November, 2005

Business / Innovation — No Comments
29
Nov 05

M is for skunkworks

Lucky Ian Wylie, Fast Company writer, had a ride in BMW’s newest M5 – a 190mph 507hp v10, something you could find in a pimped Honda, but probably not appointed with the same kind of leather and fancy little button that unleashes the last 100hp without artificial accelerant. At 20,000 units per year, the 500 person M division cranks out 40 cars each and results, coincidentally, in a 40% higher sticker price (over $100K for an M5).

BMW M cars are created for the auto enthusiast – the BMW early adopter. Today’s M5 informs tomorrow’s 5-series. Impressively enough, BWM assembles the distinguished M models alongside the rest of the fleet. It shows the companies ability to not only develop the next generation bimmer in a skunkworks fashion, but also integrate those innovations into their production process. BMW has long identified consumers willing to pay for leading edge R&D by offering an intentionally modified version of their regular autos – a marriage made in heaven, hopefully one without speed limits.

Culture / Design — No Comments
24
Nov 05

Perspectives on limitation

A cartoon by Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid.com

Creativity is a big deal to me. It is central to how my mind works. For me creativity is playful – there is no question that the kid in me is alive and well, it just so happens that the playgrounds change and I have discovered more of them.

I was musing on one of the author descriptions in The Big Moo – Hugh Macleod. Among other things Hugh spends his time drawing cartoons on the back of business cards. My first thought was, what an interesting use of limitation. Anyone who has taken a decent college level art class will known what I mean.

I remember back to the summer of 2003 when I entered the Rhode Island School of Design pre-college program. My focus was photography, but they expose you to a sample curriculum to help explore the possibilities. One of the best parts was looking at the illustration majors. Every piece of work was enormous, sometimes 5 x 7 feet. It impressed upon me that I did not have to feel confined by someone else’s notion of size – in this case the 19 x 24 Canson Bristol pad. So, Hugh’s decision to work with a smaller format evoked a similar inspiration.

The back of a business card is one of the best places to take notes about anything. It is small, so thoughts need to be crisp – a creative distillation process in of it. If I use my card and it is ever lost, I have a chance of actually getting it back.

What I love most about Hugh’s business card limitation is that is artificial. He can obviously render ideas and I bet has done so on larger pieces of media. It is a creative concept. What happens when we place artificial boundaries around our creative process? Does it help focus our ideas and expressions? Do we lose something that the RISD illustration majors are gaining? If we consciously impose a set of rules, do we need to pop back out to make sure those rules still apply and are helping and not hurting or is it the fact that we are conscious of imposing the rules that keeps us aware that we are not really limited?

Business / Culture / Innovation — 1 Comment
21
Nov 05

Something remarkable

The Big Moo Book Cover

Remarkable is my new favorite word, inspired by a new book I picked up, The Big Moo. I never read The Purple Cow, but I have to believe it has to do with being remarkable. A purple cow does not seem to cut it anymore, and so, we have the big moo.

The cover captured my attention, “Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable.” It has 33 authors some of which I have read before and others which were foreign. The idea that I would get to read remarkable stories from 33 thinkers, sold it. Opening the book on a cross-country flight reconfirmed it. All the profits go to three charities, the Acumen Fund, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International and Room to Read. Another thing that got me was that readers are invited to copy the pages of the book, similar to open source, helping build a community about being more than good enough.

I never thought of myself as striving for perfection. To be honest, I was never shooting for remarkable either – seems too easy. Godin points out, if you do something that makes someone remark then by definition it is remarkable – see? Too simple. On the other hand I feel the sentiment loud and clear and The Big Moo reminds me to stoke the flame and not mind standing up and out.

Business / Technology — No Comments
17
Nov 05

Google’s elegant ability to appear unfocused

The notion that Google does not know what is doing is laughable. Peter Day from the BBC kicked off a recent article with that very premise – that Google’s lack of obvious direction might be the source of their genius.

Everyone can see that Google has enormous ad revenue allowing them to apparently dabble, but there is no way they have lost focus on being the dominant leader of internet search and targeted ads. Google’s management has to have a clear vision keeping their amazing progression on course. Without it, they would be looking to buy General Mills cereal.

There is elegance in Google’s ability to appear so unfocused. I have to think some of that is due to their accelerated growth – strong ad revenue, acquiring top talent and strategic market positioning decisions that help explore future opportunities.

Most large IT companies are able to spend money on acquiring companies and research and development. Not all of those investments reveal aspects of the company’s strategy. Google’s current business is heavily focused on internet ads. If they were not investing in ad supportive technology, talent / intellectual property or market position opportunities they would have a problem. Their stock price is all about the oil field they tapped into and the promise that they will continue to be a company of bankable innovation. I have no doubt they will, but spending any time thinking that this is all by accident, that Google does not know what its doing, is foolish.

Uncategorized — 2 Comments
14
Nov 05

Getting SH-Autolink to do what I want

I have always been torn about adding HTML to my blog posts. Clearly, there are times when you need it to point off to an image or to format text for emphasis. I know other markup exists, like Markdown, Textile or even Wikitext, but those carry the same undesirable characteristic – content ends up being marked up. It is probably not that big of a deal, it all stems from the question of if I will ever want to extract the content and place it in a context where <insert your favorite markup> is not interpreted. My goal is to automatically tag keywords with the right URLs, reducing the amount of HTML markup in my posts and better, more centralized, link management.

Being a WordPress and PHP newbie, I thought I might write a plug-in to help accomplish this goal. I went through the “How to write a simple WordPress plugin” tutorial and realized it would be pretty simple to use that approach the problem.

I had a feeling that I was not alone in wanting such a plug-in so after I did a little coding, I did a search and found SH-Autolink. I was both bummed and excited – I really wanted to use writing the plug-in to get more familiar with PHP and after reading some comments about the plug-in, I was not going to have to write it from scratch! Stevie’s plug-in had the same issue I first ran into, if the text of the post included the keyword as part of existing anchor tags, then the string replace would break the markup.

So, I merged my code with Stevie’s to get the best of both worlds – my better string replacement and his data management / administration interface. (As a side note, I do think it is curious that he decided to specify the protocol of a link, but maybe I am not thinking the whole problem through.)

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