problem solving

In The Outsiders, William Thorndike argues that the most essential skill for a manager is capital allocation. To prove his point, he profiles CEOs such as Henry Singleton of Teledyne and John Malone of TCI who, while not household names, achieved outsized returns by wisely deploying their firm’s resources.

A couple of times a year I guest-lecture for several Masters in Marketing/Customer Management programs in The Netherlands. Almost every time students approach me with a question regarding their master-thesis or other assignment. 

It is the ability to identify patterns of insights and “connect the dots” in a meaningful way.

Bruce Nussbaum, in a blog post: 3 Paths Toward A More Creative Life, calls it “Pattern Sight”.

I've been talking about 70, 20, 10 models for a good time, and it seems that it's applicable in a wide number of different contexts. Generally, it relates to the idea that the majority of time, focus, attention or resources should be focused on established practices or core methods, but room should be left for both extending those core approaches and taking them in new directions, but also for completely new ideas and input.

Such a good point made by Instagram Co-Founder Kevin Systrom in this short video (below), about how often it's not generating solutions to problems which is the hard part, but finding the right problem to solve. And as Ed Cotton says, planners have some highly relevant craft skills in this critical area.

There was an Economist piece on Innovation a while back on Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble's new book “The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge”, dealing largely with innovation in established companies. There's much focus on ideas generation these days, perhaps more so than on what innovation really is: the commercialisation of those ideas. The perspiration stuff, not the inspiration stuff.

There were tours visiting our office last week, people were curious about what we do and what kind of people we hire. It is an interesting question. I guess our job is to help large companies go through mid-life crisis.

When I want to solve a problem or come up with a creative idea, I usually sit down and think about it. This could be the wrong strategy, according to University of British Columbia psychology professor Kalina Christoff. The UBC prof is an expert in the unlikely subject of daydreaming, and has released findings that our brains are MORE activated than normal when we let them wander:

by: Iqbal Mohammed

Adrian Ho wrote a post last week about how solving sudokus serves as a metaphor for doing marketing strategy, and followed up by listing his thoughts on what's analogous between the two.

by: Sigurd Rinde

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”

Roughly translated to business and IT it would be:

"Give a man IT applications; you have made him profitable for today. Enable a man to change his ways; and you have given him the potential to profit for a lifetime."