Bill Jensen's Blog, page 15

Exploring Why Is Harder Than Figuring Out What

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Viktor Mayer-Schönberger





Author, Big Data

Big Data Site







MY CURRENT DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

Finding the 'Why's.“Even with all our access to all kinds of data, it’s still becoming harder and harder to make very definite statements about causes of things. It’s very hard to say anything about the ‘why’ of things. It’s much easier to talk about the ‘what’ of things.



“We’re out of our comfort zone. And our instincts are to go back to our comfort zone and stick to the old hunches, the old intuitions — that didn’t necessarily work, but that we’re comfortable with. If we look at something and it’s tiring, it’s cumbersome, it’s costly, it’s difficult, it’s complex, we don’t understand it … we just tend to throw it away.



“That’s just very human. But at the same time, we only advance ourselves and we only advance the human race if we tackle these issues. Not by sticking to the old fashioned intuition, but by using the disruptive technology that’s outside of our comfort zone.”
    

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? The universe keeps sending us messages to step outside of our comfort zone … and we keep clawing our way back to what feels comfortable and familiar. Break that rut, now! It’s easy to ask what to do if you don’t dig very deep. But if you do go deeper, beyond what’s currently comfortable, you uncover completely new ‘why’s and ‘what’s!  



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The Secret to Happiness

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Rajeev Peshawaria

Author, Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders

Blog







MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE CHANGE

Personal Transformation. “I went from being a net taker to a net giver to society. This transformation happened slowly.



“I had depended on society for gratification. The next promotion, a little bit more money, a bigger title — my happiness depended on what I could get from society. Somewhere down the line, instead of asking what I would get, my orientation became focused on what can I give. Since then I became a free man. And now it’s about what can I leave behind.



“I don’t depend on somebody else for my happiness. If I’m happy, I created it. If I’m not happy, that’s because of me too. I feel much more liberated, much more empowered.”
     

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

This is exactly how Disrupt’s companion book, The Courage Within Us , ends: The one character trait most necessary for a world of continuous disruptive change is living your live in a way in which you create as much as you receive from other creators. Because, if you take more than you create, most every disruption can always cause some form of dis-ease or unhappiness. If you are focused on giving more than you take, disruptions to what you currently have a no big deal.   



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The 21st Century Nervous System

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Cory Doctorow

Author, Rapture of the Nerds

Craphound Blog







PART 2: UNDERSTANDING THE 21st CENTURY NERVOUS SYSTEM

After giving a brief tour of modern-day computing that began with the Turing machine, Cory Doctorow then describes the challenge we all face: “Everything has become a computer. Your dishwasher, your car, your house, your hearing aid and your pacemaker are all general-purpose computers with very specialized peripherals. A 747 is a flying Sun Solaris workstation with some specialized controllers in a fancy aluminum case. 



“That means every problem we have involves a computer, because computers are everywhere. And every lawmaker tries to solve every problem by selectively breaking computers. (e.g.,) ‘Make me a laptop that can run every program, except those that let people pirate music.’ or ‘Make me a car that can run every program except for the ones that let thieves steal the car.’ 



“That means everything we’re buying now has some program running in the background that it’s been programmed to interdict it says ‘I cannot let you do that, Dave.’ So computers are now being designed to hide portions of its existence from the owner. 



“That’s a bad idea! We want the things that our lives depend on — our thermostats, our cars, our airplanes, our pacemakers, our glucose meters — to faithfully represent their internal states. 



“And yet, we are entering a long period of fights — I think, a century — in which well-meaning people with the best of intentions without understanding how all this works, say ‘This is the lessor of two equals.’ This is going to be one of the most disruptive forces in our lives for years to come.”


FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

A century-long fight. Wow. That’s well above most our paygrades or capabilities. But here’s what Doctorow’s warning means to you on an everyday basis: Well-intentioned people are designing built-in conflicts into everything you do and buy. 



You cannot outrun all the disruptions coming at you. What you can do, however, is to learn how to take advantage of and ride those disruptions. Become a master disruptor/adaptor! 



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Finding Balance Within the Chaos

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Joseph Jaffe

Author, Z.E.R.O.

Evol8tion Blog







PART 2: MY DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

Change Itself. “As I grow older, I see myself balking at change and realizing that I have become that which I once despised. I’m just like everyone else. I love my habits and my way of life.



“But each of us must change. You must embrace, you must force yourself out of that comfort zone. Intel CEO Andy Grove famously fired himself, and had his CFO re-hire him — so he come back without baggage, without all the kind of pretense that slows us down.



“I continue to struggle with the fact that change always takes longer than we think. It appears like it happens overnight, but it doesn’t. Even though some changes can be incredibly disruptive, they are the product of a lot of little tiny increments — which eventually reach a tipping point. It’s about becoming comfortable in that chaos.



“One thing I have learned throughout my career is that any form of extreme is bad. Many see disruptors and innovators and creators are extreme in and of themselves. But I don’t think that’s accurate. For example, 50% of me is extreme left brain. And 50% of me is extreme right brain. But put them together and I’m somewhere in the middle, where there’s balance and equilibrium.”



Applying that to disruptive change: “We need to take the best of the old and combine it with the best of the new. And we need to throw out the worst of the old and throw out the worst of the new. A lot of new stuff is absolute crap.



“What it all comes down to is finding your place and your space in this vortex of chaos and change. The answer isn’t to move quicker or slower. It is to move extremely quickly and extremely slowly and figure out the balance between the two.”  

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Finding your place and your space in this vortex. That’s it! That’s the challenge for each of us. And once we find our place, how we keep throwing out the stupid stuff and find balance between extremes.



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Big Data Means Big Changes

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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William McKnight

President, McKnight Consulting Group







MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE CHANGE

Big Data. “Big data is a real disruptive change because it’s data that could not be cost-effectively managed by our old techniques. 



“In the past five years or so, we’ve had a whole new slew of technologies that have come aboard that have allowed us to manage that information, and companies are also learning how to use that information with their data science to turn it into profit. This is data that accumulates very rapidly. It’s stuff like sensor data reads, social data, video, audio, click stream data — very fine grain data that we’ve just been letting go in the past. But now we have a way to manage it and translate it into corporate value. 



“I think it’s going to be a very strong component of how companies compete in the next decade.”


FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Big data is a big part of our future, of your future. Your job and your role as a parent or citizen or community member are going to be more and more influenced by the data that your To Dos generate. You can’t control or change that. 



But what you can do is: Ask better questions, dig deeper. All the underlying assumptions about how things get done are changing. You need to question the assumptions and root causes of the challenges presented to you before you take them on.



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What Is Happening to Face-to-Face?

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Amit Chowdhry

Editor-in-Chief, Pulse 2.0




MY DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

“The disruptive change that I’m currently struggling with is text messaging. That’s something I’ll never really get into. I have friends that send 20,000 text messages per month. 



“I remember when I was growing up, we had landlines that had cords… We would call people and we would constantly interact [on the phone]. Now, I have family members I haven’t talked to in six months, but I’ve texted them maybe 100 times over the past few months. 



“It seems that now that all these phone providers offer unlimited text messaging…people are constantly doing that rather than calling each other. And I really enjoy seeing people’s faces and hearing their voices. And I feel text messaging is a technology that’s taking away from all that.”


FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Amit Chowdhry does not have these feelings because he’s an old fart Baby Boomer (like me)… He’s a GenY-er who edits an online tech site! There are tremendous upsides to our new technologies. And there are some big downsides too. It’s up to each of us to achieve the right balance as we use them.  



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Stop Running Fool Errands

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Cory Doctorow

Author, Homeland

Craphound Blog







PART 1: DISRUPTIONS LESSONS LEARNED

“I was very priviledged to have worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and two of my heroes founded EFF: Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus, and John Gilmore, who founded the first ISP. They really changed and challenged my thinking. 



“Years ago, I was at a conference and Mitch was going to be debating the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, Hillary Rosen. We were talking about EFF’s position on this and I gave him a lot of research on the impact of downloading on music sales and whether or not downloading was a net positive for music. 



“He said, ‘All this doesn’t matter. No where in the constitution does it say ‘You will have the right to make money selling music on plastic disks forever. Even if this was terrible for the record industry, there’s no way we can stop it. What we need to be talking about is the impact of the Internet on this fool’s errand.’ 




“Mitch really nailed it. If you want a perfect statement about disruption, it’s that. What that conversation did was make me reframe my thinking from: Is [any disruptive change] good or bad? To: [The disruptive change exists,] how do I make the most of it. No one got rich by stamping their feet indignantly.”

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Doctorow’s Aha is at the center of every debate about every disruptive change. Those who try to slow down or ignore or complain about disruptive changes are just wasting time, or worse — setting themselves up for failure. 



The only path forward is to figure out how to take advantage of the biggest disruptions coming at you.



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Anatomy of a Disruptive Hero

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Joseph Jaffe

Author, Z.E.R.O.

Evol8tion Blog







PART 1: ONE OF MY DISRUPTIVE HEROES

Steve Jobs. “I think he was really not a nice man. But as a disruptor, he’s got to be out there. He’s taught us about form and function — that you need both. That’s it’s got to look good and it’s also got to do good, it’s got to work.



“As far as customer service: Apple is this wonderful, beautiful contradiction. On one hand, there service is terrible. They don’t really care about what we say as customers. They’re so arrogant that they know better than us and that we don’t know what we want (and truthfully, we don’t). So they create what we want for us. But at the same time, their stores are a wonderful testament to the future role of bricks and mortar as well as customer service. I would go so far to say that Apple has become a customer service brand, more so than Zappos.



“We’ve seen this company grow, fall, grow, fall… And Steve Jobs was the constant. It’s amazing to think that one man made that much of a difference. 





“And that’s really the common theme between all my disruptive heroes — my mother, Nelson Mandella, Robert Brozin — each one made a difference. And each one, without which, the people in their lives would have been forever changed.

That’s the great litmus test when you talk about disruptive heroes — that they were able to alter the course and the fortitude and the direction and the future of individuals or groups of individuals.”  

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

There it is — a great definition of a disruptive hero. We all want to make a difference in the world because we were loved and liked. But disruptive heroes go one step further. 



Love ‘em or not, they alter the course of our lives in a way we still admire and often need. Nelson Mandela, MLK Jr, Gandhi and all disruptive heroes are flawed human beings. Still, they alter the course of our future in ways we could not have imagined.



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You Cannot Hide: Disruption is Everywhere

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Joe McKendrick

Disruptions Columnist at Forbes







DISRUPTIVE CHANGE: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

“In the 1980s there was a group, IWP: International Word Processing Association. Before desktop computers existed, companies were taking word processing — typing, correspondence, transcription — away from their secretaries and shifted those functions into word processing pools. As the PC came on the market, the whole word processing market collapsed within five years.”



Also: “The way we did surveys, way back when, was by mail. And that involved designing the questionnaire, getting it printed, printing envelopes and cover letters, taking all that to a mail house, having it delivered…then when the responses come back, someone had to be hired to data entry, putting the responses in digital format so you could work with it.



“When the internet came along, within the space of a couple years, again, the entire industry of creating, mailing and transcribing surveys collapsed.”

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

If recent history (1980s to now) has proven anything, it’s that no industry, no market, no job is immune from being instantly transformed and blown up by disruption.



We need to stop clinging to what we wished still was, and start being more adaptive, more resilient in the face of constant, disruptive change.



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How is Mobile Changing You?

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Braden Kelley

Author, Stoking the Innovation Bonfire

Innovation Excellence Blog







MY DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

Mobile Technology. “The disruptive change that I’m currently struggling with is the transformation that mobile is causing, because I really care about the human element of innovation.



“The first two elements of innovation are inspiration and insight, and the human element often determines those. I’m struggling to completely understand the full societal implications of the mobile-centered human experience — and how the smart phone is and will continue to transform human behavior and also society, infrastructure and most industries.”  

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

So many of us love so much about our mobile phones. On a daily basis they are completely revolutionizing our lives. There are downsides though. 



We all must play careful attention to how this technology both enhances and detracts from very human experiences. It remains our daily responsibility to keep the best of what’s new and to continually throw out or ignore the worst of what’s coming at us.   



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