Gilad Lotan » lecture

David Kord Murray – “Borrowing Brilliance”

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:22:48 +0000

I’m very excited about the new Speaker Series that MSR New England has kicked off today, featuring David Kord Murray, author of Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by building on the ideas of others. David gave a solid talk, emphasizing the importance of two aspects in the process of being “creative”: Borrowing other ideas, and knowing how to Judge ideas.

In his book’s second chapter (on borrowing) he quotes Einstein: “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”. What he lays out later in the chapter, describes “smart” ways of borrowing – basically don’t borrow ideas from your direct competitor, but possibly someone else in a related field, or yet better, someone in a completely unrelated field, who is trying to solve a similar problem. Bill Gates borrowed solutions from the existing software industry, while Charles Darwin borrowed his creative solutions from places not usually associated with biology (Galapagos). Borrow from within your industry and you’re considered a thief or lowly pirate. While if you borrow from another industry, you are considered a creative genius.

Another interesting quote from that chapter: “If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.” He continues to write about how Bill Gates stole the mouse+click GUI idea that Macintosh developed first. Apparently Steve Jobs spotted that technology at XEROX parc, hired the reseracher who worked on the mouse, and put him to work on the Mac. Gates immediately recognized the potential of the idea, and blatantly copied it. After years of legal battles, Microsoft won the suit, on the claim that the original idea didn’t originate from Apple, but from Xerox. Dan Bricklin, a prominent software engineer who developed the first spreadsheet, said about the suit, “This is a sad day for the software industry in America.” He added, “Writing software is not the same as writing a book. Software builds on what was there before.” Bricklin is right. Software builds on what was there before, but so does every commercial product, engineered machine, scientific theory, and creative thought… also books!

In the Q&A session I asked the author what his thoughts of DRM & technology/web copyright. He didn’t have a stong opinion other than – he understands why its necessary for profitability, but also sees how it inhibits the creative process.

My notes from his talk:

Borrowing Brilliance is about taking ideas and restructuring them. New ideas are always built out of existing ideas. The key becomes where you go to look for ideas. Main questions:

1. can you teach someone to be creative? Definitely.
2. is there a defined process? Maybe.

defined six steps:
the origin of a creative idea:
step 1) defining – define the problem that you’re trying to solve
step 2) borrowing – borrow ideas from places with a similar problem
step 3) combining – connect and combine these borrowed ideas (this is the essence of creativity)
the evolution of a creative idea:
step 4) incubating – allow the combinations to incubate into a solution
step 5) judging – identify the strength and weakness of the solution
step 6) enhancing – eliminate the weak points while enhancing the strong ones

DEFINING
We’re not necessarily good at the formation of a problem. The problem is the foundation of a creative idea. Its important to define, understand and describe the problem. Its important to describe the problem from different perspective, define it differently.

BORROWING
The problem with define where to look for the solution. John Nash had an economics problem: how do members of the economy act, he sensed that they were acting with incomplete information. He recognized that as the same problems he had playing poker. He took the same solutions to the problems from poker into create a decision-making model as a solution for his economics problem.

how do you solve a navigation problem? First look at other software companies. Then step away outside that industry and look at search&rescue teams, truck drivers… etc, and see how they solve their navigation problems.

COMBINING
this is the essence of creativity.
Walt disney created disneyland by using a movie metaphor while constructing the park. Used a move metaphor while breaking out the different experiences that people should have in different parts of the park. Facebook’s original metaphor was an online yearbook. Creative thinkers use metaphors. Isaac Newton was thinking in terms of metaphors – making the connection between the apple and the moon – the apple falls down, but moon moves around. combined celestial and earth-based physics.

INCUBATING
Input to the subsounscious is important => incubate => output from the subconscious (usually happens in the shower! -> the one time of the day where we’re not consciously thinking). Before going to bed, important to glance over some things we’re thinking about, then put it away… It’ll come back.

JUDGING
This is used to drive/improve the idea. Put on your positive and negative hats. So in the next phase, you can bring up an idea that doesn’t have the negative bits and mostly the good bits. This helps develop your intuition, identifying good ideas fast. Example: steve jobs visits XEROX PARC 20 years ago. Goes wild over a demo of mouse+click GUI. Identifying that as a brilliant idea vs. others that had the same demo…

ENHANCING
Trial and error as the passage to the creative solution.

[tags]creativity,book,review, David Kord Murray [/tags]

Presenting imPulse at TEX meetup

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:45:27 +0000

Yes, a month has already passed and I have only just now got around to uploading my presentation from TEX to slideshare – a meetup for those seeking skills trade, collaboration, inspiration, techniques, and exposure to topics with an emphasis on fiber, physical computing, textiles, wearables, and all matters of materials. I gave a half hour presentation on imPulse – the heartbeat sharing devices I built in collaboration with Christian Croft. The emphasis was on materials and design choices when building interactive pieces. I also demo-ed one of the imPulse pieces which still (surprisingly) works flawlessly! Thanks Syuzi and Alice for arranging the meetup.

More info about the meetup on the Make blog and on Robo’s blog.

THE FUTURE OF CONSUMERISM :: Benjamin Barber

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:01:18 +0000

Last night I went to a Hollywood Hill event, a fantastic LA based non-profit which brings together Hollywood creatives around social good. This time Benjamin Barber presented his thought provoking arguments on globalization, interdependence and the impact of consumerist culture.

He described an erosion in the concept of sovereignty, which, today is meaningless. There is no problem that a country can solve by itself. Living in a multi-faceted society, the enemy can come from the inside. There is a blurring between the notions of inside and outside, yet we are still trying to build more walls around us, if between US and Mexico or Israel-Palestine. The US is nominally more powerful than it ever was – incredibly strong military, huge economy and a world leader in academic research. However, at the same time it is the least capable and has little power to protect itself, because of asymmetrical fighting structures. This is something Israel has been facing for many years – how DO you battle against a group of insurgents who are also civilians by day? How do you target terrorists who live within civilian communities? The enemy no longer has an address. It is not a country, but a global entity.

We are misled to believe that as a country under a democratic regime, we are completely sovereign and independent. However, we put little thought into how interdependent we are on foreign goods, especially when we are presented with such a wide variety of choice. I’ve lived in the states for some two and a half years, and am still in awe every time I walk into Home Depot and see the sheer size of that store. Barber argues that most Americans call this a basic freedom – being provided with the choice to buy different products. Personally it frightens me. Effectively, by having this amount of choice, America is placing itself in a position of dependence on foreign manufacturing, goods and oil. There is an inadvertent social public consequence to consumerism, one that many tend to oversee. By shopping at Wal-mart you are helping bring down your neighborhood shops since they cannot compete with the corporation prices. By buying a car (even Prius) you are inadvertently supporting the continuation of America’s dependence on oil, and therefore its involvement in the Middle East and the continuation of the war.

He ended by describing an African Nut Trap, used in Africa to catch monkeys. The idea behind it is simple. Place a nut in a wooden structure with only a small hole. The hole is large enough for a monkey’s hand to squeeze through, but will not allow the hand to come out if clenching onto the nut. The monkey can escape if it lets go of the nut, but it never does. It keeps its clench, and gets caught that way. Barber suggested that our economy is clenching onto consumerism as its engine, and sometimes, it might be worthy to let go and free ourselves from its clutches. He is worried that none of the current US candidates speak about these problems that are causes by consumerism. Instead they ask people to continue shopping in order to strengthen the US economy, a destructive cycle which feeds itself and has no end in sight.

Looking forward to reading the book.

Bill Buxton @ KAIST

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:55:22 +0000

Principal researcher at Microsoft Research – www.billbuxton.com

Sketching and Interaction Design:

Hardware and Software have to be merged, and not kept separated. They’re not sufficient on their own. Design (as an industrial designer sees it) does not exist in software. What is quintessential design activity? Sketching. This is an activity that is seen everywhere where there is design. Sketches are not design, but the activity of sketching is the primary enabling mechanism which is the primary dialog for design. What is the visual vocabulary of sketching?

Sketches are not there to tell you anything, they’re there to ask questions. There are holes there you leave for your imagination to grow. You can’t have the answer to a design problem – you need to have at least five options. Five options which you deeply believe in! Less is more – don’t refine a concept too much, do another concept. The rendering must not suggest you’re farther along in the design process than you really are.

How do you sketch interaction?

Traditional sketching is not sufficient for the types of design we’re doing now. We’re designing experience and interaction. Static traditional sketching doesn’t do the full job. We need more feel than look. It must accommodate time and dynamics.

Start off by telling a good story.

Programming is the last thing to do when thinking about problems. Its more about getting the right design, before getting the design right. Sketching is also about colleting material. Collecting, then putting things together and refining.

Ethan Zukerman Talk

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:46:11 +0000

Went to an inspiring talk by Ethan Zukerman today. He touched very interesting points, and had numerous details about African countries that I know nothing about.

It is less useful to speak on behalf of people. We need to point to them and let them speak. Today’s internet connects 1 billion people. The next billion will be BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China)… then will come Africa’s turn. The web is a selective amplifyier. It is hard to get some stories out there.

What he said in the end was – we all have to find what challenges us. If it doesn’t scare us, then we haven’t picked the right thing!

a lot of info in this talk, and many links:

http://globalvoicesonline.org

http://globalvoicesonline.org/witness – teaching people how to use cameras and document what goes on in their lives.

John Galtung mapped out the media distribution around the world in 1960. Was pretty much the same as now.

http://ohmynews.com - you get some money for submitting articles to the site. But Ohmynews international is not taking off very well. This might be a direct outcome of cultural differences and other basic differences between South Korea and the US.

http://scoop.co.il – give people who submit 25 stories or more a digital camera. Very active Israeli citizen journalism site.

http://wikinews.com = They try to create a story in the morning and let everyone edit it. This isn’t working so well. Wikipedia is a big competitor – it also covers big news events -> that might be a more effective way.

http://newassignment.net – (Jay Rosen) – Open Source Reporting

Salam Pax – Iraqi blogger, right before the US attacked.

http://politics.za.net – South African blog

http://gnarlkitty.blogspot.com – was in Bangkok during the coup.

http://themalau.blogspot.com – Elections in Congo -> group blog

http://jikomboe.com – key swahili blog in Tanzania. Trying to “lower the entry” for users by using their native language.

http://jordanplanet.net

http://kenyaunlimited.com

http://mzalendo.com – Kenyan parliament info

Bridge Blogs – that interest people outside of a specific community

Amplification - amplifying an interesting signal makes it seen (globalvoicesonline try to do this to little stories that wouldn’t be seen otherwise)

http://harakamasia.org – kefaya website (Egypt) – wholly online movement

http://manalaa.net – OS in Egypt

http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com – natural disasters

Rememeber… no lights… no bloggers… Who gets to speak? Still there are several divides:

* power (electricity)
* connectivity

* device access

* expertise

* literacy

* local content

* relevance: Whats your incentive to use this technology

http://translate.org.za – OS translation in SA

OLPC – one laptop per child movement -> perhaps the laptop is not the right device. There is a striking rise in ombile phones. Especially in Africa (100 million users & 3G existing networks) -> this also means that they also all have cameras.

leblogmedia – reporters without borders

book - “OS community Wireless Networks”