inside the room they're smarter about the project

This in particular is the room for the K12 education project. You see lots of post-its and photos on the walls that represent the different projects that this initiative is working on. One thing that is very important, that is that this room doesn't belong to a person, but to a project. And so, as soon as anyone working on the project gets inside the room they're smarter about the project. They know, they see the ideas and everything is very visible on the walls. This is the main area where student teams come to work on their projects. As you can see we have, furniture that can be moved and reconfigured, as well as boards that slide to create private spaces for the teams to work.

The Context of the Innovator: Space,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7o19ta4sMk.

the food tastes better

We have ingredients that come in every day. Hundreds of varieties of stuff. It's difficult to understand, but take watercress. You have it in one week, you do this new dish, you write a recipe for it and it's really good. The watercress is spicy. Then it rains two days later. The watercress is not so spicy. Then it's the cook at the section cooking that dish who needs to make the adjustment so that the magic can happen again in the flavor.

If people are in an environment where they're afraid of making decisions, making mistakes or speaking up, those decisions aren't made. They simply just follow the recipe. They become robotic. Our kitchen became less robotic, leaving more space for the individual. Because of that, the food tastes better.

....

The first book we did -- the previous one, which is 3 years old -- that was a different story. But in the past 3 years, we've become more confident. As a result, the food has become more simple. For instance, there's a recipe that is essentially just a roasted cauliflower. Then it's served with a dollop of whipped cream. Everybody can do that.

Rebecca Sheir, "Noma's Rene Redzepi on fame, fun and not freaking out," The Splendid Table, 12 Jan 2014,
www.splendidtable.org/story/nomas-rene-redzepi-on-fame-fun-and-not-freaking-out, (bold added).

...look long enough for an argument against reason...

I learned that if you look long enough for an argument against reason you will find it.

Michael Lewis, Moneyball, Norton, Kindle Edition, Location 4476
www.amazon.com/Moneyball-The-Winning-Unfair-Game-ebook/dp/B000RH0C8G/ref=tmm_kin_title_popover

This I Believe recordings

Some fascinating voices from the past.

thisibelieve.org/essays/fifties/

decide what problem is worth working on

There's a creative act in trying to decide what problem is worth working on in the first place.

Mike Antonucci, "Sparks Fly," Stanford Magazine, March/April 2011, alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=28380

we can adjust the sails

On one occasion President Monson said: “We … can choose to have a positive attitude. We can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. In other words, we can choose to be happy and positive, regardless of what comes our way.”

Thomas Monson, “Messages of Inspiration from President Monson,” Church News, 2 Sep 2012 as quoted in William Walker, "Our Prophet Thomas S Monson," CES Devotional, 5 May 2013,
www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/ces-devotionals/2013/01/our-prophet-thomas-s-monson.

he paid more attention to the customers than they paid to themselves

Let’s start with Henry Ford. If he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse, because they knew they had a problem that a horse seemed to solve (transportation), and they could only think in terms of what they already knew (a horse, but faster). Did Ford really ignore his customers? Not really. He just understood their underlying need better than they did. He realized that what they really needed was not a horse per se, but convenient, affordable transportation. So he threw out the assumptions, reframed the problem at a deeper level, and found a way to bring an emerging product category to the masses.

It’s not that he didn’t pay attention to the customers, but that he paid more attention to the customers than they paid to themselves.

Peter Lewis, "Looking Past the Horse," Midium.com, 3 Aug 2013,
medium.com/editors-picks/44bda7299a28.

BBQ

"When I'm feeling good, I want barbecue. And when I'm feeling bad, I just want barbecue more."

Jason Sheehan, "There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue," This I Believe, npr.org, 29 May 2006, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4827993.

In-progress

In-progress work is uncomfortable, it shows more open questions than answers; and “uncertainty”, as Paul Soulellis wrote in The Manual, “runs counter to how we’re trained to articulate our design values. We’re taught to express clearly and certainly”, but in-progress work is usually not clear yet, craft is messy and dirty, and sometimes you hit a dead end. Facing this is unsettling — maybe especially so for a generation of designers raised with the shiny precision of computers. We love that precision, even if deep down we know that it’s often a lie. The precise numbers of computers can make our work look like we’ve found answers when really all we have are questions, and the only truth we know is vague.

Nina Stössinger, "Sketching Out of My Comfort Zone: A Type Design Experiment," typographica.org, 27 May 2013
typographica.org/reports/sketching-out-of-my-comfort-zone-a-type-design-experiment/ via Robb Perry.

Daring Greatly

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly... who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Found while looking at the Amazon description of
Daring Greatly.