To achieve quality in something requires;
- quality people
- insightful thinking
- great execution on details
- just enough time
quality needs four things
not quite enough time
“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Leonard Bernstein
if you can’t do it tomorrow…. you won’t be able to do it next week
“Yes . . . Damn!” effect, as it’s been dubbed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch Jr., who are professors of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively. This occurs when we agree to a future commitment in the belief that we’ll have more free time later than we do now — and then, when it comes due, discover we still don’t have time for it.
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/procrastrinating-pleasure/
from http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/arming-the-donkeys/id420535283
directly responsible individual
Apple’s term for the owner of something – who is the directly responsible individual DRI.
This concept helps to drive accountability, and combat diffusion of responsibility
http://genecloud.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/diffusion-of-responsibility/
what’s the difference between a janitor and the VP?
Reasons, situations and excuses all matter in some jobs, and are acceptable at certain seniority levels. Achieving goals, regardless of the situation matters more and more with seniority.
“Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when has asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: the locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn’t have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. “When you’re the janitor”, Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, “ reasons matter.” He continues: “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.” That “Rubicon, “ he has said “ is crossed when you become a VP.”
quote from Fortune on Apple
enough semblance of truth
“The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote that if authors could infuse their stories with enough "semblance of truth," readers would suspend their disbelief of the clearly fabricated tale.”
and advice on using suspension of disbelief in convincing others in business and life;
“In order to inspire others and convince them to suspend their disbelief, you must celebrate, through language, the idea above yourself. Treat the idea as if it were a character you were embodying on the stage. Compelling others is "a function of your capacity to imagine and to subsume one’s own ego in favor of whatever character or idea it is that you’re trying to portray," says Wright. "The idea becomes larger and more powerful than you and there is then hopefully some type of levitation that happens and the story touches people."
tracking trends
- Know why you’re tracking trends
- Don’t get your trends mixed up
- Know a fad when you see (or smell) one
- Don’t apply all trends to all people
- Be (very) curious
- Have a Point of View
- Benefit from an unprecedented abundance of resources
- Name your trends
- Build your Trend Framework
- Start a Trend Group (even if it’s just you)
- Secure senior backing or be doomed
- Don’t worry about timing or life cycles or regional suitability or…
- Apply, apply, apply
- Have some fun
- Let others do some of the work for you in 2011
calm despair
A calm despair… is the essence of wisdom
“Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom.”
Alfred Victor Vigny
a generous 15 minutes to grab the player?
"In the old days, again, we were talking about the golden hour – you had to catch the player in the golden hour to get them to love it enough and tell their friends and whatever. These days it’s more like the golden 15 seconds," he commented. "You can actually watch the little waterfall graph of the longer the bar goes for loading, the more people you lose forever for first time players.”
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/zynga-on-why-triple-a-developers-fail-at-social-games/
understand, don’t ask
Understand and empathize with consumers of your product to stimulate innovation.
“Internalizing the values of your users makes innovation easier, but getting there is hard …the goal is not to ask them what we should design, but to gain insight, absorb it, and translate it into a language our clients understand. Without that insight, any attempt at innovation is no better than a wild guess.”
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663453/true-innovation-starts-with-the-user
too scared to ask ‘stupid’ questions?
“If we can see that questions are linked to innovation and problem-solving, why are so many of us reluctant to ask them?….”
“A recent University of Michigan study found that people in business are generally loathe to raise questions—primarily because they fear that anyone who asks fundamental questions will be perceived as incompetent or uninformed. And if anything, this problem seems to worsen over time as people gain more experience and expertise in their fields. After all, experts know they’re supposed to supply answers, not more questions.”
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663429/innovation-starts-by-questioning-the-right-assumptions
timing is everything
Comedian Jack Benny: ‘When you are speaking, timing is not so much knowing when to speak, but knowing when to pause’
Seven types of pause:
- Phrasing: taken whenever a punctuation mark is used.
- Breathing: to enable breath to be renewed.
- Rhythmic: associated with the rhythm of speech
- Underlining: used after a word or phrase to let its importance sink in.
- Emotional: used during emotional passages to enhance the effect.
- Confident: used at the beginning of a speech to emphasise the speaker’s authority and confidence. (and create anticipation)
- Emphatic: used before a word or phrase to make it stand out. (or tease)
stand up on innovation
- Know Your Audience, Then Ignore Their Advice
- Data Does Not Replace Insight
- Keep It Fresh
- Develop Your Own Point of View
- Create a Story Around the Material
- Even Friendly Audiences Need to Be Won Over
- Don’t Expect Everyone to Get It
- You Can’t Test Your Way to a Decision
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663337/method-what-s-so-funny-about-innovation
people are memorable
“people remember the people details not the thing details”
http://herd.typepad.com/herd_the_hidden_truth_abo/2011/02/people-stories-vs-thing-stories.html
on the run at home
“The myth that mobile players are experiencing games "on the run" is wrong, said Boatman. 47 per cent play when at home, 14 per cent at work and only 12 per cent whilst commuting.”
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-02-10-ea-core-gamers-under-served-on-mobile
your audience are people…
Get out there and observe and talk to your audience.
“In our socially-mediated world, marketers must place greater emphasis on understanding their audience as people rather than as consumers.
To build a social brand, marketers need to discover who these individuals really are. This requires research that can elicit stories about how people feel about their world, the subtext of which defines their identities.”
http://www.allfacebook.com/how-to-target-social-tribes-on-facebook-2011-02
IDEO say it is human-centered;
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” —Tim Brown, president and CEO
what characterizes a tribe?
Online games provide many forms of structure, language, opportunity for ritual and belief systems.
Here are five things that characterize a social tribe:
- Possession of a unique revelation: An ideology that in some way rejects the mainstream and is symbolic of an uncompromising idealism and certainty that is expressed with romantic passion and cold logic.
- A belief system: A mythology about how the world works and how tribe members, and the tribe, can maximize “self” in relation to that world.
- Ritual: The creation of recurrent, exaggerated or stylized behavioral routines that represent the tribe’s belief system; this helps establish institutional memory.
- Distinctive lexicon: A characteristic lingo and a set of emblems to display membership.
- Boundaries: A pseudo-speciation that defines where the tribe begins and ends — i.e., the “other” is not like me.
http://www.allfacebook.com/how-to-target-social-tribes-on-facebook-2011-02
clear view or short distance?
Folk wisdom:
“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.”
Which is good advice when looking in to the future, trendwatching or forecasting.
are there only 8 kinds of fun in games?
Sensation – as sense-pleasure
Fantasy – as make-believe
Narrative – as unfolding story
Challenge – as obstacle course
Fellowship – as social framework
Discovery – as uncharted territory
Expression – as soap box
Submission – as mindless pastime
