Category Archives: Creativity

Does the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete?

Posted on September 29, 2008 by John Hunter

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete by Chris Anderson “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Innovation, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Ergonomics of Innovation

Posted on September 22, 2008 by John Hunter

The Ergonomics of Innovation by Hayagreeva Rao and Robert Sutton the IHI case teaches us that innovations spread quickly when organizations focus relentlessly on selecting and spreading ideas in ways that ease the burden of thought and action for everyone involved. This mind-set differs from the one that burdens most organizations, where innovation is seen as difficult, expensive, and protracted. The IHI staff’s ergonomics-of-innovation mind-set focused on making things easier and cheaper for everyone, including the staff itself. … IHI … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Health care, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , ,

Agile PDSA

Posted on September 16, 2008 by John Hunter

Dr. Deming encouraged the use of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to improve. Agile Management encourages a similar mindset – to test out ideas in practice and adapt quickly. A key to both strategies is to quickly iterate over possible solutions. Tesco provides an example of this strategy: This was our first opening since we took our 12 week pause, after we had opened 61 stores at breakneck speed. We used that time to reflect on what customers had told us they … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Seth Godin: Intern Program and the Internet

Posted on September 3, 2008 by John Hunter

Learning from a summer intern program: I was overwhelmed by the quality of what I got back. (The quantity was expected… interesting internships are hard to find). I heard from students on most continents, with a huge variety of backgrounds and life experiences. And these people were smart. Unable to just pick a PDF or two, I invited the applicants to join a Facebook group I had set up. Then I let them meet each other and hang out online. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Education, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged ,

Tiger Woods and Lightning Bolt

Posted on August 22, 2008 by John Hunter

You have done pretty well when you can get people to post your ads on their blogs for the enjoyment of their readers. Enjoy this creativity and have a nice weekend. While on sports I also will mention Usain ‘Lightning’ Bolt’s performances in the Olympics: they were amazing. In contests (100 and 200 meter dash where the victor is usually a few hundreds of a second faster he won the 100 by 20/100s and 200 by 66/100s officially [52/100 but … Continue reading →

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Some Good IT Business Ideas

Posted on July 22, 2008 by John Hunter

Paul Graham has some excellent ideas. I have written about some of them previously: Innovation Strategy, What Business Can Learn from Open Source and Google and Paul Graham’s Latest Essay. Y Combinator, which he founded, provides seed funding. Here are some ideas they would like to fund: Outsourced IT. In most companies the IT department is an expensive bottleneck. Getting them to make you a simple web form could take months. Enter Wufoo. Now if the marketing department wants to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, IT, Software Development | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Zipcar Innovation

Posted on June 21, 2008 by John Hunter

Zipcar is an intriguing idea where you rent cars by the hour. The whole process is a significant change from the previous rental model (gas, parking and insurance included). Zipcar makes deals with local governments to secure zipcar parking near public transportation. They also have deals with universities, apartment buildings and businesses all of which provides a new level of easy customer access with cars available in many locations. The internet is used to schedule and provide up to date … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Deming, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management, Systems thinking | 4 Comments

Engineering Innovation

Posted on June 3, 2008 by John Hunter

(video link no longer works so it has been removed) In the webcast Dean Kamen discusses his latest innovation: robotic arms for people (amazing stuff). Once again he is doing great stuff. It is great what engineers can do (many worked together to get the progress so far) when given the opportunity. We need many more such efforts. The research was funded by DARPA. DARPA, for those that don’t know, also made reading this blog possible. They funded the development … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, Management | Tagged ,

Paying New Employees to Quit

Posted on May 25, 2008 by John Hunter

[the video is no longer available] Training new employees and then paying them to quit, sounds pretty bizarre; Zappos is not afraid of doing things differently. Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit – And You Should Too [Harvard broke the link so I removed it – they should pay those responsible (most likely an executive, technical people know better but bad management breaks things) for not maintaining urls to quit]: Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, Management, Respect, webcast | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Packaging Improvement

Posted on April 9, 2008 by John Hunter

McDonald’s Branding Makes Food Tastier for Tots Researchers at Stanford University have found that children tend to rate food that is wrapped up in McDonald’s-branded paper as tasting better than the same food wrapped in plain paper — a finding that suggests that even the youngest consumers are heavily influenced by advertising. The new study was released Monday in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The study had 63 children, aged 3 to 5 years old, tasting five pairs … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Management, Psychology, Science | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Drug Price Crisis

Posted on March 18, 2008 by John Hunter

In 2005 I posted about some of the problems with drug pricing. It is nice to find at least a couple of people at MIT that want to have MIT focus research on the public good instead of private profit. As I have mentioned too many universities now act like they are for-profit drug or research companies. That is wrong. Drug companies can do so, institutions with purported higher purposes should not be driven to place advancing science below profiting … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Economics, Health care, Science | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Pleasing Customers

Posted on March 10, 2008 by John Hunter

Why is 37signals so arrogant? by Don Norman The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid. Brash is an understatement. I was quoted in the article because of my article arguing that simplicity is highly overrated: the tasks that we do require tools that match the requirements, and these add complexity. … Yes, they are arrogant — and proud of it: “Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult,” Hansson said. “But when … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Creativity, Customer focus, Management, Psychology, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Systemic Workplace Experiments

Posted on March 6, 2008 by John Hunter

Workplace Experiments At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy. … Last summer we experimented with 4-day work weeks. People should enjoy the weather in the summer. We found that just about the same amount of work gets done in four days vs. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Severance Plans to Respect People

Posted on February 21, 2008 by John Hunter

Yahoo’s Severance Plans a Defense Against Microsoft? Yahoo’s board of directors has created an expansive severance package for all full-time employees who are either terminated without “cause” or leave on their own with “good reason” following a “change in control of the company.” The severance packages would extend regular compensation for a period of four months to two years, depending on the employee’s job level. Employees would also receive continued health benefits, financial assistance for finding a new job (up … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management, Respect

Renting Toys

Posted on February 21, 2008 by John Hunter

That kids get tired of many toys long before the toys are worn out is not a recent revelation Those frustrated by this waste surely number in the millions in the last few decades alone. Some attempts to reduce the waste exist: garage sales, goodwill, saving for younger siblings… but the waste remains frustratingly high. While I am sure some override the cultural bias against (at least in the USA) gifting used, perfectly serviceable, toys, that practice doesn’t seem to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management

Innovation Strategy

Posted on February 18, 2008 by John Hunter

Six Principles for Making New Things by Paul Graham The answer, I realized, is that my m.o. for all four has been the same. Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. Great advice. Similar to the evidence Clayton Christensen documents in the Innovators Solution on how … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, Management | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments