The Curious Paradox of Copying and Creativity
By Tim Berry
A couple of months ago I picked up this post on TechCrunch, which sort of accuses Apple of copying its iBooks application for the new iPad. I hate business copycats. Drives me crazy. As Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Pro grew up, others copied our tag lines, our packaging, and the software. I hated that.... Read More »
The Truth in a Graphic About High-Tech Distractions
By Tim Berry
I just couldn’t resist sharing this. It’s called The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions, and it’s brilliant; and even better in full size, so you should click this link or on the picture to see the original. I got it from Ann Handley, @marketingprofs on Twitter. It’s from a site called Information is Beautiful, by David... Read More »
New World, New Leaders, New Institution
By Tim Berry
Singularity University, brainchild of Ray Kuzweil and other industry leaders (Nobel physicist George Smoot, for example, and Tom Byers of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Google leaders Vint Cerf and Chris DiBona, SIM City creator Will Wright; quite an impressive list), is up and running now at the NASA-Ames research center in Moffett Field, CA,... Read More »
2 Pictures, 200 Words, Lots of Ideas.
By Tim Berry
Pictures, words, ideas. If one picture equals 1,000 words, how many ideas does it generate? Is there a transitive property there? I had time over the weekend to pick up two unrelated pictures. Each covers something entirely different. Both are full of ideas. The first, a chart by Seth Godin: This is one of those... Read More »
10 Really Bad, 11 Really Creative Designs
By Tim Berry
That’s right: it’s a doggy washing machine, not a faked photo, at least according to the write-up at www.davison.com in a hilarious collection called dangerously dumb designs. (Editor’s note: That page has been removed from the Davision Creators’ site, subsequent to the publishing of this post.) The description says: Yeah, that’s right, a dog washing machine. Traumatic and... Read More »
What Does an Imaginary Brick Have to do with Creativity?
By Tim Berry
Try this exercise with a group of people: take out a piece of paper, take three minutes to list uses for a brick. Be creative. List as many as you can. After the three minutes are up, share your results. What’s this about? It turns out that most experts agree that creativity is about quantity... Read More »
Is Software Management Doomed?
By Tim Berry
Committees don’t make great software. It takes a single person, an author. Maybe he gets some help. Teams don’t do it. Nobody sees the whole elephant. I’m pretty sure I heard that basic sentiment first in about 1986, from Dave Winer, who was then the author of a Macintosh outlining program named More (now he’s... Read More »
Really Good vs. Pretty Good vs. Adequate
By Tim Berry
One of my favorite quotes, by Adam Osborne talking about product development, gives way to Seth Godin talking about running your business. Adam was a writer first, and a personal computer industry pioneer later. I met him when he spoke to my class at business school, then followed his nova-star company, Osborne Computers, as it rose... Read More »
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