“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” This quotation is widely attributed to Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Whenever you begin thinking that unlearning may no longer be necessary just remember this quotation. If nothing else, it should help keep you humble and open to the idea [...]
The Weight of Unlearning
February 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment
What is the abbreviation for “pounds”? Did you say “lbs”? Congratulations, you are correct. Now, where does the abbreviation come from? It’s rather curious. None of the letters (l-b-s) appear in the word “pound.” What should be more curious is why you have never inquired into the matter (provided that is you don’t know the [...]
Unlock the Keys to Failure
November 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“To kill an error is as good a service, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.” – Charles Darwin Question #9: Who coined the phrase, “The survival of the fittest”? Did you say Charles Darwin? If so, you are mistaken. The honor belongs to Herbert Spencer who first used [...]
Unlearning & Creativity
October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This past summer IBM released a survey of 1500 CEO’s across the globe and they said that creativity was the most important leadership quality for guaranteeing future success. How does one become creative, though? Part of the answer begins with the ability to unlearn. It’s now generally understood that today’s more successful companies have figured out [...]
Heroic Failure
September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
If you want to facilitate creativity and encourage innovation you are going to have to embrace the idea that many ideas and products will end in failure. Failure, as I have said before, is thus something that must be encouraged. But how does one “encourage” failure? One idea, which was suggested in this article, is [...]
Being in the “I Don’t Know.”
September 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Everybody likes to be “in the know.” The problem with this is that it’s an impossible goal to achieve because knowledge is being created at an ever accelerating rate. This knowledge creation is a wonderful thing but it also implies that our ignorance is growing even faster (in the sense that it is impossible to [...]
