice to listen to smart people drone on and on about competitive advantage or corporate strategy, but then what? You won't really learn anything as such, nor does the exam grade really tell anything either. The topics are such that you need to go the extra mile yourself and think about them. And even then they'll require years of experience before you can really say that you're starting to understand them.
So, if in primary school you are taught discipline and given a basic set of tools with which you can search for information and process information with, what's the rest about? In some way I can't help but think that it's all a very long and tedious certification process. Sort of like when company XYZ decides that it wants start shipping products that utilize technology ABC as part of a network. XYZ needs to obtain a certificate for their implementation to show others that they know how to talk ABC. Of course XYZ may also skip the certification and just implement the specification and it will still work, even without the certification.
What is the point of a certification, then? As is the case with technology certifications, the lack of school certifications does not necessarily mean that a person is somehow lesser. And from the other side, possessing a certificate that certifies that XYZ's product complies with the ABC spec does not necessarily mean anything, as the certification process may also be flawed. But if the product displays the logo of the certifying organization, it certainly goes a long way to suggest that it should work. It decreases the risk involved. Same goes for schools. Schools ram students through a pipeline, more or less. Some are especially efficient and have a good reputation. Their graduates go on to brilliant places, further enhancing the value of the certifier in the eyes of the clients, in this case the employers who are highering the graduates.
The employer is naturally trying to minimize the risk associated with new recruits, and certificates are one easy way to screen people. If you hold an engineering degree from MIT and it is commonly known that degrees awarded by MIT require quite a bit of work, then the expected value increases as the associated risk for negative outcome decreases and the risk for positive outcome increases. Of course, a person may not be MIT-certified, meaning that the risk increases. But it may be that the person is very brilliant too. But the issue is still that even though every company says that they are highering the top 5%, that can't be true, since then the other 95% of the workforce would be unemployed. So regardless of the fact that rockstar employees are very nice, in the long run you'll end up also employing people who are average, or even below average. And situations like these increase when the company grows. And all of a sudden the fact that you are able to decrease risk, decrease the volatility of candidates, becomes very attractive.
So from one perspective schools can be seen as certificate awarding institutes. Their interest, typically, is to keep up churning out very competitive people. This serves both of their customer groups: the students and the companies employing the graduates. If the graduates are of high quality, the companies will compete more for the graduates. This in turn signals the students that the school has a good reputation and that the graduates from the school are often recruited into good positions. Interestingly enough, though, some schools have to be worse for the other schools to be better. Only 50% of schools can be above average schools, after all.
In light of this, it seems, a rationale player should optimize her studies to be able to obtain certificates with high enough marks to gain access to better schools and earn more certificates. This is at least the route of a risk-averse player. A risk neutral or risk-seeking player, however, may be more satisfied with skipping the certificates and aiming to provide good expected value by looking for unlimited upsides, however unlikely they are. In fact, this trail of thought would lead us to a discussion about how engineers and other boring people are often clustered very closely into the average of a Gaussian distribution whereas artists and other more free-spirited people tend to not follow a Gaussian distribution and instead have more people cluttered at both ends of the scale (i.e. some become very successful and others never break even near to success--think about actors).
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Innovation
Everyone needs to be innovative today. If you're not innovating, shame on you. But even innovation by itself is not enough as innovation should be accelerated. You need to beat your competitors in innovation, lest you be left behind. So, what exactly is innovation?
Apparently innovation is, according to Mckeown, the radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes, and in services. Apparently some also feel that it is synonymous to the output of a process. But wait a minute, this becomes interesting. It seems that innovation can be created with a process. In engineering a process is often understood to be a serious of operations done to an input to obtain some sort of output. Fair enough: let's devise a process for innovation. You take some inputs, for instance creative ideas, apply a magical formula and out comes innovation. And of course accelerating innovation just means that you engineer your black box to speed up the process.
Now, according to my understanding, an important part of a process is that the process creates consistent outputs. If I have a manufacturing process for creating nuts and bolts, it's not very nice if the variation between the individual nuts and bolts is too big. In business, processes are often used to ensure consistent actions and is the opposite of what rock stars and divas do: Sarbanes-Oxley attempts to ensure that the processes of companies are well defined and adhered to so that individuals within a company can't create new Enrons and Worldcoms. Innovative accounting is the enemy of Sarbanes-Oxley, so to say.
But wait, if the point of processes is to introduce standardized ways of working or applying transformations and operations to inputs, that doesn't really sound very radical. Alright, maybe we're talking about incremental change, then. Incremental isn't necessarily radical; it may be a fair deal slower and the impact more minute. But it is often understood that innovation should create something new, and it should be substantially different from the previous in order to be considered an innovation. If you consider a field where an entity, say a company, might have a very solid foothold, the company might be able to plan and devise a very clear roadmap of incremental enhancements. 3G comes to mind, for some odd reason. Would someone consider a minor increment in the evolution of a technology an innovation? I guess one could, but I would still venture that it is neither radical nor necessarily substantially different from prior things (sustaining technologies vs. disruptive technologies, if we cite Christensen).
Now, my hypothesis is that innovation cannot be manufactured with rigid and well defined processes. It's not something that can be really grasped and managed in a consistent enough way so that one could say that Innovation Process A, B, or C could consistently bring significant value. In fact, intuitively an innovation process sounds like an oxymoron. Most innovation management processes, I guess, start by assuming that a great enough set of "creative ideas" are present. The a screening process of sorts kicks in and gets rid of the ideas that aren't relevant or promising. Transforms and other actions are then performed in some way and finally out comes innovation, as previously noted. At different steps along the way the process gets rid of more and more ideas; the motivation comes from Darwin and the idea is that only the fit will survive and that eventually only the best and most valuable ideas persist. But the truly greatest innovations have been creations of coincidence. It should not be assumed that visionary people have been able to foresee the consequences of their doings, unlike what analysts and other people watching the world from the rear view mirror would have you believe. There's always too much chance and uncertainty involved.
Look at entrepreneurs. For every Google there are a million and one failures. Google didn't become what it now is because Larry and Sergey were that much more special than the competition. Of course they are incredibly talented, but so are the other guys. They just happened to be talented enough (threshold criteria), but also in the right place at the right time with the right idea. One shouldn't over-analyze things and downplay the significance of chance. Nassim Taleb has written very interesting books on the subject.
So to summarize, really great innovation can seldom be created with rigid processes enforced by bureaucrats. Innovation management processes may be fine and dandy, but they create predictable and minute things. Creative chaos is overlooked by technocrats and boards and the concept of innovation has been done a great disservice by the aforementioned parties, who have consciously or unconsciously devalued innovation and all things related by placing it on every Powerpoint slide that they can. It's disgusting. And that's why corporate innovation is silly; it'll just happen if it is allowed to and if the processes don't kill it. It's like love, you can't force it.
Apparently innovation is, according to Mckeown, the radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes, and in services. Apparently some also feel that it is synonymous to the output of a process. But wait a minute, this becomes interesting. It seems that innovation can be created with a process. In engineering a process is often understood to be a serious of operations done to an input to obtain some sort of output. Fair enough: let's devise a process for innovation. You take some inputs, for instance creative ideas, apply a magical formula and out comes innovation. And of course accelerating innovation just means that you engineer your black box to speed up the process.
Now, according to my understanding, an important part of a process is that the process creates consistent outputs. If I have a manufacturing process for creating nuts and bolts, it's not very nice if the variation between the individual nuts and bolts is too big. In business, processes are often used to ensure consistent actions and is the opposite of what rock stars and divas do: Sarbanes-Oxley attempts to ensure that the processes of companies are well defined and adhered to so that individuals within a company can't create new Enrons and Worldcoms. Innovative accounting is the enemy of Sarbanes-Oxley, so to say.
But wait, if the point of processes is to introduce standardized ways of working or applying transformations and operations to inputs, that doesn't really sound very radical. Alright, maybe we're talking about incremental change, then. Incremental isn't necessarily radical; it may be a fair deal slower and the impact more minute. But it is often understood that innovation should create something new, and it should be substantially different from the previous in order to be considered an innovation. If you consider a field where an entity, say a company, might have a very solid foothold, the company might be able to plan and devise a very clear roadmap of incremental enhancements. 3G comes to mind, for some odd reason. Would someone consider a minor increment in the evolution of a technology an innovation? I guess one could, but I would still venture that it is neither radical nor necessarily substantially different from prior things (sustaining technologies vs. disruptive technologies, if we cite Christensen).
Now, my hypothesis is that innovation cannot be manufactured with rigid and well defined processes. It's not something that can be really grasped and managed in a consistent enough way so that one could say that Innovation Process A, B, or C could consistently bring significant value. In fact, intuitively an innovation process sounds like an oxymoron. Most innovation management processes, I guess, start by assuming that a great enough set of "creative ideas" are present. The a screening process of sorts kicks in and gets rid of the ideas that aren't relevant or promising. Transforms and other actions are then performed in some way and finally out comes innovation, as previously noted. At different steps along the way the process gets rid of more and more ideas; the motivation comes from Darwin and the idea is that only the fit will survive and that eventually only the best and most valuable ideas persist. But the truly greatest innovations have been creations of coincidence. It should not be assumed that visionary people have been able to foresee the consequences of their doings, unlike what analysts and other people watching the world from the rear view mirror would have you believe. There's always too much chance and uncertainty involved.
Look at entrepreneurs. For every Google there are a million and one failures. Google didn't become what it now is because Larry and Sergey were that much more special than the competition. Of course they are incredibly talented, but so are the other guys. They just happened to be talented enough (threshold criteria), but also in the right place at the right time with the right idea. One shouldn't over-analyze things and downplay the significance of chance. Nassim Taleb has written very interesting books on the subject.
So to summarize, really great innovation can seldom be created with rigid processes enforced by bureaucrats. Innovation management processes may be fine and dandy, but they create predictable and minute things. Creative chaos is overlooked by technocrats and boards and the concept of innovation has been done a great disservice by the aforementioned parties, who have consciously or unconsciously devalued innovation and all things related by placing it on every Powerpoint slide that they can. It's disgusting. And that's why corporate innovation is silly; it'll just happen if it is allowed to and if the processes don't kill it. It's like love, you can't force it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
