innovation culture
The technocracy has evolved radically. Technical knowledge based on science has replaced military and theological knowledge as the source of power, but the distance is not as large as you might think. In modern technocratic power, the distinction between hard-edged scientific knowledge and softer ideological paradigm knowledge is blurry. We have... See more
Venkatesh Rao • The Modernity Machine
A guide on how to do great work, from someone who has clearly done it himself.
There are patterns to great work — it would be wise to at least experiment with them for yourself!
Andrew Rose • Introducing the Fractal University Canon
Note that the key phenomena are not movements. They are not collective efforts to build social capital around any particular idea or aesthetic or value. Nor are they forms of propaganda or prestige. The real core activities of culture are disciplines of craft aimed at actually achieving something great, regardless of what everyone else thinks. They... See more
Wolf Tivy • Entrepreneurial Statecraft Gets the Goods
- Strategy exists to force a disciplined choice to deploy scarce resources for maximum impact. Regardless of the size of a company, the resource pool and capacity to get work done is always constrained relative to the universe of work that could be done—making this choice a critical decision in every single context.
Strategy Blocks: An operator’s guide to product strategy
As I note in that post, the successful examples of “socialism” that people cite — the Scandinavian societies of today — are actually social democracies. They achieved their mixed economies through a slow evolutionary process that was absolutely nothing like the revolutionary upheavals predicted and advocated by Marx.
Noah Smith • Should economists read Marx?
Here is how Plutarch, classical biographer par excellence, described his attraction to the stories of great men:
We may say, then, that achievements of this kind, which do not arouse the spirit of emulation or create any passionate desire to imitate them, are of no great benefit to the spectator. On the other hand virtue in action immediately takes... See more
The Scholar's Stage • The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite
Once front-running other participants in financial markets or cultural production becomes a common strategy, trends become inefficiencies – temporary blips of difference or spikes in value that are bound for correction. Being early as a meta is replaced by catching people offsides. Betting on the return to the mean.