Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
Microessay about how things take time by Justin Duke
https://x.com/jmduke/status/1788307295526338883
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation - Yamamuchi Nintendo & Co., LTD - was established nearly fifty years later, in 1933. They spent forty years selling playing cards, then another decade operating merely as a distributor of electronics before coming out with their first piece of electronic hardware.
The Lego Group began in a Danish workshop in 1932; it took them 26 years until a confluence of technology, iteration, and luck led them to what we now refer to as a Lego. (Er, sorry - a Lego brick.)
Nike spent eight years merely re-selling (literally, not figuratively) Onitsuka shoes to a U.S. audience.
Gates and Allen ran Microsoft as what was essentially a freelance firm for eight years, too, before scoring a contract with IBM (and even that took an additional two years to be parlayed into MSDOS.)
(There are, of course, some companies that like Athena sprout fully-formed from the head of their creators - Amazon and TSMC come to mind.)
When we build hagiographies of the companies we love (or at least find most interesting), it can be tempting to draw clean, neat, satisfying arcs and fast forward through the boring eras that do not inform our modern understanding of those organizations.
But neither the Nike Cortez nor the Lego System 236 Garage with Automatic Door came from the first decade of either company's existence.
Part of success is staying alive long enough to have the right kinds of things happen to you all at once.
Congrats to Christian Cooper on his Emmy win. We love to see it. #christiancooper #blacktiktok
tiktok.comGetting the last laugh (black bird watcher)
We need big brains to manage all the models
Neil Gaiman's Most Important Rule for Writing #writing #neilgaiman
tiktok.comA really good robot
Third, I'm trying to learn more about how these Generative AI systems work more deeply and uncover their creative potential. You've seen my explorations with Midjourney through the cover images of many of the last few newsletters, including this one.
Jason Shen • 131: How to Be Human in the Age of Generative AI
In fact, people with extreme traits can often structure their lives in such a way that they can trade on the ways they’re exceptional, leaving no persistent reason to address some particular deficit they have. And, generally, people are savvy enough to hide their dysfunction. People will disappoint you, eventually.
Sasha Chapin • Some Advice Gathered From People Smarter Than Me
people hide weaknesses
A recent article in The Military Times revealed that there are already autistic leaders in senior positions in the intelligence community, and how matters of national security are too important and challenging to leave only to people who see the world in typical ways. Autistic workers, for example, have been shown to detect sensitive geospatial... See more
There’s power in neurodiverse people if you can harness their strengths