W. Edwards Deming on the Future of Capitalism

Extrinsic motivation slowly destroys self esteem, dignity, cooperation and a yearning for learning - all of which are innate and high early in life. They are diminished throughout our life by what Dr. Deming calls the forces of destruction - of which extrinsic motivation is one of these destructive forces.

Fast Cycle Times

Talk about shrinking cycle times. This small company used a trade show floor to generate product ideas from passers-by (or potential customers) and then used online tools to vote for the best idea - then product prototypes. All in 4 days. Now the top products are going into production.

Racing from idea to prototype at Macworld
Mophie, which makes a line of iPod cases, used a good chunk of its booth to solicit attendees' designs. The company got 150 ideas in about four hours at its booth. A quick round of online voting helped the company choose three finalists. By Friday, the last day of Macworld, the company had marketing pitches and rough, but working, implementations of all three finalists.

High Performance Book Writing?

This could be a very significant change in the way books are written - if it works. To date, almost all books have been written by one person or several people collaborating on an effort. A few books have been written as compilations of individual author's essays.

MIT and Wharton are experimenting with having up to a million people write a book on how community process influences and changes business. What's amazing about this so far is that people participating are not only writing the book but they are changing the software being used to write the book.



If you would like to contribute to this book go to We are Smarter than Me.