#ideas

Why Most Ideas Get Shot Down

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Michael Iva’s man­i­festo, “100 Ways to Kill a Con­cept: Why Most Ideas Get Shot Down”.

So, you’ve got an idea. A big idea. But will your idea take flight? Not if you let your con­cept be killed by all the usu­al excus­es you hear from your man­agers, your boss­es, your spouses—excuses moti­vat­ed by fear or pos­ses­sive­ness. In this wide-rang­ing man­i­festo, Iva offers you ways to per­suade some­one to embrace your idea, to not be swayed by neg­a­tive respons­es, and to uti­lize your cre­ativ­i­ty.

Here’s a list of cir­cum­stances that usu­al­ly fol­lows up once a con­cept is con­ceived:

  1. The boss won’t go for that.
  2. The lawyers won’t go for that.
  3. The accoun­tants won’t go for that.
  4. The client won’t go for that.
  5. The sales­peo­ple won’t go for that.
  6. The investors won’t go for that.
  7. So and so won’t like it.
  8. It’s not us.
  9. It won’t fit into our sys­tem.
  10. We’re not ready for that yet.
  11. I don’t think it will work.
  12. I don’t under­stand.
  13. Do you under­stand?
  14. Will any­one under­stand?
  15. What will they think of next?
  16. It’s polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect.
  17. It’s too com­pli­cat­ed.
  18. It’s too late for that now.
  19. It’s too expen­sive.
  20. We’ll lose mon­ey.

    21. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Keep Remixing! It’s The Future.

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Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor explores issues of copy­right in the infor­ma­tion age, mash­ing up the media land­scape of the 20th cen­tu­ry and shat­ter­ing the wall between users and pro­duc­ers.

Watch “RiP! A Remix Man­i­festo” here on Hulu.

PS. If you haven’t yet, down­load Girl Talk’s All Day here for FREE!

Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far by Stefan Sagmeister

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I was inter­est­ed enough to check this out from a TED newslet­ter. Pret­ty inter­est­ing TED Talk by Ste­fan Sag­meis­ter.

Ste­fan Sag­meis­ter is no mere com­mer­cial gun for hire. Sure, he’s cre­at­ed eye-catch­ing graph­ics for clients includ­ing the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed, but he pours his heart and soul into every piece of work. His design work is at once time­less and of the moment, and his painstak­ing atten­tion to the small­est details cre­ates work that offers some­thing new every time you look at it.

While a sense of humor invari­ably sur­faces in his designs, Sag­meis­ter is nonethe­less very seri­ous about his work; his inti­mate approach and sin­cere thought­ful­ness ele­vate his design. A gen­uine mav­er­ick, Sag­meis­ter achieved noto­ri­ety in the 1990s as the design­er who self-harmed in the name of craft: He cre­at­ed a poster adver­tis­ing a speak­ing engage­ment by carv­ing the salient details onto his tor­so.

Some of the points he high­light­ed in his TED talk were:

  • Help­ing oth­er peo­ple helps me.
  • Hav­ing guts always works out for me.
  • Think­ing life will be bet­ter in the future is stu­pid. I have to live now.
  • Start­ing a char­i­ty is sur­pris­ing­ly easy.
  • Being not truth­ful works against me.
  • Every­thing I do always comes back to me.
  • Assum­ing is sti­fling.
  • Drugs feel great in the begin­ning and become a drag lat­er on.
  • Over time I get used to every­thing and start tak­ing for grant­ed.
  • Mon­ey does not make me hap­py.
  • Trav­el­ing alone is help­ful for a new per­spec­tive on life.
  • Keep­ing a diary sup­ports per­son­al devel­op­ment.
  • Try­ing to look good lim­its my life.
  • Mate­r­i­al lux­u­ries are best enjoyed in small dos­es.
  • Wor­ry­ing solves noth­ing.
  • Com­plain­ing is sil­ly. either act or for­get.
  • Actu­al­ly doing the things I set out to do increas­es my over­all lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion.
  • Every­body thinks they are right.
  • Low expec­ta­tions are a good strat­e­gy.
  • What­ev­er I want to explore pro­fes­sion­al­ly, its best to try it out for myself first.
  • Every­body who is hon­est is inter­est­ing.

There’s also a com­mu­ni­ty site ded­i­cat­ed to Things I Have Learned In My Life in which you may con­tribute, share, and hear oth­er people’s life lessons.

PS. Thanks to Mar­co de Jong for sum­ma­riz­ing them on the TED Talk page.

Google’s Project 10^100

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Project 10100 is a call for ideas to change the world by help­ing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.

Here are the points in order to par­tic­i­pate:

  1. Sub­mit your ideas by Octo­ber 20th. You may do so by using this sub­mis­sion form.
  2. Vot­ing takes place on Jan­u­ary 27, 2009. Google will be pick­ing the top 100 ideas, of which 20 semi-final­ists will be select­ed through pub­lic vot­ing. From there, Google advi­so­ry board will then select up to 5 final ideas.
  3. After the final ideas have been picked, Google will bring them to life. They will com­mit $10-mil­lion to imple­ment the projects.

I like how Google is doing this. Hope­ful­ly, its suc­cess­ful enough that not only a lot of peo­ple con­ceive great ideas but also help the World. If any, I wouldn’t be a bit sur­prised if those 5 or so final­ist show up on TED Talks.

More details avail­able at project10tothe100.com. Good luck every­one! Let’s change the World pos­i­tive­ly.

Google Chrome’s Logo Inspiration from Pokemon?

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As I was try­ing to con­firm my hunch about Chrome and the Poke­mon ball look­ing the same, I ran into a search result in Flickr which led me to Cole Hen­ley’s image above. Awe­some. I am not alone1.

  1. Although, I don’t know about the Simon Says part but it wouldn’t hurt. [↩]
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