Random Musings

A detailed account of what culture means to Netflix Netflix - Freedom & Responsibility Culture View more presentations from solsolid .

Great post and could not agree more... on the "Great Reset" the period that we are in now and what it means to you as an individual " Today, a person’s professional identity is more important than ever. Individual skills, expertise, reputation and authority have become the personal currencies of our economy. And they are the currencies that will lead us into the future." "We finally realize the ultimate extension of the founding concepts: the democratization of opportunity. No longer do background, resources, education, or other former determinants of success control enterprise. Gone is the need to come from the right family, grow up on the right side of the tracks, or have access to the right resources. The opportunities provided by the transformation to an online business landscape, as well as the elimination of many barriers to entry and transaction costs, have left individual strengths, passions and expertise as the only distinguishing factors remaining in...

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo .

The history of social network the past , present and the future and loved the predictions. This is year 2010. for the actual presentation http://www.docstoc.com/docs/63969915/Social-Networks-Past-Present-and-Future

"You don't control your circumstances and you are in, but do control your response" - Condoleeza Rice

An understanding and an ability to exploit big data is a sure shot path to preparing oneself for the future the next decade. Few trends from this post that thought were interesting here - Data exploration to discover new market opportunities: Nearly 30% of respondents thought that analyzing big data to find “the next big thing” was a huge opportunity. This supports the notion that data scientists will be one of the sexiest jobs in the future. - Behavioral targeting: 16% surveyed called out the importance of establishing links between purchasing behavior and areas like advertising spend to better tailor budgets and promotional campaign - Social Network Analysis: 15% of those surveyed responded that using social network analysis to build a more complete profile of their customer base is a key business opportunity - Monetizing Data: 15% of respondents say monetizing data is key for organizations seeking to unlock the hidden value within previously untapped asset - Fraud Reduction and Ris...

Some interesting titbits on parenting young children from my favorite parenting blog . Could'nt help but smile at some of the bolded ones :-) 1 . Teenagers need to make dumb mistakes to get smart. 2 . Be ALERT but not ALARMED. 3 . Be compassionate and concerned but not enmeshed. 4 . Love them but do not worship them like idols or despise them when they let you down. 5 . Be observant without spying or prying. 6 . Pretend you have seven kids: Dopey, Bashful, Sleepy, Grumpy, Doc (the “know it all”), Sneezy (Does he have a learning disability? An undiagnosed handicap of some kind?), Happy (Is he too laid back? Where is his passion, focus, ambition and drive?) and that which ever of these seven appear in your child’s form on any given day, they are all just going through a phase 7 . When they come to you in distress, resist responding like a concierge, talent agent or the secret police. Assume that they are capable of figuring out — through trial and error — how to solve their own prob...

A nice essay guess this is what "most" parent's goes through.....growing up his/her kids :-) http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/a-fathers-acceptance/

"It's not what we have in our life- it's who we have in our life that counts"

Great talk by Sir Ken Robinson

The true size of Africa!!! http://twitpic.com/2woim6/full

A story from a startup CEO that failed... and some advice "You'll hear a lot about why company A won and company B lost in any market, and in my experience, a lot of the theories thrown about -- even or especially by the participants -- are utter crap. A domain name doesn't win you a market; launching second or fifth or tenth doesn't lose you a market. You can't blame your competitors or your board or the lack of or excess of investment. Focus on what really matters: making users happy with your product as quickly as you can, and helping them as much as you can after that. If you do those better than anyone else out there you'll win." http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint

Interesting finding of why diversity in a group helps... "That collective intelligence, the researchers believe, stems from how well the group works together. For instance, groups whose members had higher levels of "social sensitivity" were more collectively intelligent. "Social sensitivity has to do with how well group members perceive each other's emotions," says Christopher Chabris, a co-author and assistant professor of psychology at Union College in New York. "Also, in groups where one person dominated, the group was less collectively intelligent than in groups where the conversational turns were more evenly distributed," adds Woolley. And teams containing more women demonstrated greater social sensitivity and in turn greater collective intelligence compared to teams containing fewer women." http://www.physorg.com/news205076011.html

A very interesting talk on the future of technology by Jesse Schell. Can't agree more :-) PS3 Games - E3 2011 - Guitar Hero 5 Om Malik review of the same http://gigaom.com/2010/02/22/video-reality-tv-iphone-the-future-of-technology-why-its-all-a-game/

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes." –Marcel Proust

In the debate of NATURE vs NURTURE this post is a nice addition. Few interesting titbits... " it's possible to build any given skill or capacity in the same systematic way we do a muscle: push past your comfort zone, and then rest. Will Durant*, commenting on Aristotle, pointed out that the philosopher had it exactly right 2000 years ago: " We are what we repeatedly do ." "For more than two decades, Ericsson has been making the case that it's not inherited talent which determines how good we become at something, but rather how hard we're willing to work — something he calls " deliberate practice ." Numerous researchers now agree that 10,000 hours of such practice as the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain." http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/six_keys_to.html

More Poverty = More Religion ( well free trade matters as well !! ) else how does one explain US Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/opinion/04blow.html

Skills of inquiring mind .... as defined by a maths teacher Habits of mind 1. Pattern Sniff A. On the lookout for patterns “Ok. We’ve been working on this staircase problem and it seems that you can’t write perfect squares as a sum of consecutive whole numbers.” B. On the lookout for shortcuts “It would be nice if there were a faster way to do 57x34 than adding 57 to itself 34 times. Think we can find a way?” 2. Experiment, Guess and Conjecture A. Can begin to work on a problem independently “I’m not sure how to solve this problem, but I’m confident I can make some progress.” B. Estimates “Without doing any calculations, I’m guessing that it will take him 30 seconds to walk up the down escalator.” C. Conjectures “Based on my work, I think the following is true.” D. Healthy skepticism of experimental results “Boy, it sure seems like this 4, 2, 1 thing always repeats but we don’t have a proof yet.” E. Determines lower and upper bounds “I know ...

One of the opportunities that Om Malik spoke off years back that social media solves... " The problem is that there’s too much data coming online too quickly, and the traditional method of search that involves first finding and then consuming the information is not going to work for much longer. There just won’t be enough time for us to do that and still have a life. It’s a problem, and therefore solving it is an opportunity — a very big opportunity." http://gigaom.com/2008/07/14/can-serendipity-make-you-rich/

A nice post from an engineering manager within Facebook of what makes him stick there longer. Think these are attributes every team must shoot and is a sure shot recipe for a high performing group. Autonomy and Responsibility Focus on Impact A place run by Hackers i.e. folks who are passionate to build something and share the same leading much bigger innovation Growth and Coaching http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=415679363919

"I tell unmarried women who ask about marriage that marriage is like long term dating... but having children is like running a start-up." - Unknown

If you are struggling to decide on how to delegate read this classic Harvard Business Review article. Who's got the monkey ?

As everyone ponders why could we not have seen the financial crisis one line of thought is can physics help us and so the rise of the new field called econophysics - the use of tools of physics in economics. However Rick Bookstaber thinks no . Nice post around this newest avataar. Excerpts " during an earthquake things shake around and fall, and during a market crisis things shake around and fall. Seismology predicts the former, so why not the latter? " "...fledgling discipline of econophysics. The reason it persists is first of all, there are not many jobs for physicist in physics, and most of finance is child’s play once you have gone through the rigors of a physics degree, so a lot of physicists end up in finance." :-) " while physics can generate useful models if there is well-parameterized uncertainty, where we know the distribution of the randomness, it becomes less useful if the uncertainty is fuzzy and ill-defined, what is called Knightian uncertainty....

A nice graph showing the history of the world GDP.

With the recent resignation of a very successful HP CEO, Mike Hurd on charges of fudging expenses one wonders how can accomplished people like him be so dumb . A nice post on tries to explain what happens to people in power and and possibly a solution. A few excerpts " Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. In some cases, these new habits can help a leader be more decisive and single-minded, or more likely to make choices that will be profitable regardless of their popularity." "Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, has observed that the size and strength of male chimps is an extremely poor predictor of which animals will dominate the troop. Instead, the ability to forge social connections and engage in "diplomacy" is often much m...

Next time trying to present some idea visually consider using this periodic table

If you overshare about yourself on the web you might run into the "PLEASE ROB ME" problem :-)

Interesting post on how the true collaborative power of web is used to solve age old problems.. The format is simple. By linking questions and answers from hands-on participants, each small solution builds toward a larger understanding, accelerating research. And it proves that mass collaboration can greatly expand human problem-solving abilities. "The idea is to have a place that is a repository of global knowledge," said Stanford professor Ravi Vakil, " http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15713739?source=email&nclick_check=1

And the list is ... http://techonomy.com/the-big-list/ Can't agree more. These folks have been force multipliers for our human race.

A nice interview with Jeff Bezos launching his new Kindle on the Charlie Rose show. Here is a device that is trying to get you into a flow state . Enclosed are interesting comments from the show. “I would say something though like we’re trying to get out of the way. We’re not trying to create an experience. We want the author to create the experience. You know, if you’re going to read Nabokov or Hemmingway or we want us creating the experience for. That’s not our job. Our job is to provide the convenience. That you can get books in 60 seconds, that you can carry your whole library with you so that you don’t get hand strain, so the device doesn’t get hot in your hands, so that it doesn’t cause eye strain, so that the battery life lasts a month, so you never get battery anxiety.. … Now people say why don’t you add a touch screen? Well, the reason we don’t want a touch screen is if we’re going down that decision path, we say, okay, a touch screen and the current technology for ...

Tony Hayward from BP is the poster child of how not to lead during the Deep Horizon oil spill crisis for 2010. Rosabeth Moss Kanter ( HBS ) has summed all the things he should't have done Deny and minimize problems . Drop any mention of the high-minded principles you announced at the beginning of your term, such as safety and a culture that puts people first. Sweep them under the rug as you play down the significance of the crisis. Or better yet, find someone else to blame — a supplier, a business partner, a lowly employee or two. Emphasize your own power and importance . Keep yourself front and center all the time. Rarely bring forward the rest of the team, nor even indicate that it's a team effort. Make the story all about you . Talk about your heavy burdens and the costs to your life. When forced to acknowledge the true victims, pay lip service. Never apologize, and don't even pretend to learn from your mistakes . Brush off public disapproval, and persist in the same mi...

With the explosion of information and umpteen number of places that vie for your "head space" comes Attention Deficit Disorder . Paul Graham in a nice post has a good advice on how to manage this one.. " You can't directly control where your thoughts drift. If you're controlling them, they're not drifting. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into. That has been the lesson for me: be careful what you let become critical to you. Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want think about. You don't have complete control, of course. An emergency could push other thoughts out of your head. But barring emergencies you have a good deal of indirect control over what becomes the top idea in your mind." http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html

"Everyone has a Boss excepting God" - Unknown Don't know who said this but very very true in an organisation setting. Had read "Managing your Boss" a classic long long time back. Came across something this week and reminded myself that should blog this one. No matter how smart one is if we are within an organization setting managing ones boss is critical. And don't get me wrong this is not sucking up. Do that ( suck up ) and a smart boss would recognize and get rid of you soon... :-)

"lliterate of the future won't be those who can't read & write, but those who can't learn, unlearn & relearn" - Unknown

"Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger."--Arnold Palmer

Good advice from one of my favourite Harvard Business School professors Clayton Christensen to the class of 2010 On Thinking... " When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have." On Happiness "How to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements." On Management "Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be...

Presenting worlds youngest "country". The simple reason for this phenomenon is network effect . Now the question is how long will this one last ? I would think very very long. The stickiness factor is large for residents to consider to move out yet ... The Facebook Republic

Why intelligent people fail... can't agree more to these points 1. Lack of motivation. A talent is irrelevant if a person is not motivated to use it. Motivation may be external (for example, social approval) or internal (satisfaction from a job well-done, for instance). External sources tend to be transient, while internal sources tend to produce more consistent performance. 2. Lack of impulse control. Habitual impulsiveness gets in the way of optimal performance. Some people do not bring their full intellectual resources to bear on a problem but go with the first solution that pops into their heads. 3. Lack of perserverance and perseveration. Some people give up too easily, while others are unable to stop even when the quest will clearly be fruitless. 4. Using the wrong abilities. People may not be using the right abilities for the tasks in which they are engaged. 5. Inability to translate thought into action. Some people seem buried in thought. They have good ideas but rarely...

Other than the daily grind of operational activities and managing them a manager's job is to strategize. Well should say its everyone job to strategize to upset the competition. But what exactly is Strategy???. Was drawn to question a long long time back and the Harvard Business Review classic from Micheal Porter resolved this one What is Strategy ?? A highly recommended read for everyone

Nice talk by Michael Sandel on markets and morality. And how the 2008 subprime crisis illustrates our drift from a market economy to a market society i.e everything is a market even if it is at the expense of others... Some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if we turn them into market commodities. So when we decide when to use markets, it’s not enough to think about efficiency. It’s not even enough to think about market freedom. We also have to decide how to value the goods in question, be they health, education, national defense, criminal justice, environmental protection, and so on. These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones. And to decide them democratically we have to debate them, case by case, just as we have begun to do here, the moral meaning of these goods and the proper way of valuing them. This is the debate that we didn’t have in the age of market triumphalism. And as a result, without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do...

Was reminded of this recently and can concur from experience how valuable this advice is... "What do you do if you receive a nasty email from a customer/partner? Reply in full steam? Tell them how they suck badly and you don’t give a damn to who they are/what they do? That you don’t need them and they can eff anywhere? Hang on. One of the most important lesson I have learnt over the last few years is to not reply to nasty emails immediately, especially if its from somebody who matters (business partner/potential customer). Take a deep breath. Take a walk. Go for a smoke. Do whatever that helps you unwind a little bit. In some cases, simply calling up the other person is better than carrying the conversation over email. Email is a great communication device and will continue to remain so (atleast for businesses), but do not take that as a discussion device. It’s a tool and serves as a means to achieve a much bigger goal." http://www.pluggd.in/email-etiquette-for-entrepreneurs-...

In tribute to the ongoing 2010 football World Cup presenting the Vuvuzela blown by fans across the stadium.. truly annoying :-) Click to listen And if you missed this youtube just added the Vuvuzela to their football videos...!! http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/23/bzzzzzz-youtube-gets-a-vuvuzela-button-seriously/

If only these guys would add this Power Distance indicator for each organization they measure would be good know how really "flat" an organization is from the seats of power.

Calling out for all you super-rich Indians to be part of this. http://givingpledge.org/ Am sure the site owners would be happy to include the Indian oligarchs( Ambani's, Birla's,Godrej's ) as part of this movement.. While hear read Warren Buffets pledge.. http://givingpledge.org/Content/media/My%20Philanthropic%20Pledge.pdf The line that was most interesting by the Worlds Richest Man was this... "Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends."

Is the internet really making us dumb.. ?? Nicholar Carr says yes Steven Pinker says no Two things that sprang to my mind of reading these of what internet can do in a bad way .... - Polarization of thoughts The fact that information is more pull based rather than push based we might run the risk of having to circle ourselves with only the information we like to see and thus not respect or appreciate the diversity that an issue could have from a very unrelated source. - TIME SINK!!! This is the mother of all. How many times have you felt that if you just spend time doing something more productive... and darn not have wasted all the time "just browsing" ......