“If I were starting now I would do things very differently. I didn’t know anything. In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it’s not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me. He explained that he had a conversation once with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos about this, and the average time someone stays in job at Seattle is twice as long than it is in Silicon Valley. There’s a culture out here where people don’t commit to doing things, I feel like a lot of companies built outside of Silicon Valley seem to be focused on a longer-term, he explains. You don’t have to move out here to do this. There’s this culture in the Valley of starting a company before they know what they want to do. You decided you want to start a company, but you don’t know what you are passionate about yet…you need to do stuff you are passionate about. The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.” – Mark Zuckerberg

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17521806

Businessinsider.com paged through his titles and pulled out 12 of his most mind-blowing theories…

The business of spreading the epidemic of an idea, product or preference — including your own — is why Gladwell lands on so many business must-read lists.

Understanding who changes minds and influences people, and the small but critical ways the change takes place, is the first step to sweeping your audience up in your epidemic. This theory also explores how you can convert minds from hostility to acceptance.

What you need is one of those special people who have the power to connect with others and bring them over to their way of thinking.

These connectors

• Have social networks of 100 people or more
• Have something intrinsic in their personalities that allows them to span many different worlds
• Combine confidence, interest in and curiosity about the world in the broadest sense, social energy, and a high level of enthusiasm
• Translate and make accessible to all with whom they come into contact what they care about

Mavens

• Are “information specialists”
• Are the ones others rely on for the newest and the best
• Accumulate the latest and best information on what is out there
• Are “almost pathologically helpful” – they can’t help but know, they can’t help but share
• Are the source of word-of-mouth epidemics: they know and they know how to communicate what makes things worth knowing about

Tipping Point #4: Salesmen — You want what they are selling, whatever it is

Salesmen:

• Are the persuaders
• Through charisma, a level of engagement with what they know, and the skill to speak to a particular audience
• Are the ones people want to agree with

The Tipping Point #5: The Stickiness Factor – Why some ideas stick

The Tipping Point #6: The Power of Context — We are exquisitely and unknowingly sensitive to ambient influences

Image: Wikimedia Commons

• The Broken Window Theory is all about context
• Environment directs a person in one direction over another in tacit and therefore powerful ways
• Marketers, policemen, or any agency looking to direct human behavior is aware of this

Blink #1: Thin Slicing — How a little bit of knowledge goes a long way

Image: Business Insider

Our ability to gauge what is important, relevant, or meaningful from a very narrow slice of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully considered ones. We live in a world so information-saturated, the idea is radical.

In one example, a psychologist observed married couples:

• For each he knows a core set of facts
• The couples interact in response to a set number of questions posed
• He predicts whether or not they will be married in fifteen years.
• Observed for one hour, his accuracy is 95%
• Observed for fifteen minutes, his accuracy rate dropped to only 90%

Blink #2: Analysis Paralysis — Information overload is worse than too little information

Image: Flickr

• It can be difficult to focus on only the most critical information to make a decision
• Examining a large amount of data makes it hard to weed out the irrelevant and confusing
• The act of collecting more and more information is too often just a search for facts that reinforce assumptions made

Gladwell suggests decision making performed with a “frugality” of information — learn to recognize when enough information has been gathered.

Blink #3: The Secret Life of Snap Decisions — What they say about us can make us squirm

Image: AP

What we say or think before we’ve had time to remember what we want to say or think comes from the unconscious; they take place behind what Gladwell calls a “locked door.”

The problem? The snap decision doesn’t always reflect the best we want to be: we may be more racist, sexist, anti-short people than we would hope to be.

The solution? “Priming.”

• First impressions are based on experiences and environment.
• This means they can be changed by the simple act of changing, mixing up, the experiences we have which result in the impressions we walk around with.
• Exposure, positive experiences, and familiarity with more and different kinds of people result in first impressions of others that are different than those with a more narrow sense of the world.

Blink #4: The Delicate Art of Mind Reading — And why a face can say more than words ever could

Image: Wikimedia TA230773651

Or, rapid cognition.

• When we are around other people, we are in a constant state of predicting and inferring what that person is thinking and feeling.
• First impressions of a job candidate and an officer faced with a person who may or may not pose a threat are both cases where rapid cognition come into play.

The Facial Action Coding System, or FACS, offers up ideas on lip movement, brow furrowing, and every other facial movement (or lack thereof).

• We can understand why we interpret faces the way we do
• We can teach those for whom this kind of cognition does not come naturally
• We can challenge assumptions in order to change responses when they are based on prejudices or stereotypes

Outliers #1: The Matthew Effect — Talent is one thing, luck is another

Image: wstera/Flickr

“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” Matthew 25:29

“The biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.^“

There are so many more variables involved in a person’s ability to succeed than any of us care to admit, we want to believe the chance to succeed is available to anyone who puts their mind to it.

Gladwell found the top of the field, whatever the field, to be dominated by those born in the first part of the year. Their advantage: they are bigger, been around longer, have developed just a bit more than those poor souls born in the later months.

The Outliers #2: The 10,000-Hour Rule — It’s less about natural talent and more about how much time you put into developing a talent

Apolo Anton Ohno, 2010 Winter Olympics

Image: AP

One of the most oft-quoted Gladwell-isms, it takes 10,000 hours, plain and simple, to be the best.

This involves a level of dedication that far exceeds even a significant interest. So much for the idea that talent is enough.

The Outliers #3: The Trouble With Geniuses — IQ is not enough to succeed

Image: AP

The correlation between high IQ and success is wobbly at best. Rather, one who has a supportive family and community that fosters, encourages, and values success — and subscribes to some form of the 10,000 hours theory — is much more likely to be successful.

From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music“, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Jonathan Abrams
Founder of Socializr and Friendster; San Francisco, CA

“In five to ten years, we will all have chips in our brains. When you look at someone’s face on the street, your Google Brain software will automatically call up every embarrassing photo of them from ancient websites such as Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace; list all mutual friends; and remind you of the person’s annotated bio. As a response to the perceived slowness and verbosity of antiquated services like Twitter, people will send everyone they know nanobursts of information about anything they might do or think before they actually do or think it. Every website, blog, and social-networking profile will include an aggregated feed from every other website, blog, and social-networking service, resulting in an exponential and infinite length of repeated content on every possible site, overloading our brain chips and causing frequent nosebleeds and occasional cerebral hemorrhage.”

Source: The Future of The Web, Technology Review 7/2008

Mr. Tobias: a big thanks for the link to my write up on Mint/Covestor. Apparently, AT is friends w/ one of the Mint.com founder’s which allowed him to share:

• The monetization strategy of this relatively new online finance management service:
  • AT: Their game plan is ad revenue and “sponsored links.” My friend who’s one of the founders says: “Some of the offers we present are sponsored, meaning we earn a referral fee if you sign up for them. However, Mint will always show you an un-sponsored offer ahead of a sponsored one if it will save you more money. We sort offers in order of their value to users, regardless of sponsorship.”
• A response to the concerns about how your login credentials are used/stored:
  • AT: My friend responds: “Mint does not store your credentials, we use them once to create a linkage with your account(s). Consider the benefits of being able to see all your account activity in one place – makes it easy to spot any suspicious activity (remember 90% of fraud occurs off line). Mint offers alerts (via email, or text message) to bring unusual spending to your attention.”
• Click here for the full article…

Mass production of these “XO” laptops is slated to begin this month to prepare for launch on November 12th. You can track the progress and major developments of Nicholas’ program by visiting: http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/progress/index.shtml.

1. Nicholas Negroponte is founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child non-profit association.
2. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology.
3. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966.
4. Conceived in 1980, the Media Laboratory opened its doors in 1985. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages.
5. In the private sector, Nicholas Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment.
6. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.
   Source: Laptop.org

Click the thumbnail below to see a preview of this laptop that can be donated AND delivered for a mere $200…

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

“Terje HÃ¥konsen (born October 11, 1974 in Vinje, Norway) is a Norwegian snowboarder. HÃ¥konsen is widely considered one of the most influential snowboarders of all time and was one of the sport’s early icons.

HÃ¥konsen dominated freestyle snowboarding in the 1990s winning the ISF World Championships in half-pipe three times in a row, in 1993, 1995 and 1997. He has also won 5 European championships in half-pipe (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997), the U.S. Open in half-pipe 3 times (1992, 1993, 1995), and the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom 6 times (1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004). He also won the Innsbruck Air & Style Contest in 1995. HÃ¥konsen set the world record for highest ‘air’ during the finals of the Arctic Challenge in Oslo 2007 when he reached 9.8 meters out of the top of the quarterpipe with a backside 360.

He is the creator of an aerial snowboard maneuver named The Haakon Flip.

HÃ¥konsen is also credited to have developed the T6, the world’s first snowboard to be made out of a material named “Alumafly,” an aluminum honeycomb construction and as a co-creator of the Burton Fish (a powder-specific board) and the Burton Malolo, a cross-breed between a freestyle and powder board.” – Image: norskdesign.no Bio: Wikipedia

About Y Combinator:

“Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. We fund startups in two batches a year, one in winter in Silicon Valley, and one in summer in Cambridge. We’re the right choice for a group of two or three young hackers who have an idea, and want some money and advice to get it launched.”
source: ycombinator.com

About Graham:

“…In 2005, after giving a talk at the Harvard Computer Society later published as How to Start a Startup, Graham along with Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris started Y Combinator to provide seed funding to startups, particularly those started by younger, more technically-oriented founders. Y Combinator has now invested in 38 startups, including reddit, Justin.tv and loopt.

Graham has an B.A. in philosophy from Cornell. He also earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Applied Sciences, (specializing in computer science) from Harvard in 1988 and 1990 respectively, and studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.”
(Source: wikipedia)

Related:
http://www.paulgraham.com (which got 9.7 million page views in 2006)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-paul-graham-of-ycombinator/
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail188.html