PAUL ISAKSON

"We’ve seen a dramatic shift in the way people interact with technology, not just related to..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:06:00 -0500

“We’ve seen a dramatic shift in the way people interact with technology, not just related to games. The consumer is changing us.”

- Andrew House, head of Sony’s PlayStation division

Microsoft’s New Xbox Girds for a Smartphone Battle - WSJ.com

Photo

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:55:21 -0500

(via Here We Are :: Cube Grenades from gapingvoid art)

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:37:44 -0500

(via Here We Are :: Cube Grenades from gapingvoid art)

Photo

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:31:46 -0500

"I’m a very proud micromanager. If you don’t care about the lapel or the buttons or the..."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:19:00 -0500

“I’m a very proud micromanager. If you don’t care about the lapel or the buttons or the fit, then you are doing a disservice to the consumer. We’re all inside the tunnel, speaking the language of business, but we need to speak the language of customers. How many companies actually talk about the product?”

- Mickey Drexler

via 10 Creativity Tips From J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler | Fast Company | Business Innovation

"This is work you will be proud of for the rest of your life."

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:36:12 -0500

“This is work you will be proud of for the rest of your life.”

- Work at Flickr

"Market share is important and unit share is important, but we’re all about customer experience and..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:48:21 -0500

““Market share is important and unit share is important, but we’re all about customer experience and enriching lives.””

- Tim Cook

via Apple CEO Tim Cook: Why yes, we do care about market share | VentureBeat

THE WRITER’S TECHNIQUE IN THIRTEEN THESES

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:06:00 -0500

Walter Benjamin’s Timeless Advice on Writing

1. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

2. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

3. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

4. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

5. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

6. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

7. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

8. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

9. Nulla dies sine linea [‘No day without a line’] — but there may well be weeks.

10. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

11. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

12. Stages of composition: idea — style — writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

13. The work is the death mask of its conception.

via Brain Pickings

While “broadcasting” to social networks (like Facebook, Twitter...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:43:21 -0500

While “broadcasting” to social networks (like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr) is popular, Pocket users still share via email more than twice as often.

(via Introducing Pocket’s Send to Friend: Share with the People Who Matter Most « Pocket Blog)

"It really is that simple–just design something great, something that users love."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:17:26 -0500

“It really is that simple–just design something great, something that users love.”

- Ilkka Paananen, CEO, Supercell

via Is This The Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever? - Forbes

Is Nike losing their advertising swagger?

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:47:01 -0500

Is Nike losing their advertising swagger?

Ship My Pants (by Kmart)

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:20:51 -0500

Ship My Pants (by Kmart)

Forensic Artist Proves Women Literally Don’t Know Their...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:19:06 -0500

Forensic Artist Proves Women Literally Don’t Know Their Own Beauty

via Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce

(via Sarah - Industry of One)

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:42:49 -0500

(via Sarah - Industry of One)

CreativeMornings Short: Ping Fu (by CreativeMornings)

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:25:35 -0500

CreativeMornings Short: Ping Fu (by CreativeMornings)

"Humans are pleasure gluttons. And that’s just straight up."

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:44:09 -0500

“Humans are pleasure gluttons. And that’s just straight up.”

- Johnny Michaels

La Belle Vie Minneapolis Bartender Wisdom - Esquire

Season 6 starts in less than 6 hours… (via Mad Men in GQ:...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:16:36 -0500

Season 6 starts in less than 6 hours…

(via Mad Men in GQ: January Jones, Jon Hamm, John Slattery, and Jessica Pare: Movies TV: GQ)

37 Signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO's Model? His Cleaning Lady

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:09:34 -0500

Don’t build a fast company, Jason Fried tells Fast Company. Build a slow one.

Jason Fried is a founder and CEO of 37signals, a software company based in Chicago. Fried also treats 37signals as something of a laboratory for innovative workplace practices—such as a recent experiment in shortening the summer workweek to just four days. We caught up with Fried to learn how employees are like fossil fuels, how a business can be like a cancer, and how one of the entrepreneurs he admires most is his cleaning lady.

FAST COMPANY: You have your employees only work four-day weeks in the summer.

JASON FRIED: Sometimes people are not really used to working just four days and actually want to stay to get more work done.

You’re saying you have people who actually want to stay the fifth day?

When we first started this a few years ago, there was a small sense of guilt in a few corners. People were like, “I have stuff to get done, it’s Thursday, so I’m gonna work Friday and just get it done. But we actually preferred that they didn’t. There are very few things that can’t wait till Monday.

How many employees would stay to work Fridays?

I don’t know.

Because you weren’t there!

We don’t track things in that way. I don’t look at that. I don’t want to encourage that kind of work. I want to encourage quality work.

As CEO, wouldn’t it simply be rational to let people work the fifth day for you if they wanted?

If you’re a short-term thinker you’d think so, but we’re long-term thinkers. We’re about being in business for the long haul and keeping the team together over the long haul. I would never trade a short-term burst for a long-term decline in morale. That happens a lot in the tech business: They burn people out and get someone else. I like the people who work here too much. I don’t want them to burn out. Lots of startups burn people out with 60, 70, 80 hours of work per week. They know that both the people or the company will flame out or be bought or whatever, and they don’t care, they just burn their resources. It’s like drilling for as much oil as you possibly can. You can look at people the same way.

Are we reaching “peak people”?

It seems like in a lot of companies we are. There’s a shortage of talent out there, and if there’s a shortage of resources, you want to conserve those resources.

So you think there’s a slash-and-burn mentality in the tech world?

For sure. I think there’s a lot of lottery-playing going on right now. Companies staffing up, raising a bunch of money, hiring a bunch of people, and burning them out in the hopes that they’ll hit the lottery.

You seem like too nice a guy to name names—but do you have certain companies in mind?

I won’t name names. I used to name names. But I think all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a whole, you’ll rarely see stories about treating customers well, about people building a sustainable business. TechCrunch to me is the great place to look to see the sickness in our industry right now.

Our magazine is called Fast Company, but it sounds like you want to build a slow company.

I’m a fan of growing slowly, carefully, methodically, of not getting big just for the sake of getting big. I think that rapid growth is typically of symptom of… there’s a sickness there. There’s a great quote by a guy named Ricardo Semler, author of the book Maverick. He said that only two things grow for the sake of growth: businesses and tumors. We have 35 employees at 37signals. We could have hundreds of employees if we wanted to—our revenues and profits support that—but I think we’d be worse off.

What industries do you look to for inspiration, if not the tech world?

I take my inspiration from small mom-and-pop businesses that have been around for a long time. There are restaurants all over the place that I like to go to that have been around a long time, 30 years or more, and thinking about that, that’s an incredible run. I don’t know what percentage of tech companies have been around 30 years. The other interesting thing about restaurants is you could have a dozen Italian restaurants in the city and they can all be successful. It’s not like in the tech world, where everyone wants to beat each other up, and there’s one winner. Those are the businesses I find interesting—it could be a dry cleaner, a restaurant, a clothing store. Actually, my cleaning lady, for example, she’s great.

Your business icon is your cleaning lady?

he’s on her own, she cleans people’s homes, she’s incredibly nice. She brings flowers every time she cleans, and she’s just respectful and nice and awesome. Why can’t more people be like that? She’s been doing it some twenty-odd years, and that’s just an incredible success story. To me that’s far more interesting than a tech company that’s hiring a bunch of people, just got their fourth round of financing for 12 million dollars, and they’re still losing money. That’s what everyone talks about as being exciting, but I think that’s an absolutely disgusting scenario when it comes to business.

This interview has been condensed and edited. For more from the Fast Talk interview series,click here. Know someone who’d be a good Fast Talk subject? Mention it to David Zax.

This article originally appeared on FastCompany.com here.

"If you stop worrying about the outcomes, you will achieve a better outcome."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:46:42 -0500

“If you stop worrying about the outcomes, you will achieve a better outcome.”

- How to Innovate Like a Jedi Knight | LinkedIn

fastcodesign: Odes To The Air Max, The Cool Kid’s Nike Nike...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:48:44 -0500

fastcodesign:

Odes To The Air Max, The Cool Kid’s Nike

Nike asked six artists and designers to enhance the hipster aura around the Air Max, which turns 25 this year.

Read more here.