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Thoughts & Ideas

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  • New ideas must use old buildings

    Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    1. ​​The economic value of old buildings​​
    • time
    • ideas
    • architecture
    • novelty
  • On Greatness

    What’s important to you in the development of a product?

    One of the things that really hurt Apple was that after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease — I’ve seen other people get it too — it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work, and if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can just go off and make it happen.

    The problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts, because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it, and you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs you have to make, there are just certain things you can’t make electrons do, there are certain things you can’t make plastic, or glass, or factories, or robots do. And as you get into all these things, you find that designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain, these concepts, and just fitting them all together and continuing to push to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover a new problem or a new opportunity to do it a little differently. And it’s that process that is the magic.

    Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
    1. ​​The idea grows as they work​​
    2. ​​The Design Squiggle​​
    3. ​​The Nature of Product​​
    • ideas
    • craft
  • v0.crap

    I couldn’t seem to convince my writers that I was genuinely ok working with a super rough first draft — i.e., that I’d harbor no hidden judgment about their intelligence, commitment, or excellence at their craft.

    So I came up with a new word. “Just give me a v0.crap.” (Pronounced “version zero dot crap”.)

    v.0.crap works because it’s attuned to the psychology of the situation. It’s punching through our innate desire not to “look bad”, plus years of corporate conditioning that tells us not to share less-than-polished work. It’s easier for people used to delivering exceptional work to feel they’ve exceeded the goal of “crap”; they can sit comfortably in “good enough for the current purpose.”

    Courtney Hohne, The monkey, the tiger beetle and the language of innovation
    blog.x.company
    1. ​​Writing, Briefly​​
    • quality
    • ideas
    • writing
    • making
  • Shaped and reshaped

    [Inventions] do not spring fully formed from the mind of some maker, but, rather, become shaped and reshaped through the (principally negative) experiences of their users within the social, cultural, and technological contexts in which they are embedded.

    Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things
    • ideas
  • A distinct and complementary stance

    Each person in the pair takes a distinct and complementary stance toward the design problem as they work together. One generates solutions. That is, one individual materializes solutions to the problem at hand for discussion and iteration. The other synthesizes the proposed solutions.

    Gretchen Anderson & Christopher Noessel, Pair Design: Better Together
    • ideas
    • critique

    Anderson and Noessel refer to these roles as gens and synths, respectively, which sounds more than a little cyberpunk.

  • But bulldozers move mountains

    A planner may find that his beautiful plans fail because he does not follow through on them. Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

    Peter F. Drucker, Managing Oneself
    • planning
    • ideas
  • Argue against the best

    To argue against an idea honestly, you should argue against the best arguments of the strongest advocates.

    It’s all too easy to argue that someone is exhibiting Bias #182 in your repertoire of fully generic accusations, but you can’t settle a factual issue without closer evidence. If there are biased reasons to say the sun is shining, that doesn’t make it dark out.

    Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies
    • argument
    • ideas
  • Half-winged, half-imprisoned

    The contrast between man’s ideological capacity to move at random through material and metaphysical spaces and his physical limitations, is the origin of all human tragedy. It is this contrast between power and prostration that implies the duality of human existence. Half winged—half imprisoned, this is man!

    Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook
    • ideas
    • body
  • Curiosity spurred on

    Methodically noting and filing resources is a sign of a mature and deliberate craftsman—it is an investment into future learning and projects. Before long, you will begin to reach the point where this collection generates projects and ideas with minimal effort; previously isolated ideas are consolidated and curiousity spurred on.

    Will Darwin, Building a knowledge base
    www.willdarwin.com
    • commonplace
    • craft
    • ideas
    • learning
    • connection
    • notetaking
  • From one Arte to another

    New ideas would come about by a connexion and transferring of the observations of one Arte, to the uses of another, when the experience of several misteries shall fall under consideration of one mans minde.

    Sir Francis Bacon, The Two Books of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning
    • creativity
    • ideas
  • The Innovation Funnel

    A Comic by Tom Fishburne
    marketoonist.com
    Image from marketoonist.com on 2022-06-11 at 6.28.06 PM.jpeg

    Most organizations use some version of an innovation funnel to bring ideas to life. It starts with lots of ideas at the front end and then launches whatever survives all the way to the back end.

    Yet this Darwinian process of bringing ideas to life doesn’t necessarily lead to survival of the fittest ideas. If we’re not careful, the innovation funnel leads to survival of the safest ideas.

    Organizations are good at spotting risks. In an effort to improve success rates, organizations tend to put sharper teeth in the funnel.

    As ideas run the organizational gauntlet, they can get pruned, sheared, shaped, and watered down beyond recognition. On the way, they can lose the essence of the idea. They may lose their point of difference and reason for being.

    • innovation
    • ideas
    • novelty
  • The power of One

    An Article by Kathy Sierra
    headrush.typepad.com

    It's not teams that are the problem, it's the rabid insistence on teamwork. Group think. Committee decisions.

    Most truly remarkable ideas did not come from teamwork. Most truly brave decisions were not made through teamwork. The team's role should be to act as a supportive environment for a collection of individuals. People with their own unique voice, ideas, thoughts, perspectives. A team should be there to encourage one another to pursue the wild ass ideas, not get in lock step to keep everything cheery and pleasant.

    • ideas
    • teamwork
    • collaboration
  • A bad tweet is like a deepfake of an idea

    A Fragment by Ryan Broderick
    open.spotify.com
    95C42179-946B-4F42-9E53-A0FCA5EE6DB6.webp

    I guess what you’re describing is like a tweet that hits the uncanny valley of good and bad in such a precise way, with such confidence, that it just pisses everybody off.

    Because if you look at this tweet for just a second you’re like ok, that’s a fine bedroom, but then you look at it, and it starts to unravel in your mind, like trying to remember a dream after you just woke up. And you’re like “what is this?” It’s like a deepfake of a person’s face.

    …Ok, I’ve got some fire for you: A bad tweet is like a deepfake of an idea.

    The perfect bad tweet is like something you read and you’re like “ok yeah” but then you’re like, “wait…”, and it just starts to come apart in your mind and you’re like that makes no fucking sense, just like this photo of this incredibly bad room.

    1. ​​Coevolution and the bad take machine​​
    • media
    • ideas
    • anger
    • strangeness

    Refers to the viral tweet, Guys Live in Apartments Like This.

  • The McDonald’s Theory of Creativity

    An Article by Jon Bell
    jonbell.medium.com

    I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

    An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic!

    It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative. I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.

    1. ​​The surprising effectiveness of writing and rewriting​​
    • creativity
    • ideas
    • repair
  • Eulogy for Steve Jobs

    An Article by Jonathan Ive
    www.wsj.com

    He was without doubt the most inquisitive human I have ever met. His insatiable curiosity was not limited or distracted by his knowledge or expertise, nor was it casual or passive. It was ferocious, energetic and restless. His curiosity was practiced with intention and rigor.

    Many of us have an innate predisposition to be curious. I believe that after a traditional education, or working in an environment with many people, curiosity is a decision requiring intent and discipline.

    In larger groups our conversations gravitate towards the tangible, the measurable. It is more comfortable, far easier and more socially acceptable talking about what is known. Being curious and exploring tentative ideas were far more important to Steve than being socially acceptable.

    Our curiosity begs that we learn. And for Steve, wanting to learn was far more important than wanting to be right.

    1. ​​Steve Jobs​​
    • curiosity
    • learning
    • ideas
  • Ideas behind their time

    An Article by Tim Harford
    www.ft.com

    These days I am more interested in the reverse case [of Da Vinci's helicopter]: ideas that could have worked many centuries before they actually appeared. The economist Alex Tabarrok calls these “ideas behind their time”

    Curious minds want to know why these ideas appeared so late — and whether there might be anything that would prevent delays in future. One explanation is that the ideas aren’t as simple as they appear.

    The bicycle is not as straightforward an invention as it seems. To move from ox-hauled cart to human-powered bicycle requires smooth-rolling wheel bearings, which in turn need precisely engineered bearing balls. Modern steel ball bearings were not patented until the late 1700s, and demand from the 19th-century bicycle industry helped to improve their design.

    1. ​​Materials and how to employ them​​
    • invention
    • ideas
  • Negative Creativity

    An Article by Scott Alexander
    slatestarcodex.com

    Coming up with entirely novel ideas is really, really hard.

    1. ​​Misinterpretation as inspiration​​
    2. ​​Sit Down And Think About It For Five Minutes​​
    • ideas
    • creativity
    • metaphor
  • Early work

    An Essay by Paul Graham
    www.paulgraham.com

    Imagine if we could turn off the fear of making something lame. Imagine how much more we'd do.

    1. ​​The right way to deal with new ideas​​
    2. ​​Focus on the rate of change​​
    • creativity
    • skill
    • ideas
  • The Top Idea in Your Mind

    An Essay by Paul Graham
    paulgraham.com

    I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

    • ideas
  • The still life effect

    A Fragment by Paul Graham
    paulgraham.com

    If you're going to spend years working on something, you'd think it might be wise to spend at least a couple days considering different ideas, instead of going with the first that comes into your head. You'd think. But people don't. In fact, this is a constant problem when you're painting still lifes. You plonk down a bunch of stuff on a table, and maybe spend five or ten minutes rearranging it to look interesting. But you're so impatient to get started painting that ten minutes of rearranging feels very long. So you start painting. Three days later, having spent twenty hours staring at it, you're kicking yourself for having set up such an awkward and boring composition, but by then it's too late.

    • ideas
    • art

    From Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas.

  • A lightbulb is not an idea

    An Article by Ralph Ammer
    ralphammer.com
    Image from ralphammer.com on 2020-07-27 at 4.59.21 PM.gif

    With conventional placeholders, such as words, we can describe patterns for a large number of situations. On the other hand it is easy to fool yourself (and others) with words, since you can avoid to be specific. Any business meeting can confirm this.

    When you draw something you are forced to be specific — and honest.

    Our illustration of an “idea” from above is unconventional in the sense that it conveys specific original thoughts of what an idea is. It adds value to the words.

    And that is the catch: The drawing must be unconventional to support the conventional words. We have to make sure not to use “words in disguise”. Take a common illustration for “idea” for example, which haunts flip charts all over the world: the lightbulb.

    The lightbulb image works on a purely symbolic level, it only replaces the word “idea”. This image of a household item contains no original thought about what an idea is. While symbols like these work well as international replacements for words or icons to indicate a light switch for instance, they convey no nutritional value as illustrations — they are empty.

    • words
    • ideas
    • symbols
    • drawing

See also:
  1. creativity
  2. craft
  3. learning
  4. novelty
  5. commonplace
  6. connection
  7. notetaking
  8. words
  9. symbols
  10. drawing
  11. body
  12. argument
  13. time
  14. architecture
  15. art
  16. skill
  17. quality
  18. writing
  19. making
  20. metaphor
  21. planning
  22. critique
  23. invention
  24. curiosity
  25. repair
  26. media
  27. anger
  28. strangeness
  29. teamwork
  30. collaboration
  31. innovation
  1. Paul Graham
  2. Sir Francis Bacon
  3. Will Darwin
  4. Ralph Ammer
  5. Steve Jobs
  6. Paul Klee
  7. Eliezer Yudkowsky
  8. Jane Jacobs
  9. Courtney Hohne
  10. Scott Alexander
  11. Peter F. Drucker
  12. Gretchen Anderson
  13. Christopher Noessel
  14. Tim Harford
  15. Henry Petroski
  16. Jonathan Ive
  17. Jon Bell
  18. Ryan Broderick
  19. Kathy Sierra
  20. Tom Fishburne