Emilie Kormienko

C. THI NGUYEN: The way I navigate the world right now is I’ve developed a fair amount of defensive suspicion about certain kinds of pleasure. A marker of design game-like systems is that they’re very pleasurable to operate in.

Many successful organizations pride themselves on moving quickly to tackle problems. But over time, they start to feel way, way slower. Accomplishing previously simple things feels like it takes forever...This happens in every successful organization over time.

Like a wildfire after years of drought, The Pattern is spreading through our digital commons, and seeping into the hearts and minds of humanity. The Pattern is stifling our creative potential. It is poisoning our culture. And it is standing in the way of our ability to live well and flourish.

Founders typically experience the market problem themselves, hence why they come up with a solution. Therefore, if founders can find people like themselves from their own circles, that’s a good starting point. From there, let Metcalfe’s Law of networking effects take it forward. But this can be slow.  My favourite way is to combine that initial... See more

Smartphones represented a new generation of computing. But they also represented a new generation of users: the birth of the casual user, where anybody could be a part.

More effort is wasted doing things that don't matter than is wasted doing things inefficiently. And if that is the case, elimination is a more useful skill than optimization. I am reminded of the famous Peter Drucker quote, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

I can’t overemphasize the value of getting hands-on experience, combined with the time I’d previously spent on research.