innovation culture

But it's also true that right now is a great time to do something ambitious. Robin Hanson calls the present "the dreamtime", following a concept in Aboriginal myths: the time when the future world order and its values are still liquid, not yet set in stone.

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

―

William F. Buckley

Those who are staying in the US, meanwhile, say they feel exhausted. "I've been in the US for almost a decade," a Chinese-born data scientist and UC Berkeley graduate told me. "Many of us left to escape that political environment, and are the most liberal-leaning Chinese you can find. We spend so much time going through the American education and... See more

The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point [that writing helps you refine your thinking] is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking. If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone

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2. Most of the newcomers to the realization that govt is paralyzed (Ezra Klein, Dunkelman etc) think that the red tape jungle can be pruned, or organized with better feedback loops (Pahlka). This is falling into Gore's pit. There's a fatal defect: the operating system is designed around legal compliance--instead of human authority to make tradeoff... See more

Taste is not some idea of good design and brand. That definition isn’t rooted in a single damn thing.

Taste is that personalizing moment, that got transferred spiritually. It’s Naoto Fukasawa’s idea of embodiment in design. It didn’t come from a vague notion of “being good”. NOOOOOOOOO it came from dropping in on that moment in life, being ready... See more

One is simply the sheer difficulty of building a modern commercial aircraft, which is probably one of the five or six most complex technical achievements of modern civilization (along with jet engines, leading-edge semiconductor fabrication, and nuclear submarines). Commercial aircraft must couple a high level of performance in some of the most... See more

Listen deeply to what people have to say about your brand and your product. The answer key is already in front of us. This is not new, but it is becoming more and more important, and rarely is it being implemented at the right moments, (again, during R&D vs. post-campaign analysis.)

How do we do this? I’ve dubbed it “Layering & Triangulating.”... See more