September 2013 Articles

“Try one of these techniques if you want better service in restaurants:

“1. Become very famous;

“2. Spend $1,000 or more on wine every time you go out;

“3. Keep going to the same restaurant until you get V.I.P. treatment; if that doesn’t work, pick another place.

“Now, here is a technique that is guaranteed to have no effect on your service: leave a generous tip.”

“Low light. Moderate levels of noise. Alcohol. These are all things that – according to research – enhance our creativity. Those findings are all interesting, no doubt, but the applications of such enhanced creativity in the real world are pretty debatable. By focusing too much on the smallest details, we often lose sight of why creativity is so important in the first place: because it improves people’s lives. That’s the whole point, and it’s something businesses should keep in mind. Upgrades and cool new features are great, but if your creative team isn’t getting people excited, and making people’s lives better, they’re doing something wrong.”

It’s true, I’m really excited about doing UCLA Volunteer Day again.

“…It’s logical, then, to assume that the longer a team is together, the better they’ll be at performing. But research into the inner workings of teams, particularly creative teams, suggests a different conclusion, one supported by experience from many of the most innovative companies: The best teams might temporary, with members forming around a given project and then going their separate ways to work on new projects.”

With the amount of IT technology and oversight available to corporations and businesses, it’s an interesting thought experiment to understand the line between acceptable personal use of company resources (like computers/networks) and abuse.

“…I’d long thought that photographic technology had imposed that constraint: It’s harder to hold a smile than a grimace or smirk, and early film simply took longer to expose than people could hold an expression. Smile in a portrait and you’d wind up with a beautiful buccal blur.

“But an article by Nicholas Jeeves, recently published in the Public Domain Review, suggests that, when folks frowned, they did so for reasons as economic, social and historical as they were technological.”

“The world’s top climate scientists on Friday formally embraced an upper limit on greenhouse gases for the first time, establishing a target level at which humanity must stop spewing them into the atmosphere or face irreversible climatic changes. They warned that the target is likely to be exceeded in a matter of decades unless steps are taken soon to reduce emissions…”

When going with your gut is better for everyone.