All this buzz about people buying iPads and queueing up for an iPhone 4 brings me to think of something I often talk about when discussing innovation and technology intelligence. The ‘Technology Diffusion Model’ by Beal, Rogers and Bohlen. It looks something like this:
Just for fun, I imagine how this roughly interprets to Singapore’s iPad adoption:
Innovators. You bought the iPad directly from the USA around the original launch date. People love you and love your technological gadgets. Some even stalk you over it. There’s also a high chance you’re an Asian American who works for a multinational software company in the day and owns a sushi bar by night (private joke).
Early Adopters. This would refer to the hoards of people who queued up in Singapore last week to grab an iPad. This week, you’ll be stocking up on accessories such as little cute bags to protect your precious toy and screen filters because once you got it home you realized how reflective the surface is. You’re probably reading this from Starbucks right now.
Early Majority. Those that missed out on the great iPad grab are probably feeling quite sore right now; but. You’ll pretend that you never get one; but one fine day you’ll let your guard down when one winks at you seductively from a shop window.
Late Majority. (I think I fit here) You’re probably sat cursing that everyone you’ve seen with an iPad this week is a douche, or worse: a douchePad. You’ll be getting one though as soon as 1) the price goes down considerably 2) everyone else has one and you need to share applications/files with them and 3) you can impress people (whose wives won’t let them buy one) in meetings.
Laggards. At some point, you’ve said something like the iPad “it is just a big iPhone/iPod touch.” You’re probably going to get an iPad in a years time or so when they come free with new Singtel Mio/Starhub packages… and you know it.
So which one are you?
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July 29th, 2010
“The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence.”
- Lyman Bryson
Wordpress blogs discussing Bryson’s works here and here.
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July 6th, 2010
Remember the scene from Gladiator?
“Whatever comes out of these gates, we’ve got a better chance of survival if we work together.”
Well it seems that mobs can use that principle too; only that they can now make use of an expansive repertoire of communication methods to co-ordinate themselves.
Found on: Holy Kaw!
Read more at: How Stuff Works
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May 21st, 2010
[This side of paradise. The egotist becomes a parsonage] F. Scott Fitzgerald
“If you’d have gone to college you’d have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twice as hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did who were earning their way through.”
“The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long we’ve forgotten there’s any other way. We’ve made a world where that’s necessary. Let me tell you” — “If there were ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a green ribbon for five hours’ work a day an a blue ribbon for ten hours’ work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon.”
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January 19th, 2010
Owing to some late night escapades on a Friday night, Tom Sawyer’s mother ensured that his Saturday would involve a day of hard laborious punishment for Tom Sawyer.
Whitewashing the fence was a far cry from the excitement that was possibly being had by Tom’s friends and Tom Sawyer wanted to get out of this chore quickly. Looking at his worldly possessions of a few bits of toys, marbles and some trash: prospects for buying his way out of it by bribing some other boys to share his task seemed bleak.
Then it struck Tom. Ben Roger’s taunts about Tom rather working seemed to brush right off him:
Ben: “Say, I’m going in a swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course, you’d druther work, wouldn’t you? Course you would! … Come now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”
Tom: “Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth — stepped back to notice the effect — added a touch here and there — criticized the effect again, Ben watched every move, and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
Ben: “Say Tom. Let me whitewash a while.”
Tom considered.
Ben: “… oh come now; lemme just try, only just a little. I’d let you, if you was me, Tom”
Tom gave up his brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.
The retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by and munched on an apple. Boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with; and so on.
When the middle of afternoon came, from being a poor poverty stricken boy in the morning Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He’d amassed twelve marbles, part of a Jew’s harp, a blue piece of bottle glass, a spool-cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar, the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window-sash.
… and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it.
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January 13th, 2010
Dodig-Crnkovic (2003) states:
The industrial revolution was concerned with the utilizing of energy.
The information revolution, is concerned with the utilizing of information.
With these in mind, what will the knowledge revolution be remembered for?
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December 7th, 2009
A quote from Ayrton Senna. Tacit Knowledge? Grok?
“I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit but still able to find even more.
Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down. I drove slowly back to the pits and I didn’t want to go out any more that day. It frightened me because I was well beyond my conscious understanding. It happens rarely but I keep these experiences very much alive inside me because it is something that is important for self-preservation.”
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November 9th, 2009
From Robert A. Heinlein’s novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land:’
“Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man.”
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November 8th, 2009
On an early morning jogging visit to the nearby park, you notice a pair of unkempt men. Unshaven and shabbily dressed, their greasy hair shows signs of fatigue as it sprouts from the sides of hats that have seen better days. One reaches out a half empty can of extra strength lager and gives a smile and a salute to his friend before chugging it back.
First impressions? A pair of drunks, probably homeless. They might even well deserve to be in the state they’re in.
That’s what you see. How about what you don’t see? How about the ‘perhaps?’ Perhaps the two men might have, one time, been a pair of very successful business partners; before some seriously unfortunate event caused their demise which ultimately left them out on the street. Why is the man holding out his beer can to the other and smiling? To celebrate drunkenness? Or perhaps he was he reminiscing a time when they were once very successful and his friend pulled off a big deal.
There’s always more to a story. However, our primary impression is based on our assumptions, experience and knowledge. Sticking to our prior assumptions, experience and knowledge will seriously limit ourselves to seeing only with our eyes and not what is beyond.
I think it is our job as curious human beings to try and find out the whole story before snapping to conclusions. Our duty as innovative human beings is to challenge our own assumptions, experience and knowledge in order to create new knowledge and experience new things.
In our unforgiving societies we are often looking at the ‘obvious’ and condemning people straight away. On the flip side, we are also very quick to put people on a pedestal and fall over their every word out of admiration.
Or sometimes we just need to see what we see with our eyes at face value, and look deeper so that we can see with our minds as well as our eyes. If we challenge ourselves continually there will be no end to the amount of new knowledge we can generate.
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September 16th, 2009
Given four words: Monkey, Banana, Cow, Grass.
How do you categorize them? There may be two major categorizations to consider:
Categorization 1 (By Context):
Monkey & Banana (Context of monkey eating banana)
Cow & Grass (Context of cow eating grass)
Categorization 2 (By Category):
Cow & Monkey (Category of Animals)
Banana & Grass (Category of Animals’ foods)
According to a paper written in 1972 by cognitive psychologist Chiu Lian Hwang, the majority of Asian children would categorize by context (and have a more holistic view) by associating the animal with the food that it eats. The norm for Western children was to look at the categorize the cow & monkey together as being members of the animal kingdom, which is coming from more of an analytical viewpoint. The important thing here is that neither are wrong.
Interesting study for thought. Especially in our modern environment where me might be leading a team with members from over six different nationalities on it. We are no longer dealing with topics such as ‘managing men vs managing women;’ but the differences in managing someone who was brought up, schooled and exposed to an Asian environment vs someone who grew up with Western education, environment and ideals. A modern manager must be able to sensitize themselves to such differences in upbringings amongst the members of their team.
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September 12th, 2009
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