Contrary Valley

The Innovation Perspective

Jeffrey Phillips has a great essay at his blog Innovate on Purpose. His starting point is ideas from the book Blue Ocean Strategy.

One of the companies talked about is Southwest Airlines, a company often cited as a leader in their industry (and a model for other companies in all kinds of industries.)

Southwest was started by people who simply wanted to improve the ability to get around in Texas - really not much more than that.

A simple idea, that Phillips guesses comes from taking an innovation perspective.

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

Remember the Power You Have Over Others

From Patricia Digh:

“More grows in the garden than the gardener knows he has sown.” -Spanish Proverb

Three stories circling one theme...three stories are about the power we have over others...About how words matter, about how we define things (and people).

The Transforming Power of Art

Before Oprah flogged James Frey on her TV show the other day about his untruths in "A Million Little Pieces," I was one of those who wondered if this was much ado about nothing. [Disclaimer: I have neither read the book nor watched her show.] I thought that if he was addicted to drugs since he was 8 or something, perhaps he was fuzzy on some of the details of his life.   

I feel differently now, and not because of watching Oprah or reading any of the well-known editorialists' opinions, but because of reading the letters to the editor in yesterday's New York Times.  Especially one by a Mary Taggart of Ottawa, who said in part:

Do people want a sensational story, a rags-to-riches story, an overnight-success story, love at first sight, a duckling to a swan, a frog prince — or do they want the truth?

The truth is that love at first sight is blind love, frogs are frogs, poverty breeds poverty, success takes years of hard work, and drug addiction is ugly and fueled by deceit.

The Times ran several pieces about this controversy in the 1/28/06 edition. To me one of the most fascinating is Edward Wyatt's piece, Questions for Others in Frey Scandal.

Stop Trying to Be the Next Google

Spike Jones over at Brains on Fire wonders, does your company have a soul?

Read his complete post here.   

60 Days Until

...spring and the grape hyacinths.

Work is Work...a Lesson From Erma Bombeck

Found an old clipping of a column that the late Erma Bombeck wrote, probably sometime in the early 1980's (must have been then since it's from the Philadelphia Inquirer and that means I was in college...)  It was titled "Words to the wise: Work is work" and it resonated so strongly with me as a kid. Part of it reads:

We have an entire generation of young people growing up who honestly have been told that work must be "fun, relevant and meaningful." If they get one out of three, they're lucky.

It's time we stopped kidding ourselves and our children. Work is discipline, sacrifice, competition, endurance, repetition, concentration, dedication and principle...

...they're confusing work with success. Success is fun, relevant and meaningful. Work is work.

Now I have kids of my own. I sure hope the message resonates with them in a few years.

I would so love to make it available for others to read. But copyright laws don't allow it. And I can't find any links to the column (she wrote thousands in her lifetime.) So I called Tim Bete, the director of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, to ask about reprinting it on this blog. He gets tons of similar requests, and he forwards them to Bombeck's estate. He said they rarely allow republication on the internet, to avoid problems with plagiarization and misquoting and such. Well, I'll give it a try anyway. It's such great stuff, and there isn't really anyone like her out there today.

By the way, Tim Bete recommended this collection of Bombeck's writings:

Forever, Erma: Best Loved Writing from America's Favorite Humorist

(sorry if the link is screwy)

Amazon Link

How to Be Creative: Lessons from a Harvard Business School Professor

...One of the interesting findings suggested by your work is that while people believe they are more creative under deadline pressure, they are not. At the same time, too little pressure does little to help creativity, either. So how does a manager find that "sweet spot" along the time/creativity continuum?

Read the answer along with Professor Amabile's other findings here.