Sunday, November 26, 2006

10 laws of simplicity

10 laws of simplicity

1. Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

2. Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

3. Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.

4. Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.

5. Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.

6. Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

7. Emotion
More emotions are better than less.

8. Trust
In simplicity we trust.

9. Failure
Some things can never be made simple.

10. The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Source:
John Maeda

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Budget Airlines 3.0

On 26 Oct 2006 Oasis Hong Kong Airlines' first flight took off. It flew from Hong Kong to London. The travelling time was 14 hours and 20 minutes.

At the moment, budget airlines flew domestic ( Southwest Airlines ) or regional ( Tiger Airways ). Is this the beginning of Budget Airlines 2.0 where they start flying from from domestic and regional to global? The current airline industry is very competitive; will Budget Airlines 2.0 make it more competitive?

What happen if Southwest Airlines, Ryanair, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, Tiger Airways and Virgin Blue form a global budget airlines alliance? This will be Budget Airlines 3.0. Will this make it even more competitive? How affordable will long distance air fares be? Will there be two distinct airline groups in the future - affordable and high cost?

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Initiative

Each year Buckminster Fuller receives and answers many hundreds of unsolicited letters from youth anxious to know what the little individual can do. One such letter from a young man named Michael – who is ten years old – asks whether I am a “doer or a thinker.” Although I never “tell” anyone what to do, I feel it quite relevant at this point to quote my letter to him explaining what I have been trying to do in the years since my adoption of my 1927 - inaugurated self-disciplinary resolves. The letter, dated February 16, 1970, reads:

Dear Michael

Thank you very much for your recent letter concerning “thinkers and doers.”

The things to do are the things that need doing that you see need to be done and that no one else seems need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often get buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviours induced or imposed by others on the individual.

Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are intensely interested in. Don’t be disappointed if something doesn’t work. That is what you want to know – the truth about everything and the truth about combinations of things. Some combinations have such logic and integrity that they can work coherently despite non-working elements embraced by their systems.

Whenever you come to a word with which you are not familiar, find it in the dictionary and write a sentence which uses that new word. Words are tools and once you have learned how to use a tool you will never forget it. Just looking for the meaning of the word is not enough. If your vocabulary is comprehensive, you can comprehend both fine and large patterns of experience.

You have what is most important in life – initiative. Because of it, you wrote to me. I am answering to the best of my capability. You will find the world responding to your earnest initiative.

Sincerely yours,
Buckminster Fuller

Source:
Buckminster Fuller
Page xxxviii
St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0312174888

Saturday, November 4, 2006

Buckminster Fuller leadership principles

Buckminster Fuller leadership principles

  1. Think comprehensively.
  2. Anticipate the future.
  3. Respect gestation rates.
  4. Envision the best possible future.
  5. Be a trim tab - an individual who can initiate big changes.
  6. Take individual initiative.
  7. Ask the obvious and naïve questions.
  8. Do more with less.
  9. Seek to reform the environment, not man.
  10. Solve problems through action.

Source:
Medard Gabel & Jim Walker
Futurist 2006 Sep