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What does the Singularity invite us to ignore?

When life is busy, advice is a third-level need.

How pressing, playing the odds, and driving results changes the game.

This category covers issues in business and strategy for entrepreneurs, SMEs and large corporations.

How the character of place influences and shapes everything it makes.

When we build tools for decision-makers, we follow two intentions: Build simple tools and honor complexity.

How do we get started on a path to doing things that express our genius?

It was hot. Having Chernobyl just a few hours away didn’t help.

I was lying on my back, slung between two seats in the bottom of the row boat. My self-appointed advisor sat sweating in the bow. His fat white…

Before moving on to a review of John Ruskin’s book, On Art and Life, there’s one more bit to synthesize from the first two (here and here). Trouble is, I’m not sure how to…

After finishing New World, New Mind I was convinced of two things. First, more attention is needed around staging our thinking processes. Second, the authors didn’t had no idea how to do it.

So, while Cuban waves tickled…

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations:

“When an object presents itself to your perception, make a mental definition or at least an outline of it, so as to discern its essential character, to pierce beyond its separate attributes to a distinct view of…

Might seeking a future be short-sighted if it keeps us from seeing where we are?

From the Thoreau blog:

“Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter. I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed

…

Time away brings introspection.

Long hours in a canoe give lots of room for thought.

While I sort through those ideas – here is a compilation of favourite ideas from the past. It’s a series of posts about purpose,…

Retro post #143

A good friend and I were chatting about personal branding, it started with the regular hoopla: posture, piercings, language, work ethic, body odour, etc. Gradually we got to talking about how we perceive ourselves and how we each perceive the…

Eccentricity comes from the Greek phrase “to prick”. I dream of working with eccentric people that dance within chaos and fragmentation.

To work with people that have embraced their brilliance. To work with people who are brilliant. People who intend to shine.

I want to work on innovation, creativity, and insight. I’m keen on educating for creativity and insight, creating markets…

There’s an unobservable line between ambition and growth. Where movement can be too early, just right, or too late. When does growth stop and stagnation take over? When is a switch premature?

I don’t think the answer is outside us.…

Retro post: September 12, 2004

(A Billy Collins poem. Rated PG)

Purity

My favourite time to write is in the late afternoon,
weekdays, particularly Wednesdays.
This is how I go about it:
I take a…

Action is directed by ideas. Action realizes what thinking has designed.

Creating art and creating brilliant business can be a long, tedious process. But both require a set of intentions instead of a series of responses.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

There’s been a big dust up between Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, and Werner Vogel (CTO Amazon).

The hubbub brings to a point several interesting dynamics:

1. Bloggers are…

Invest in knowing what perfect is and then spend the time to build it.

Guidelines for conversations with busy people.

Here’s a list of pages I’ve cruised by lately that seemed to merit another peek. Mostly a list of pages I want to get back to, but may be of interest to others too.

Flickr: Scaling Fast and Cheap —…

Become less. Be more.

Every moment is the last we will ever have.

What’s with the wheelbarrow? This is a placeholder where I want to begin to use and understand the humanity of tags.

More here.

Metatags: first derivative of thought.

Metatags are key to meta-knowledge…

I’ve been thinking about the things corporate salary-type folks could learn from entrepreneurs. It’s actually an old idea of mine … not really an idea I guess … more of a recognition — entrepreneurs have lots to teach innovators within…

[posted January 16, 2006]

Below is the purpose I had for sift when I started this experiment.

I’m still all in on those ideas but I think the purpose is quickly evolving away from purely entrepreneurs and purely business. Just…

The only moment for color, joy, love, and grace is now.

The Edge Annual Question — 2006

WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?

“The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What

…

One late, introspective night in early 2003, I closed my eyes and typed till done. Dave Pollard’s recent post reminded me of this note to self:

If I dream about what would make me happy or content. Satisfied.

…

Whilst lolling despondently on the sofa: “When will I start doing the things I am great at? I keep doing things that help me be greater.”

Good friend in from old places: “Maybe guys like you just keep growing and…

A few months ago I was talking to a guy I grew up with. We were chatting about work. Me flashing over to Paris for international meetings and him driving truck. We had started out in the same place but…

What’s with the wheelbarrow? This is a placeholder where I want to begin to use and understand the humanity of tags.

Metatags: first derivative of thought.

Metatags are key to meta-knowledge

Clay Shirky: “Taggers are…

Holidays, long absences (or large abscesses), and in my case a gynormous move, threaten the very foundation of something like a blog. In reality a blog is incredibly fragile. Mostly carried by the resolve of a single author, a blog…

Dan Shaffer on “design thinking“:

“… design thinking is creative, innovative, and focused on problem-solving. But so is the thinking of many different types of professions: lawyers, engineers, and contractors, to name only a few. So lets remove

…

Keynote by David Kelley, Founder and Chairman, Ideo, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Founder of Stanford’s New “D” School:

- doing well in technological innovation, rounding the corner on business innovation, but still have lots to do on human-centred…

Compiling a list of lessons, this post presents a series of parables on entrepreneurism, perfect-for-purpose, and peerless innovation.

How being exclusive creates wide-ranging success.

Kottke writes:

“… can we have a discussion about where technology and user experience on the web are headed without using any of the following words or concepts:

Ajax, web services, weblogs, Google, del.icio.us, Flickr, folksonomy, tags, hacks,

…

Related to the last post:

If SMART is action steps that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound, and SMART doesn’t work with wicked problems, maybe we should look for ones that are FLUID.

F is…

I don’t deal in issues as weighty as racism or as complex as a Nasa space shuttle — but I do work on thorny and complicated problems. But I still see, as Patti just experienced, a deep desire…

Corporations get boards. What about personal boards?

A friend just handed me a chapter from Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline. In it Peter writes:

“At one of our recent programs, I talked to a manger who has worked in both U.S. and

…

I’ve been poking at sift for the last month or two. I’ve been wondering what this blog’s for. Not because I doubt the value of what all this is about. Nor do I question my interest in this work. I’m…

Ok, I’m back.

During the break — in between changing diapers, burping babies and battling a wicked cold, I’ve been thinking about this blog. What’s it for? Who cares? What now?

I asked a few months ago who was reading…

I love design, even if my vanilla background and black text don’t prove it. In grade five I discovered that Ms. Faulkner gave A’s for illustrated stories and B’s for the plain text version. By 13 I knew that ladies…

The five-minute rundown, big brother of the 60-second pitch.

While I’m busy fooling around with book lists, Dave Pollard’s dropping gems. He’s not only framed-up my initial idea but already started putting on the drywall. I guess that’s what you get for sharing ideas with bright guys.…

An aggregated, curated list of business books.

One of my friends is a teacher. He’s told me many times that the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else. Well I want to learn to do a 60-second pitch, so here goes.

Over…

Update: Dr. Ronald S. Burt from the University of Chicago backs up everything written here and adds his idea about “structural holes” — the notion that people can find opportunities for creative thinking where there is…

When I started sift I was working with two entrepreneurs that seemed to be working about 12 hours daily.

Being so busy, these guys weren’t able to keep up with the massive amount of information available to them. My…

Brad, at Feld Thoughts, writes about the importance of business measures. I’m glad he did because it confirms some recent suspicions I’ve been having.

Let’s compare three of my favourite entrepreneurs. The first is a lawyer…

In the comments for Optimists die, I wrote something about hiring “sift bandwidth”. That got me thinking of advertising and in particular billboards.

There’s a billboard not far from my place that seems to be one of…

Two days ago I sat down for lunch with a new friend. He recently gave up a secure job for a chance to do something new and more challenging.

He’s has a lot more experience than me in almost every…

A man of science doesn’t discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
- Alfred North Whitehead

I spend a large part of each day getting information for other people. The requests come in…

Hugh MacLeod writes often about marketing and what he’s called smart conversations.

I posted the following comment to Hugh’s riff on the market’s willingness to pay premiums:

“The smarter the market, the harder it is to charge

…

I’m re-reading Edward O. Wilson’s book, Consilience. He describes the biological conception of scale that I tried to illustrate below. He breaks up the magnitude of action by space and time. So, for example, brain synapses…

Dear entrepreneur,

If you’re someone I want to work with, you don’t have time to read this. I’ll keep it short: If you want to keep innovating, you need my help.

My guess is around three years ago you had…

At least two things are true of me. One, I love coffee. Two, I’m a fiddler. Not the musical kind, the annoying kind. Always jigging around, tapping, rattling, bouncing, swaying – annoying.

Being a big fan of experiments, I started…

I was just playing around at BlogPulse. They’ve got a nifty tool for querying the frequency of blogging topics. Now I’m not sure how many sites they scan, but still, the idea is cool even if it’s not…

I’ve been reading Human Action by Ludwig von Mises. He makes two important points: action is preceded by thinking and only individuals think. This is important because economists don’t understand individuals.

Worrying costs efficiency and chews up energy – low level, never urgent issues cost us more than we recognize.

Am still reading Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Am still intrigued by the idea of tribal business.

Diamond runs through an ambitious description of social evolution. He works up from roving bands of nomads all the way…

My name is Jeremy Heigh. I am a husband, father, son, brother, friend, reader, thinker, economist, investor, gamer, artist, writer, and young man.

I liked school and have three degrees. The last is an M.Sc. in environmental economics. I enjoy…

I’ve used Google for a long time but never really looked behind the interface. Now that I have, I see a whole world back there that I need to understand. My first clue came when I read their mission statement…