Nico Luchsinger

The origin of good ideas

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:27:12 -0800

I finished reading Steven B. Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From" recently. It's a good book, definitively recommended for everyone thinking about concepts and origins of innovations, although there are probably more scientific studies of the subjects. My favorite quotes:

«The question is how to push your brain toward those more creative networks. The answer, as it happens, is delightfully fractal: to make your mind more innovative, you have to place it inside environments that share that same network signature: networks of ideas or people that mimic the neural networks of a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible.»

«In thinking about networked innovation this way, I am specifically not talking about a "global brain", or a "hive mind". [...] Large collectives are rarely capable of true creativity or innovation. [...] When the first market towns emerged in Italy, they didn't magically create some higher-level group consciousness. They simply widened the pool of minds that could come up with and share good ideas. This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It's not that the network itself is smart; it's that the individuals get smarter because they're conneted to the network.»

«The secret to organizational inspiration is to build information networks that allow hunches to persist and disperse and recombine. Instead of cloistering your hunches in brainstorm sessions or R&D labs, create an environment where brainstorming is something that is constantly running in the background, throughout the organization, a collective version of the 20-percent-time concept that proved so successful for Google and 3M.»

«[Martin] Ruef interviewed 766 graduates of the [Stanford Business] School who had gone on to have entrepreneurial careers. He created an elaborate system for scoring innovation based on a combination of factors: the introduction of new products, say, or the filing of trademarks and patents. And then he tracked each graduate's social network - not just the number of acquaintances but the kind of acquaintances they had. [...] What Ruef discovered was a ringing endorsement of the coffeehouse model of social networking: the most creative individuals in Ruef's survey consistently had broad social networks that extended outside their organization and involved peole from diverse fields of expertise. Diverse, horizontal social networks, in Ruef's analysis, were three times more innovative than uniform, vertical networks.»

«There are good ideas, and then there are good ideas that make it easier to have other good ideas.»

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Into The Shallows

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:24:08 -0700

I've published my extensive review (or, rather, rant) of Nick Carr's «The Shallows» yesterday on my NZZ blog [in German]. Here's a (very short) version of my argument:

Carr argues that the web - or, rather, reading on the web - is tinkering with our brain. Drawing on the idea of neuroplasticity (the fact that our brain is changed by experiences), he cites numerous studies that are supposedly showing that web promotes cursory reading and superficial learning and that, consequently, the human race gradually loses its ability for «deep thinking».

I have several issues with the book, the first being what I call an overly naive cultural pessimism. Carr for example reminisces about how libraries used to be places of contemplation where books were read, but are now equipped with computers with internet access - ignoring that libraries are (and always have been!) places of access to knowledge - whether this comes in the form of books or not. The scientific foundation of his argument is also shaky: While there is good cause to believe that digital reading is different from "offline" reading, there just isn't nearly enough research to support any of Carr's apocalyptic prophecies.

Most important though, I believe, is the fundamental misunderstanding of how the web works. Carr focuses solely on online texts that have hyperlinks in them and thus promote distraction. He completely ignores all the other effects the web has too, and that (very likely) also have an effect on the human brain - the unprecedented access to information, the ease of collaboration and communication (Clay Shirky even argues that the web leads to a «cognitive surplus»). This makes Carr's book sound like a disgruntled rant from someone who misses the good old times.

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Serien ohne System, oder: Darwins und Foucaults radikale Historizität

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:56:00 -0700

In seinem Buch "Darwin und Foucault" wagt der Historiker Philipp Sarasin den Versuch, zwei oft zitierte und gleichzeitig oft missverstandene Denker aufeinander prallen zu lassen. Ich habe das Buch als Laie gelesen - ich kenne mich weder mit Darwin noch mit Foucault aus (dass letzterer unter Zürcher Geschichtsstudenten eine begeisterte Anhängerschaft hat, schreckte mich immer etwas ab). Sarasins Buch fand ich erstaunlich leserlich; vieles darin faszinierend und erhellend, einiges aber auch komplett unverständlich.

Eine wesentliche Gemeinsamkeit von Darwins und Foucaults Denken liegt, so denke ich (aber ich vereinfache damit wohl erheblich), in der Sicht auf Geschichte als "Serien ohne System". Darwins Leistung bestand darin, entgegen der vorher etablierten Meinung zu zeigen, dass es keine (von einem Schöpfer erschaffene) Arten gibt, sondern nur stetigen evolutionären Wandel (Sarasin: "Arten sind [...] bloss vorübergehende Stabilisierungen der Konfiguration von Eigenschaften von sich letztlich permanent wandelnden Organismen.") Für Foucault wiederum (er lehnte sich damit an Nietzsche an) zeigte die Evolution, dass es die philosophische "Wahrheit" über den Menschen nicht gibt - es gibt nur Werden, kein Sein.

Sowohl für Darwin als auch für Foucault besteht Geschichte also aus Serien, die aber in keinem System eingeordnet sind. Sie stellen sich damit gleichzeitig gegen eine naturwissenschaftlich-statistische Berechenbarkeit sowie eine philosophische Erklärbarkeit der Geschichte und betonen demgegenüber Wandel, Diskontinuität und Zufall. Weder gibt es aus ihrer Sicht eine Teleologie in der Geschichte (Foucault im Gegensatz zu Marx und Hegel: Machtverhältnisse sind antagonistisch, aber nicht dialektisch) noch gibt es stabile Referenzsysteme: Auch das Subjekt (und der Körper) zerfällt in ein Kontinuum ohne Ursprung und Ausgangspunkt (Foucault: Dinge entstehen aus Ungleichem; Darwin: Ursprung ist metaphysisch und deshalb uninteressant). In Foucaults Worten: "Der Mensch ist ein Erfahrungstier. Er tritt ständig in einen Prozess ein, der ihn als Objekt konstituiert und ihn dabei gleichzeitig verschiebt, verformt, verwandelt - und der ihn als Subjekt umgestaltet."

In diesem Sinne, glaube ich, denken Darwin und Foucault beide radikal historisch: Indem sie Geschichte als Prozesse (Serien) ansehen, denen weder eine bestimmte Entwicklungsrichtung innewohnt noch ein stabiler Rahmen (Systeme) gegeben ist.

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Reviewing «Rework»

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:03:32 -0700

I just finished reading «Rework», the new book by the founders of web software company 37signals.

It's a good book. First of all, it is very short; reading it only takes around two hours. Also, it is written in this simple, clear, slightly repetitive language that just makes you nod in agreement while reading.

«Rework» consists of many short chapters, one to two pages long, that give you advice on how to run your business. Most are true. Many are obvious. Some are weird. Others redudant. The selection of my highlights:

Workaholism is bad for you and for your company
Embrace constraints because they drive creativity
Interruption is the enemy of productivity
Make sure you get enough sleep
Decommoditize your product - put the you in it
Pick a fight
Hire great writers
Speed is crucial

Personally, I would have added two more recommendations:

Beware of simple solutions. «It's easy» is the most overrated advice there is. Most of the time, it's not. Otherwise, it wouldn't be interesting. Simple solutions are dangerous because they always look attractive, but are not always the right ones. Often, they overlook something crucial.

Don't read business books. These books, including «Rework», suffer from a fatal flaw: They imply that you can use the model that worked for one company to every other company as well. That's nonsense. «Rework» is a good book about how 37signals became successful. Nothing guarantees that your business will be successful too if you follow the same rules.

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