learning by doing

“The source of Google’s competitive advantage is learning by doing,” said Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist.

In the Internet marketplace, Mr. Varian notes, users can easily switch to another search engine by typing in another Web address, so there is no tight technology control, as there is with proprietary PC software. Similarly, Mr. Varian says, advertisers and publishers can switch fairly easily to rival ad networks operated by Yahoo, Microsoft and others.

But economists and analysts point out that Google does indeed have network advantages that present formidable obstacles to rivals. The “experience effects,” they say, of users and advertisers familiar with Google’s services make them less likely to switch. There is, for example, a sizable cottage industry of experts who tailor Web sites to get higher rankings on search engines, which drive user traffic and thus ad revenues. These experts understandably focus their efforts on the market leader, Google — another network effect, analysts say.

Steve Lohr, "Google, Zen Master of the Market," New York Times, 7 July 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07google.html. Via Items shared by Robert Scoble.

creative without change

The irony of creativity is this: people want to be creative without change. They want innovation with no risk. They want a new result with the same exact behavior. They can talk for hours about how passionate they are about creativity, but when it comes to actually changing anything, they’ll find a way to repeat the same thing again and again. That’s why books, seminars, courses and lectures on creativity rarely translate into much actual creation. No one can make change happen except the person who must accept the fears, and consequences, of change.

Scott Berkun, "The irony of creative change," scottberkun.com, 24 Jun 2008, www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/the-irony-of-creative-change.

illuminate the things I don’t know

The value lies in the network of people and how they illuminate the things I don’t know.

....

I want to know more people, and sure, it’s interesting to see what they’re up to, but what I really want to know is what is going on inside their heads with a minimum of fuss. I want to see how they see the world. This is why I follow people on Twitter. This is why they follow me.

Michael Lopp, "We Travel in Tribes," Rands in Repose, 15 May 2008, www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/05/15/we_travel_in_tribes.html via NorthTemple.

bottom up vs top down design

JV: Have you seen challenges in being a designer at Google, a very sort of technology-focused and -centered company?

IA: It is challenging. I think in a lot of conventional companies, design is kind of a top-down process. Where you think about who are your target users, what’s the market you’re going after, what are their needs. You do requirements-gathering, and then you design the experience around that, and then you tell the engineers to go build. Here, the way products are conceived a lot of times, it’s an engineer has some kind of idea and then starts building it and then — as it gains momentum — a product manager and a designer might become attached to it. So it’s a very bottoms-up kind of process, which is very different to how designers are trained to think about product development. Yet I still think that there are ways that designers can work within that environment and still have products be use-driven and design-driven, but the ways in which you go about getting yourself inserted might be quite different than [at] other cultures, [which] are maybe more top-down, or product- or marketing- or design-driven.

Jeffrey Veen, "Chatting with Irene Au," veen.com, 7 Feb 2007, www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000961.html.
Also listen to a podcast at itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1758.html

Savor the Surprises

Q: How do you find the paradigm shifts, the really big changes that even the customer doesn’t know they want yet?

A: Or they may know they want, but they can’t verbalize it yet.

Two things. And we teach our people how to do this. One is to spend time observing customers. I love market research. It’s nice. But even better is to go out and watch with your own eyes customers or prospects in their native environment; in their home or in their office. Watch what they do and ask them about what they do and don’t do.

As you do this, second point, savor surprises. Be open for the unexpected. Look for the unexpected. What didn’t make sense? What didn’t agree with the paradigm that we all have in our mind? Because it is those surprises that typically are the market speaking to you about a problem they have that we haven’t discovered yet.

Transcribed from Nir Eyal, "Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit," iinnovate podcast, 28 Apr 2008, (quote starts at 15:30), iinnovate.blogspot.com/2008/04/cook.html

Happiness

1. satisfying work to do 2. the experience of being good at something 3. time spent with people we like 4. the chance to be a part of something bigger

Jane McGonigal, "Alternate Realities," SXSW 2008 Keynote, March 2008, podcast - 2008.sxsw.com/blogs/podcasts.php/2008/04/02/keynote_mcgonigal slides - www.slideshare.net/avantgame/alternate-realities-jane-mcgonigal-keynote-sxsw-2008/ blog post - avantgame.blogspot.com/2008/03/keynote-speaker-jane-mcgonigal-doing.html

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

If you haven't yet seen Randy Pausch's Last Lecture take 76 minutes and watch it. You will be moved - it is very good.

Randy Pausch's Site: www.randypausch.com

Randy Pausch's Lecture: www.cmu.edu/randyslecture

focus

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve go to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Steve Jobs quoted in Betsy Morris, "Steve Jobs speaks out," Fortune, 17 Mar 2008, money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/6.html via Rich Goade.
Also see John Moore, "Knowledge Nuggets from Steve Jobs," Brand Autopsy Blog, 19 Mar 2008, brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2008/03/knowledge-nugge.html

product-development voyeurism

Actually Subaru is a lot clearer about what the 2009 Subaru Forester isn't. Apparently it's not a Honda CR-V, Mitsubishi Outlander, Saturn Vue or Toyota RAV4. And that's a good thing.

There is no confusion on Subaru's part, however, about who buys the Forester, why they buy it and how they use it.

In developing the 2009 model, Subaru conducted consumer clinics as early as 2004 to determine what Forester owners thought. Even more telling, according to Tom Caracciollo, Subaru of America's director of product planning, was what was learned after the clinics. By observing participants as they drove away, Caracciollo and his team learned about the ways people actually equipped the Forester and used it, even simply peering inside to see what kind of items were lying around.

This product-development voyeurism was extended further by searching for Forester owners who posted pictures of their adventures on Flickr.com, a photo sharing site. There were the inevitable dog lovers, cross-country skiers and hikers, but the most prolific poster was a guy who posed his Forester in front of the entrance sign to the many national parks he visited. And then there was the couple who stuffed a calf in the back of their Forester to deliver the animal to a relative's farm.

From all this, Subaru was happy to discover that owners loved and trusted their Foresters, but it also took to heart the areas that needed improvement. For example, Subaru eliminated a major source of wind noise by making the crossbars for the rarely used roof rack an optional item. At the same time, load capacity of the crossbars has been increased to 175 pounds, so if you do use them, you can carry more.

In addition, cupholders have been incorporated into the door panels to stow the ubiquitous oversized water bottles that were observed to be a necessary part of the Forester active lifestyle. Interior colors in easily soiled light beige and ivory have been replaced by a more user-friendly shade of gray. And a retractable "snack tray" holds food and beverages for rear-seat passengers.

Patrick C Paternie, "First Drive: 2009 Subaru Forester XT," Edmonds.com, 26 Mar 2008, www.edmunds.com/apps/vdpcontainers/do/vdp/articleId=125348/pageNumber=1

Give Engineers Room

Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to run with it.

It sounds obvious, but people work better when they’re involved in something they’re passionate about, and many cool technologies have their origins in 20 percent time, including Gmail, Google News and even the Google shuttle buses that bring people to work at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

If your 20 percent idea is a new product, it’s usually pretty easy to just find a few like-minded people and start coding away. But when the thing you really want to work on is to make a broad change across the whole organization, you need something new — you need a “grouplet.”

These grouplets have practically no budget, and they have no decision-making authority. What they have is a bunch of people who are committed to an idea and willing to work to.

Bharat Mediratta as told to Julie Bick, "The Google Way: Give Engineers Room," New York Times, 21 Oct 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/jobs/21pre.html