This is a dense post. Feldman and March, in 1981, wrote “Information in Organizations as Signal and Symbol”. And it makes good predictions about what a management scientist type would say about the purpose of information in an organization. Indeed, just last month, I hyped Carl Anderson’s 2015 original position yet again, in the framing of information as assisting learning. Feldman and March are cited by another piece that’s been weighing heavily since February. Alvesson and Spicer’s 2012 hit “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations” explains why seemingly intelligent people pretend to be dumber than they are. Please don’t misinterpret this passage. It’s not the case that everybody is stupid. Sometimes people act dumber because they have to go-along-to-get-along. Are you[…]
Tag: business
This post describes a fast follow startup and the implication for how that startup learns. Define Startup A startup is a market hypothesis looking for validation. It’s an organization in search of a business. If they’ve accepted funding, then it’s a group of people looking for a liquidity event. Define Follow Follow means imitation. It means that an entrepreneur or a herd entrepreneurs have been observed pursuing a particular product-solution-market fit, or a hypothesis, and some founder wants to join the herd. Define Fast Fast means that the organization is imitating fast enough to nip at the heals of the lead innovator. It is imitating fast enough to be contention of overtaking the leader, or close enough to experience a[…]
It’s easier to link to this text than it is to repeat the intuition every time. Those who learn fastest win One of the core reasons why, as I write this in mid-2018, Silicon Civilization has the world in their teeth is because they figured out that it wasn’t just about learning. It was about learning quickly. Look at it from their perspective. A startup is a hypothesis looking for validation. Those startups that are able to learn fastest have a greatest chance of pulling up before the runway runs out. Those that learned survived takeoff. Those that really thrived never stopped learning. They win because they got really good at learning. It isn’t purely about data, it’s about how[…]
We visited Koh Tao from March 18 to April 1, 2018. Here are some notes for fellow Canadians thinking about visiting Koh Tao. Getting There: The Flights A wise graduate supervisor once advised that one should always break up my trip so that you’re spending no more than 8 hours a day traveling. Eight hours in an airplane is a good work day, and you want to show up refreshed and ready to go. We didn’t do that. For the first leg, we did Cathay Pacific 829, Toronto to Hong Kong. Flight time was 15h30 minutes. It departs Pearson at 0h130 and lands the next day at 05h00. The way this flight works is impressive. There are stands to manage[…]
Who do you trust to manage your attention? Because now that the news cycle has surfaced Cambridge Analytica issue – that’s the real thesis question. Let me explain. How the Newsfeed manages your attention I really can’t understate just how powerful amplified engagement really is. When you overlay the like/share verbs on top of a network of individuals who all have something in common, or who procure people who have something in common, you get some pretty strong effects. Don’t believe me? Just check out the clothing in your drawers and the items in your fridge. You, my friend, are an outcome of considerable social contagion effects. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm shelters you from a power law distribution of content that the[…]
We visited Buenos Aires from Feb 9 to March 1, 2018. Here are some notes for fellow Canadians thinking about visiting Buenos Aires. Taking a vacation in Buenos Aires as a Canadian requires some planning. If you do not enjoy planning, don’t go just yet. If the trend holds through to 2020, it’ll become easier and easier to visit. These notes are for Canadians. Getting There: The Flight We did Air Canada 92, which flies to Buenos Aires via Santiago, Chile. The flight was late because of mechanical issues prior to its Morning run to Beijing, via Vancouver. Delays are the rule, not the exception, with AC 92. Check out FlightAware to verify for yourself. It has a terrible on[…]
You may have been to a conference. Ever wonder why they’re the way they are? The Conference Market(s) Different people hire a conference to do different jobs. For some, a conference is a chance to learn, be exposed to new ideas, and exit a comfort zone. Or, to enter a comfort zone to be exposed to new ideas and feel safe enough to learn. For some, it’s entirely about networking with colleagues, or recruiting, or to be recruited. For others, a conference is a chance to spam people with signing authority with their marketing messages. Or to upsell. Or to crossell. Or to retain. For others still, a conference is a reason to visit a city. To get the hell[…]
An orthodox Software as a Service (SaaS) business is, in part, math that an organization tries its best to manage. Think about all the math that goes into the construction of a typical SaaS firm. At the core there’s some customer with a job: a goal against which the customer wants to make progress. They can have a mathematical representation in a database somewhere. A bunch of technologists write some code, which is all math, and a bunch of creatives take a few photographs, which expresses itself a mathematical representation, and some data is Created Read Updated and Destroyed in a database somewhere, which is all just more math. And it’s all abstracted by yet more math at the processor[…]
The other I likened the process for taking apart a Job To Be Done to taking a part a lobster. There’s a very effective way to decompose any problem with enough energy. And then I watched The Founder on Netflix and admired the McDonald brothers using a classic technique in management science to refine a system on a tennis court. And I loved it. They really refined hamburger and frenched fry delivery. And then this morning I read that Andrew Ng in working on a new coursera course for AI. And I’m thankful for his initiative and optimism. Out of those three threads, this one post. The Assembly Line The assembly line was an American invention for Americans. It could[…]
Earlier in the month, I dined under the space shuttle Endeavour with some of the best minds in marketing science. One mind remarked: “That’s why I bring a glossary with me, oh, you want to do supervised learning? Oh you mean regression? Oh, okay, now we can talk… We’ve been talking to managers about these methods for decades, but it’s just suddenly sexy because it’s all machine learning and deep learning and reinforcement learning.” A lot of the math that underlies much of machine intelligence and artificial intelligence is indeed remarketed marketing science. And, hipsterism aside, the annoyance is understandable. Marketing science started out a bit of a revolt against the Mad Men. Some of the early stories feature post-war[…]