Chuka Eze
Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team
Very interesting look at the nature of how we collaborate. See how Kindergartners beat Business Students.
(Source: gbayer.com)
minimize regret rather than risk
jeff bezos (founder of amazon.com) has amazing perspective on life and making decisions. he does this through what he calls a regret minimization framework.
his story is a perfect example of living now with intention for the future. when we make important decisions for our future, we must look beyond the certain near-future events that are highly likely to occur (e.g. getting a bonus in 6 months). this type of thinking is short-sighted and hinders you from taking action now when opportunity presents itself.
instead, when we establish a personally relevant framework for success, we become more decisive and action-oriented. when we focus on minimizing regret rather than risk, we become more comfortable in the notion of taking risk. (which i then ask, which involves more risk: having regret or embracing uncertainty?)
establishing a framework allows us to make more decisions faster as we’re able to more easily see the big picture.
all in all, it’s important to see beyond trivial day-to-day challenges and inevitable near-future events. that’s not what we’ll remember 2, 5, 15, 30 years from now.
(h/t to mark for sending the video my way)
Great video and nice summary by Amber.
11 notes (via heyamberrae)
Bringing Jobs to Africa
I ran into an interesting short article today in the latest edition of Fast Company Magazine. The article was on Samasource, a social enterprise based in San Francisco that focuses on bringing jobs to Africa.
“Ex-World Bank staffer Leila Janah (below, training a worker) founded Samasource in 2008 after realizing the talents of many Africans “weren’t being tapped simply because they live in poor countries.” Refugee-camp residents are especially marginalized, though some have enough education to perform skilled tasks — and to do work for clients including Google and Stanford University Library.
Samasource booked $300,000 worth of work last year. It now helps hundreds of people in Asia as well as Africa. In doing so, it has pioneered something once thought impossible: outsourcing with no losers.”
Great idea. I’ve come to believe that Africa is the next India if only governments got their acts together. Western organizations will always run to where labor is cheaper, this mentality is what transformed India. There is a magnitude of Information Technology related jobs that are “too menial for Americans”. On a continent with so many very skilled and educated people, this model is a great start. One that I wish will continue to grow and will be replicated across the continent.
Just like most Apple products. The iPad is beautiful. There are many naysayers but I believe the iPad will change computing. It will be more of a subtle change, and not the big bang that most people anticipated. Apple is known for introducing new products that have the critics denying its impact to the way we interact with the rest of the world. Everyone wants to point out its lack of features, but in time you will want one. My belief is that the importance of the iPad will be that if its not the iPad that you own, you will own another tablet based computing device.
