The PS3 Song - a Web 2.0 rant

Interesting Web 2.0 approach to telling a brand that it sucks. Check it out!

Pearls before breakfast

Read this.

Go ahead, everything else can wait.

The Bakshali Inheritance - IIMC convocation

Convocation Speech by Ajit Balakrishnan: IIM Calcutta, 1^stApril 2007

An excellent read

Emergence

I read about this interesting concept today.

Emergence is one of the founding principles of agility, and is the closest one to pure magic. Emergent properties aren't designed or built in, they simply happen as a dynamic result of the rest of the system. "Emergence" comes from middle 17th century Latin in the sense of an "unforeseen occurrence." You can't plan for it or schedule it, but you can cultivate an environment where you can let it happen and benefit from it.

A classic example of emergence lies in the flocking behavior of birds. A computer simulation can use as few as three simple rules (along the lines of "don't run into each other") and suddenly you get very complex behavior as the flock wends and wafts its way gracefully through the sky, reforming around obstacles, and so on. None of this advanced behavior (such as reforming the same shape around an obstacle) is specified by the rules; it emerges from the dynamics of the system.

Link via 37signals. Source: Andrew Hunt - The pragmatic programmers.

Sometimes the best ways to create complex outcomes is to create simple mantras to be followed religiously by all stakeholders.

The concept can be extended to organizations as a whole. If an organization has 3-5 pithy mantras that it will abide by in all its decisions, it can lead to complex positive outcomes. On the other hand if one were to start from the complex outcome and work backwards, failure is guaranteed. I believe that great vision statements perform this function in aligning the actions of organizational stakeholders.