slow thoughts

  • Engineering Isn’t What it Used to Be

    The toolbox of modern engineering contains a motley mix of approaches.

  • Introducing Straddle, a Framework For Validating Startup Ideas

    I’m often dreaming up frameworks. Very few of them spread beyond my mind, but here’s one that I think has stood the test time.

  • The Automation Paradox

    The shift from nitty gritty to ever more elevated levels of abstractions has been a trend in technology for so long, that it almost seems inevitable. But some of the most interesting pieces of technology I see coming out of the labs, are extremely close to the machine. Starting from first principles, these teams go slow. They don’t stand on the shoulder of giants, they carefully lay out the foundations for whole new paradigms. I think in the end, that’s the only way real innovation can happen.

  • Disruption Disrupted : How Big Tech Keeps Innovative Startups at Bay

    Everyone who read Clayton Christensen *knows* that startups will eat incumbents for breakfast. That’s why they call it disruption!

  • Preparing For the Next War

    Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez studies the intersection of technology and innovation. Reading her feels like looking at one of those images optometrists use to diagnose colour blindness; where before there was just a jumble of dots, patterns emerge.

  • Girly Stuff

    The system has always worked hard to hide the fact that women are just as brilliantly ingenious innovators as men are.

  • Steady On Target

    It’s all very well to come up with an award winning strategy, the tough bit is to stick to it when the goings get rough.

  • Defining Done

    The tail end of any experience is disproportionally important to how we look back at the whole, but endings are also tricky business; how do you know when you’re done?

  • Managing Mozart

    Great leadership requires constant fluid shifting between different modes of operation.

  • Product Spells D-E-V-I-C-E + S-E-R-V-I-C-E

    Marketing should be seen as civilised warfare and segmentation is one of its most discussed and least understood concepts. 

  • Product People Will Get Us Out of the Fix

    The essence of ‘product people’ is really to see what’s needed in the world and to create something out of nothing. I’m confident they will keep doing that whether anyone is paying them or not, just like the jazz musicians kept jamming right through the great depression. It will be a slog for a while, but who said it was ever going to be easy?

  • What I Think About When I Think About Design

    There are basically two modes of problem solving that are in wide spread use simply because of how we organise schools: Analysis, and decision making. According to Design Thinking, these two modes of problem solving fall short when addressing the increasingly complex challenges facing society. We need a complementary attack angle.

  • Smarter isn’t Better : the Surprising Truth About High Output Teams

    What’s the factor that allows some teams to achieve the seemingly impossible? It turns out you can’t just put the best people from different fields in a room and wait for synergy to happen.