Here’s something I wrote in response to someone who wrote about patents, confused why so many people, especially people who work in technology, are coming to dislike patents. I find people who don’t work with patents have models about them that don’t fit with how businesses use them today, their effects, and how and why we created them in the first place. The first quote is a question I read[…] Keep reading →

Comparisons to Nazis and Hitler happen all the time, usually backfiring on the people making the comparison. Since almost no one has tried to take over the world or kill everyone they could based on religion, whomever you’re comparing looks better. This comparison makes things so black-and-white you lose the ability to learn from the past. Today we know how Nazism ended, but while it developed and grew, nobody knew.[…] Keep reading →

One of the most important skills to have about beliefs and models is being flexible. Flexibility is one of the hardest skills for my clients to develop… until they get it. Then they realize the value of the skill and get good at it quickly. Today I want to share a way I’ve found useful to undermine people’s rigidity in their beliefs — to point out how an incredibly strong[…] Keep reading →

Following up on this post on voicing your self-talk, a follow-up to what I consider the most effective exercise in improving your self-awareness, here is another example of someone speaking extemporaneously for a long time. He’s not exactly voicing his self-talk, but he is, at least somewhat. I presume he knew his topic well before this recording, but knowing a topic well doesn’t make speaking for over five minutes on[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written a lot on creativity and when I do I often mention the professor whose class on creativity I took, Jacob Goldenberg. He recently gave an online talk with Columbia Business School about his research. If you like creativity, learning some unexpected properties of it, and improving your creativity, I recommend it. It’s not as polished as a TED talk, but as informative. Here it is: video platformvideo managementvideo[…] Keep reading →

A year or so ago I left Facebook, starting a nationwide and even global trend for others to leave it too, stating that leaving Facebook was easy and fun. Yes, I was the one who started that trend. Leaving wasn’t popular yet then. Rereading that post, I see that I never logged back in to say goodbye to my connections there. I haven’t missed a moment there. On the contrary,[…] Keep reading →

I once read that in the build-up to WWII, people in America were concerned that democracy would hold them back in a conflict with the nations creating strong centralized authorities. They speculated that in a war, while they deliberated, nations with centralized power would win for not having to take time making decisions. Apparently they were right, but only at the beginning. When the strong central leaders made effective decisions,[…] Keep reading →