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Twitter It!I have been down with the ‘flu for the last few days. It has been quite a while since I’ve been sick enough that I’ve had to mostly stay in bed, and I am writing this in the couple of ho...
Twitter It!Pondering the glut of vampire fiction and television dramas this Halloween, I thought I’d share a fun-scary piece of my childhood. This is the traditional Indian meta-folktale, Baital Pa...
Twitter It!Late Saturday afternoon, I headed out from my apartment to pick up my wife from the airport, about 30 miles away. It was pouring and cold. Traffic was heavy and slow as I caught 395 Nort...
Twitter It!I don’t do many meta posts, but yesterday’s slashdotting (thanks @kdawson) of the Gervais Principle post, complete with a couple of hours of server-choking, certainly demands one. The d...
Twitter It!My neighbor introduced me to The Office back in 2005. Since then, I’ve watched every episode of both the British and American versions. I’ve watched the show obsessively because I’ve bee...
Twitter It!For several months now, I’ve been noticing a distinct pattern in psychology-beat reporting in major sources of commentary like the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times. I ...
Twitter It!Remember Frogger? The classic video game that inspired a memorable Seinfeld episode? It struck me that the game illustrates the difference between working smart and various flavors of wo...
Twitter It!Have you ever taken a deep breath and stepped out on a stage of some sort to perform? Time slows down. Sounds quiet down and you can actually hear the thudding of your heart. And then, ...
Twitter It!Recently a reader emailed me a note: “I just wanted to bring to your radar ‘the pleasures and sorrows of work’ by Alain de Botton, and what you thought of its theses.” Now de Botton (The...
Twitter It!Do you ever idly fantasize about kicking a wine enthusiast in the pants? Wine enthusiasts routinely confuse knowing with caring. They are eager to explain to you that this 1992 Chardonna...
Twitter It!An intriguing theme keeps popping up in finance discussions: the relationship between time and money. The best-known line of thinking is the one that Ben Franklin popularized, that time ...
Twitter It!There will never be a Management Day to complement Labor Day. The reason lies in the nature of the function, which I once flippantly defined as “delegating whatever you can define, and d...
To most of us, the oceans are about romance, not shipping logistics. Violent thirty-foot waves and gripping piracy tales are conspicuously missing from The Box, the first shipping-themed book I rev...
Pregnancy is a rich, if slightly uncomfortable source of metaphors, especially for men. For example: The idea of the startup incubator The idea that product launches are like birth events The mo...
Twitter It!Yesterday, a colleague looked at me and deadpanned, “aren’t you supposed to have a long beard?” When you remote-work for an extended period (it’s been six months since my last visit to t...
Twitter It!The Dunning-Kruger effect is one of those cleanly stated insights that can at once make you feel relieved and hopeless. It is a cognitive bias which lends confidence to ignorance. Wikipe...
Twitter It!I have a morbid fascination with the idea that conversations represent two computers trying to program each other in real time. Pondering this sometimes yields insights that seem to be v...
As I grow older, I find fewer things funny. Curiously elephant jokes still work on me. The steady rise of my chuckle-or-cringe threshold hasn’t been a monotonic progression from childish to sophist...
Cats and dogs are the most familiar among the animal archetypes inhabiting the human imagination. They are to popular modern culture what the fox and the hedgehog are to high culture, and what far...
Metaphors frame our understanding of numbers. The idea of per capita is one such. To use per capita in your arguments is to suggest that each of us is metaphorically associated with a “fair share”...
Thrice in recent memory, a stranger has come up to speak to me because of the cover of a book. Within the three great introvert institutions built by the book: the cafe, the library and the booksto...
This article is about a number I call the optimal crucible size. I’ll define this number — call it C — in a bit, but I believe its value to be around 12. This article is also about an argument that...
In October last year, I sketched out a concept for an open-source board game that I tentatively titled “Brandhood” (I think I’d now want to call it just “Cloudworker”). The idea was picked up by t...
If you read only one book about globalization, make it The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson (2006). If your expectations in this...
The hyperlink is the most elemental of the bundle of ideas that we call the Web. If the bit is the quark of information, the hyperlink is the hydrogen molecule. It shapes the microstructure of inf...
Pondering the A. G. Lafley HBR piece that’s been doing the rounds lately, I think I’ve finally really figured out the difference between managers, leaders and workers. The title, and this cartoon I...
Much of the discussion around Google Wave so far has been down-in-the-weeds prosaic and business-like. So I decided to seek out physicist turned Zen Master, Roshi Tsu Nami, and historian of technol...
The idea that men hate shopping while women love it is probably the most defensible among all gender stereotypes. Economics would be very different if Adam Smith had been Eve Smith. Male-driven ec...
A few years ago, I was part of a two-day DARPA workshop on the theme of “Embedded Humans.” These things tend to be brain-numbing, so you know an idea is a good one if it manages to stick in your he...
Money shares with things like time and space the sort of obvious-mysterious quality that can utterly puzzle us. Do we need a philosophy of money? I think we do. Today’s financial crisis reminds...
The quadrant diagram has achieved the status of an intellectual farce. If you, as a presenter, do not make an ironic joke when you throw one on the screen, you will automatically lose a lot of cr...
This is a modern nail clipper. It was invented, it appears, by Chapel Carter in 1896. Ask yourself, which elements of this object reflect design, and which elements represent architecture. I am goi...
My reading tends to be very random-access; sometimes it takes me years before I figure out the most rewarding perspective with which to read a book. I bought and began browsing Marci Alboher’s (
The game-break is to 1:1 interpersonal relationships what the “Aha!” moment is to individual introspection. The rare moment, shortly after meeting for the first time, when two people experience a s...
Since it’s been more than week since my last post, I thought I’d do a quick meta-post for those of you who don’t follow my off-ribbonfarm blogging gigs. The next original ribbonfarm post will have ...
This has always puzzled me: why do people with similar backgrounds and intellects vary so widely in their effectiveness in dealing with money? One guy goes to work straight out of college, saves st...
Table of contents for The Organization ManThe Organization Man by William Whyte: IntroductionThe Ideology of the Organization ManThe Training of the Organization Man Recap: In the first two parts o...
Two months into my new work-from-home lifestyle, it hit me: having my elliptical machine right in my office is not making it easier to be healthy. It is just locking me more securely into an approa...
One of the most interesting problems around today is modeling trust levels in a relationship. The NY Times today has an
When I was a kid, we lived in a big, drafty bungalow-style house, verandas, mango trees and all. The dining room floor was some sort of dull red matte-like surface. It worked perfectly as a chalkbo...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture?The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American (warning, ...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture?The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American It has bee...
News flash: I was just interviewed (you can
Today, January 7th, was a brutal bitch of a day, and it was a great day. Every grim reality of the cloudworker lifestyle, the dark side of everything from mobility and laptops to eating on the run...
Yesterday I got this gentle complaint from a friend and reader, “It’s great that your cloudworker stuff is getting picked up. I’m afraid it may tear you away from your non-business interests though...
Yesterday I got this gentle complaint from a friend and reader, “It’s great that your cloudworker stuff is getting picked up. I’m afraid it may tear you away from your non-business interests though...
I wrote 80 articles in 2008, and this post contains an annotated list of links to all of them. I am also running a quickie contest to find out what people like: simply use the Email This Post link...
I wrote 80 articles in 2008, and this post contains an annotated list of links to all of them. I am also running a quickie contest to find out what people like: simply use the Email This Post link...
You read that right. Calibrations, not resolutions. Until you know a) exactly where you are, b) where you are already going, b) with how much momentum, c) and how much discretionary steering author...
You read that right. Calibrations, not resolutions. Until you know a) exactly where you are, b) where you are already going, b) with how much momentum, c) and how much discretionary steering author...
The easiest way to predict the future, as Alan Kay said, is to invent it. Some friends of mine, over at a stealth design/innovation startup called
The easiest way to predict the future, as Alan Kay said, is to invent it. Some friends of mine, over at a stealth design/innovation startup called
Table of contents for The Organization ManThe Organization Man by William Whyte: IntroductionThe Ideology of the Organization Man Recap: Last time I introduced
Table of contents for The Organization ManThe Organization Man by William Whyte: IntroductionThe Ideology of the Organization Man Recap: Last time I introduced
Table of contents for The Organization ManThe Organization Man by William Whyte: IntroductionThe Ideology of the Organization Man
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture?The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American When one o...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture? When one of my regular readers IM’ed me, “I hope you write abo...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, Obama If Truman was the Nuclear President, Kennedy the Space President, and Eisenhower the Intersta...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture?The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American If Truman ...
I rarely react to the news on ribbonfarm, since I prefer to focus on relatively long-term stuff. But tomorrow’s election is historic in too many ways to not comment on. This is definitely an Elect...
I rarely react to the news on ribbonfarm, since I prefer to focus on relatively long-term stuff. But tomorrow’s election is historic in too many ways to not comment on. This is definitely an Elect...
It’s been a busy week here at ribbonfarm, and it’s ending with a bang. Two news items — my first book project, and a board game — that should interest you, if you’ve been following the evolution of...
It’s been a busy week here at ribbonfarm, and it’s ending with a bang. Two news items — my first book project, and a board game — that should interest you, if you’ve been following the evolution of...
Dear readers: For the first time, I am asking a specific favor of you. My contribution, ‘cloudworker’, to the Plantronics contest to invent a new term for ‘telecommuter’ has made it to the top 10 f...
Dear readers: For the first time, I am asking a specific favor of you. My contribution, ‘cloudworker’, to the Plantronics contest to invent a new term for ‘telecommuter’ has made it to the top 10 f...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker Economics [Newsflash! 'Cloudworker' is one of 10 finalists in the Plantronics contest to replace 'telecommuter' --
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture?The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American I started ...
In which we offer up a lyrically-hyperlinked (and determinedly purple) paean to the Future of Work. Even as economic storm clouds gather, a grimly pragmatic worker archetype is floating in on that ...
Table of contents for CloudworkerThe Cloudworker’s CreedCloudworker EconomicsThe Cloud President, ObamaIs There a Cloudworker Culture?The Cloudworker, Layoffs and The Disposable American In which w...
You know you’ve got an interesting on your hands if it helps you build a fairly compelling case that the Amish are more sophisticated meta-innovators than Fortune 100 CEOs.
You know you’ve got an interesting on your hands if it helps you build a fairly compelling case that the Amish are more sophisticated meta-innovators than Fortune 100 CEOs.
Fourth quarter, when a young information worker’s thoughts turn lightly to thoughts of headcount. I’ve argued before that the that headcount (a.k.a HC in managerese) measures information worker ban...
Fourth quarter, when a young information worker’s thoughts turn lightly to thoughts of headcount. I’ve argued before that the that headcount (a.k.a HC in managerese) measures information worker ban...
I just posted a piece titled
When my review copy of Jeff Howe’s of self-assured, faux-authoritative rhetoric annoys me in general, and particularly in this case. Surowiecki is much too confident about his ability to represent...
[This detailed, chapter-by-chapter précis of Dan Ariely's
Continuing my exploration of information overload, in this piece, I’ll further develop the argument that it is not the real problem, but a mis-framing of a different problem (call it X) that has n...
Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma has helped frame an entire decade of thinking on innovation. His taxonomy of radical/incremental//sustaining/disruptive, despite being very widely misu...
It suddenly struck me today that I’ve never seen a visualization of a very obvious way to understand markets at the broadest level: segment all products and services based on what customer need the...
Welcome back. Labor Day tends to punctuate my year like the eye of a storm (I’ve been watching too much Gustav-TV). For those, like me, who do not vacation in August, it tends to be the hectic anch...
If you visualize your career (or your entire life) as the piloting of an aircraft, what sort of aircraft do you see? Modes of flight work as great metaphors for your life and career. The story of
I have taken to asking an unfair question in interviews in recent months: as a manager, how can you make sure you help people play to their strengths, while making sure the organization meets its g...
Okay, I couldn’t resist that bad pun in the title. I was wondering today, while taking my evening stroll to the coffee shop, about one of the most powerful visual icons in our world — the arrow. I...
Okay, I couldn’t resist that bad pun in the title. I was wondering today, while taking my evening stroll to the coffee shop, about one of the most powerful visual icons in our world — the arrow. I...
The coach tells the high-school star athlete, you’ve got to take your game to the next level to compete in college. The executive coach tells the young hotshot, at the next level, EQ matters more t...
The coach tells the high-school star athlete, you’ve got to take your game to the next level to compete in college. The executive coach tells the young hotshot, at the next level, EQ matters more t...
Three things happened today that created a sort of nuclear reaction in my head. The result was a rather blinding flash of insight concerning a set of knotty problems I am wrangling with. The first ...
Three things happened today that created a sort of nuclear reaction in my head. The result was a rather blinding flash of insight concerning a set of knotty problems I am wrangling with. The first ...
Somewhere in the back of our minds, we know that creation and growth must be accompanied by destruction and decline. We pay lip service to this essential dichotomy, or attempt to avoid it altogethe...
Somewhere in the back of our minds, we know that creation and growth must be accompanied by destruction and decline. We pay lip service to this essential dichotomy, or attempt to avoid it altogethe...
There is a compelling scene in HBO’s quasi-fictional Western,
There is a compelling scene in HBO’s quasi-fictional Western,
Let’s say you go on a business trip to the city where your favorite cousin lives, who you haven’t seen for a decade. You enjoy a nice dinner together one evening. In utility terms, this is positive...
Let’s say you go on a business trip to the city where your favorite cousin lives, who you haven’t seen for a decade. You enjoy a nice dinner together one evening. In utility terms, this is positive...
For history buffs like me, a rich understanding of the temporal structure of the world is very important, almost more so than its spatial structure. Timelines to me are in some ways vastly more int...
For history buffs like me, a rich understanding of the temporal structure of the world is very important, almost more so than its spatial structure. Timelines to me are in some ways vastly more int...
Recently I took my usual mile-long walk to my neighborhood Starbucks, in suburban Rochester, something I often do when I need a physical rhythm to help tame runaway thoughts. I sat on the patio, si...
Recently I took my usual mile-long walk to my neighborhood Starbucks, in suburban Rochester, something I often do when I need a physical rhythm to help tame runaway thoughts. I sat on the patio, si...
Since New York Times columnist/blogger Marci Alboher just praised my ‘whimsical and thoughtful’ drawings and my previous article was all text, I thought I’d better hurry up and invite NYT readers o...
Since New York Times columnist/blogger Marci Alboher just praised my ‘whimsical and thoughtful’ drawings and my previous article was all text, I thought I’d better hurry up and invite NYT readers o...
For real estate agents, it is location, location, location. For businesses, it is talent, talent, talent. Neither of Douglas McGregor’s pair, Theory X and Theory Y, works anymore, and neither does...
For real estate agents, it is location, location, location. For businesses, it is talent, talent, talent. Neither of Douglas McGregor’s pair, Theory X and Theory Y, works anymore, and neither does...
ABDs agonize far too much about finishing, and not enough about finishing right. A successful Ph.D. experience, as opposed to a merely completed one, is one that leaves you with self-assu...
ABDs agonize far too much about finishing, and not enough about finishing right. A successful Ph.D. experience, as opposed to a merely completed one, is one that leaves you with self-assu...
Here is a quick review of the 27 articles I posted between March 21 and June 16. I have given up trying to be regular, let alone frequent, with these roundups. And to think, when I started this blo...
Here is a quick review of the 27 articles I posted between March 21 and June 16. I have given up trying to be regular, let alone frequent, with these roundups. And to think, when I started this blo...
Probably the best thing about Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies is its cover, by Stephani Finks (I hope I linked to the right profile on Facebook). The contents are...
Probably the best thing about Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies is its cover, by Stephani Finks (I hope I linked to the right profile on Facebook). The contents are...
How do geniuses come up with What is common to the thinking that produced “Mona Lisa,” as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Ei...
How do geniuses come up with What is common to the thinking that produced “Mona Lisa,” as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Ei...
I have previously written about/drawn cartoons about the evolution of work-life attitudes. I also drilled down into the issue within the Gen X framing of ‘balance’ using the surfing, juggling and ...
I have previously written about/drawn cartoons about the evolution of work-life attitudes. I also drilled down into the issue within the Gen X framing of ‘balance’ using the surfing, juggling and ...
In the history of innovation, Xerox (where I work) has starred in three stories so far: Xerography, personal computing and production digital printing. The first created the modern workplace, the s...
In the history of innovation, Xerox (where I work) has starred in three stories so far: Xerography, personal computing and production digital printing. The first created the modern workplace, the s...
This article is an introduction to an — outsider innovation — whose time has come. I’ll present the and along the way include short reviews of three fun books about innovation (Thinkertoys by Mich...
This article is an introduction to an — outsider innovation — whose time has come. I’ll present the and along the way include short reviews of three fun books about innovation (Thinkertoys by Mich...
If you’ve ever used phrases like, “that’s serious food for thought” or “I need to digest that” or “there’s no meat on that argument,” you’ve used the FOOD IS THOUGHT (FIT) conceptual metaphor. In t...
If you’ve ever used phrases like, “that’s serious food for thought” or “I need to digest that” or “there’s no meat on that argument,” you’ve used the FOOD IS THOUGHT (FIT) conceptual metaphor. In t...
Most people think of only one notion relating work and life: the work-life balance notion. You and I of course, are smarter, and we know that the relationship has been evolving over time. Here’s a...
Most people think of only one notion relating work and life: the work-life balance notion. You and I of course, are smarter, and we know that the relationship has been evolving over time. Here’s a...
Big and complex problems sometimes do require require big and complex solutions. This thought was hammered home for me powerfully last week by way of a triple-punch: a conference I was attending, a...
Big and complex problems sometimes do require require big and complex solutions. This thought was hammered home for me powerfully last week by way of a triple-punch: a conference I was attending, a...
I am not much of a video game fan, but I’ve noticed that skills you learn that enable you to kill the aliens at Level 1 often become liabilities at Level 2. Everyday life in a corporation, unfortun...
I am not much of a video game fan, but I’ve noticed that skills you learn that enable you to kill the aliens at Level 1 often become liabilities at Level 2. Everyday life in a corporation, unfortun...
Conversations about ‘what is art?’ bore me. Conversations about ‘what is art for?’ on the other hand, I find arresting. I have a simple answer that works for me: in the ‘food for thought’ metaphor,...
Conversations about ‘what is art?’ bore me. Conversations about ‘what is art for?’ on the other hand, I find arresting. I have a simple answer that works for me: in the ‘food for thought’ metaphor,...
Tom Hayes‘ Jump Point, a recent addition to the emerging World 2.0 canon presents an argument that evokes a foggy sort of deja vu. If you’ve been keeping up with the literature, you’ll probably fro...
Tom Hayes‘ Jump Point, a recent addition to the emerging World 2.0 canon presents an argument that evokes a foggy sort of deja vu. If you’ve been keeping up with the literature, you’ll probably fro...
Have a gag to suggest? Send it in with a quick description of the visual, along with your punchline. If you liked this post, buy me a cappuccino!
Have a gag to suggest? Send it in with a quick description of the visual, along with your punchline. If you liked this post, buy me a cappuccino!
Economics as a subject has never enjoyed healthier times — a universe of Freakonomics clones is appearing and the subject is galloping along in popularity as an undergraduate major. Yet, these are ...
Economics as a subject has never enjoyed healthier times — a universe of Freakonomics clones is appearing and the subject is galloping along in popularity as an undergraduate major. Yet, these are ...
Have a gag to suggest? Send it in with a quick description of the visual, along with your punchline. If you liked this post, buy me a cappuccino!
Have a gag to suggest? Send it in with a quick description of the visual, along with your punchline. If you liked this post, buy me a cappuccino!
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