Engineers get it done

SD: Is Agile management really new?

RC: We have known for over 50 years that participative management is far superior to traditional legacy management. We’ve got a whole discipline of humanistic management that has come out of the work of Maslow and McGregor. But it’s had very little impact on organizations. It changed the style but it didn’t change the substance of management.

It’s ironic that as we watch the substance of the current management shift, especially over the last decade, it’s coming from the engineers. Who would have thought that the change in management would come, not from psychologists and OD specialists but from the engineers? The Agile Manifesto was written by software engineers. The new paradigm is being created by engineers like Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google. Bill Gore at W.L.Gore was, in 1958, way ahead of his time in developing his lattice organization where there were no supervisors: his background was also engineering. It’s ironic while the psychologists and sociologists identified what was needed, the engineers are actually getting it done.

Steve Denning and Rod Collins

Solar Force: the effect of Sun on the climate

A very well researched documentary on the plausible theory of how the sun effects climate change rather than CO2. For me, this kind of thinking is quite important. Irrespective of which theory is right we have to look at creating a better environment, diversifying our energy sources as a goal of national security, having a cleaner environment, and working towards managing the effect of climate change on the Earth.

 

However, what we should not do is let governments create carbon tax or carbon trading legislation which provides a lot more power in the hands of the government, more legislation and regulation and more chances to make mistake. Also, it provides more tax dollars to create special interest groups, for transfer of payments to influence voting and other ill effects of being part of a democracy.

 

 

 

The Key to Fixing Global Warming? China

A very sensible article and strategy from Stephen Chu, the Energy Secretary in the US. Simple, pragmatic and politically feasible. Unlike Australia’s Carbon Tax. (This is from a couple of years old but still very relevant).

Huge international climate deals are vexing. It would be simpler, Steven Chu says, to get the US and China to agree on cuts. Other nations would then follow.

We’re all designers now. – John Thackara

In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop

Fascinating thinking and so right. The article has a link to the espresso book machine too. Such a good idea. Print your own books when you want it. The future is online definitely.

The Coffee Shop Will Displace Most Retail Shops.

 

My Christmas shopping this year was 90% through Amazon Prime. Not having to fight the crowds and having it delivered free of charge to my home is a big plus, but as with the Kindle store, the online retail selection is much better that even the largest retail outlet.Which is more enjoyable: Starbucks or Walmart?  For the sane: Starbucks.  So if you can accomplish your Walmart shopping at Starbucks, why do it any other way?Also, imagine the 3D print shop of the future. You put in your order, probably from your smart phone, and then go pick it up. What does the lobby of such a business look like?  Again: a coffee shop.

via The Speculist » Blog Archive » In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop.

800m mobile subscribers in India but not much money

 From the latest Equitymaster newsletter. 

 

With over 800 m subscribers (includes GSM and CDMA), India represents a huge telecom market. With the cheapest tariffs, it has seen telecom penetration going up from about 4% in March 2001 to around 71% in March 2011. But the huge surge in the number of subscribers has not translated to huge returns for the network providers. In fact, telecom operators have seen their profitability dwindling down. Hyper competition that led to sharp rate cuts is one big reason for this. As shown in today’s chart of the day, profitability (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation & Amortization or EBITDA) per minute has been on the fall for the telecom operators. 

How children fail

 From Wikipedia on John Holt’s book:

When children are very young, they have natural curiosity about the world, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become “producers”, rather than “thinkers”, they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with little thought. They believe they must always be right, so they quickly forget mistakes and how these mistakes were made. They believe that the only good response from the teacher is “yes”, and that a “no” is defeat.

They fear wrong answers and shy away from challenges because they may not have the right answer. This fear, which rules them in the school setting, does their thinking and learning a great disservice. A teacher’s job is to help them overcome their fears of failure and explore the problem for real learning. So often, teachers are doing the opposite — building children’s fears up to monumental proportions. Children need to see that failure is honorable, and that it helps them construct meaning. It should not be seen as humiliating, but as a step to real learning. Being afraid of mistakes, they never try to understand their own mistakes and cannot and will not try to understand when their thinking is faulty. Adding to children’s fear in school is corporal punishment and humiliation, both of which can scare children into right/wrong thinking and away from their natural exploratory thinking.

Holt maintains that when teachers praise students, they rob them of the joy of discovering truth for themselves. They should be aiding them by guiding them to explore and learn as their interests move them. In mathematics, children learn algorithms, but when faced with problems with Cuisenaire rods, they cannot apply their learning to real situations. Their learning is superficial in that they can sometimes spit out the algorithm when faced with a problem on paper, but have no understanding of how or why the algorithm works and no deep understanding about numbers.

What is Social Innovation? Confused mix of everything?

The current buzzword in the world is everything to everybody as is clear from this video from the Social Innovation Summit 2011. Very confusing.

Some of the terms used in the video

• license to operate
• bottom of the pyramid
• innovation
• technology, analytics and data driven
• social good
• good citizenship
• environmental stuff
• ????

This is my take and it relates more to the process of innovation and the kind of problems you deal with.

Solve for X

From Google:

Last week, we ran an experiment. We hosted a gathering, called “Solve for X,” for experienced entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists from around the world. The event focused on proposing and discussing technological solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Discussions began last week with this small event, and now we invite others to join the conversation on our website and our Google +page.

The Solve for X gathering, which we co-hosted with Eric Schmidt, is a place to celebrate a concept we champion internally and that we believe will inspire many others: technology moonshots. These are efforts that take on global-scale problems, define radical solutions to those problems, and involve some form of breakthrough technology that could actually make them happen. Moonshots live in the gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction; they are 10x improvement, not 10%. That’s partly what makes them so exciting.

More here.

The Gates Notes : What is the world’s richest man learning?

Bill Gates is a great guy. You may not like Microsoft (I am personally a apple fanboi) but; you have to admire his business skills and now his foundation work. The most remarkable by any rich human being.

He is now spending a lot of time learning through the basics of subjects through online courses which he explains in this blog post on his new blog – The Gates Notes.

What a world we live in!

A lot of people ask me what I’m reading and how I learn about new topics that interest me. I am fortunate to have time to read a lot and I also like to view courses online from MIT’s OpenCourseware, Academic Earth, and others. These courses have ignited a passion of mine, which is to think about how to harness this approach so students who otherwise wouldn’t have access can experience these great courses and learn from these great teachers.

One of my favorite sources for great lectures is The Teaching Company. Most of their courses are available as audio downloads and on DVD. I had a chance to meet with The Teaching Company team and the way they find the very best professors and best courseware is impressive and it shows in the overall quality of the teaching.

via The Gates Notes.