Einstein Quote, Rocker Buddy, Thanksgiving

* "Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving" -- Albert Einstein

An Einstein quote*.
A documentary on de Band.
A song dedicated to John Lennon.
A night of living inspirations, swirled and shredded with wild hearts, moonlight proudly carved.

24. A promise unfulfilled, yet never expire.

there are moments in life when you just want to drop a few lines for someone, without expecting any reply. She/he can be your buddy, or sb. you befriended 28 mins ago. Just go do it, write your heart, slip your signature into his/her life, and expect nothing in return.

It's beautiful, knowing there's someone out there who cares.

And this one is for you my Rocker Buddy, specimens for the moments we reached to our souls. I'm just grateful.

It's tremendously motivating and meaningful, knowing there's someone out there on the same quest, same mission, same struggle.

what could be the worst?
A lifetime of pain, for evanescent yet huge, aesthetic, soul-moving moments.

year after year, life rolling on.
man, now i'm pretty sure we are never gonna change.

So Keep on Rocking...

How Ideas Change the World?

Rough generalization of my guess:

I. Blow Minds
=> people get inspired, determined and committed

II. Innovate
=> inspired people engage themselves into tons of action, experiments, failures, more trials & experiments, insights, discoveries, design, practice => innovation
[ yes Innovation is about Doing instead of thinking!]

III. Spread the Practice
=> people share, communicate and market resulting practices of innovation, until they gain enough acceptance to scale into the main stream.

By the way, modern/scientific corp. management practices took nearly 100 years to scale (And if we are lucky the next-generation practices will take substantially less time to replace it).

Mr. Maeda, you never knew...

John Maeda, some computer scientist in MIT who wrote some book that caught Tom Peters' attention and was interviewed by tompeters.com a couple of years ago(you can read the interview here). What I can really remember about him, however, is (20mins ago I couldn't even remember what his book was about)...

- He got an MBA simply because he wanted to know more about business
- He considered studying Law (i have no idea if he did) simply because he wanted to know more about the subject
- He reads a book every week (yes, just this simple!)

I was thrilled by these just as i was thrilled by the fact that Bill Gates reads insatiably simply out of curiosity... (as opposed to "i'm reading this book to learn these skills to enable me to increase my 'value' and income...", anyone?)

what I want to say is...

Ladies and gentlemen, you never know what you've said or done is in what way making what kind of influence/impact on others' lives.

So say it, do it, and live, with your heart.

Update:
John Maeda is now the President of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) and his appointment was a surprise to many, read Fast Company's report here. His latest blog here.

What do I know about Denmark?

Not much. At least nothing worthy enough for your precious time.

But I read about a Danish today who happened to be the chief of Carlsberg (by the way the founder named the brand Carlsberg because of his beloved son Carl) who said something worth sharing:

1. The Most Important Thing for Leadership - Be Yourself

As simple as this. Many people look up to great leaders or superstars in business and imitate, and just fail.

2. On Success (?) - Be Yourself and No Regret for What You've Done

If you have to do it all over again, you'd still make the same choice.

3. "Say What You Think"

A Danish trait (or he said so). Pretty admirable in any case.

What do you know about Bill? Steve? Pete?

If a relative from Mars pays you a visit and he/she/it knows nothing about Bill Gates, would you care to do some story-telling? If yes, how?

Below is my take:

...he believes with enough IQ any problem in the world can be solved...
...he grew up reading encyclopedia and got insatiable thirst for knowledge + mega sized curiosity...
...he was sighted reading while driving on freeway...
...he never read business/management literature but biographies...(I heard but never verified)

did i miss anything?
Oh he happened to be the founder of a huge company entangled in anti-trust cases...

Update 1
How about Steve Jobs?
Beat me.
The only thing I know: He regards himself an aesthete.

Update 2
How about Peter Drucker?
...he regards himself a writer, a 'loner'...
...he taught religion in university...
...he said what managers really should read is proses and poetry...

Words of The Day (again): Incentive Compatibility

Incentive Compatibility...the corner stone of Mechanism Design...the magic behind a great human invention, Markets... ..... .........I can go on and on and on on this, with messy sentence structure shallow opinions untested guesses and incoherent logic. So I won't.

Just think about it, in the context of financial regulation, activists' causes...
For anyone who wants to make lasting changes, consider it the priority.

Word of The Day: INDEFINABLE

If you can't find a slot in the market to fit in, if you aren't quite happy with the label you're given, if you have trouble finding the 'proper' description of what you can do in your CV, if you're having problem with the 'right' category of your personality... chances are...

you are INDEFINABLE (or what you are born to do is so far INDEFINABLE).

Congratulations!!!!! (the extra exclamation marks are to smash the shadow imposed by 'them' on your uniqueness)
In a society where people were busy doing categorization, simple labeling, standardization,etc to give things order keep cost lower make life easier, being Indefinable was a sin.

No longer. Welcome to a world where any spot on the Long Tail got its place.

If you find yourself indefinable, you are one of a kind. If you find yourself indefinable, it's up to you to figure out what you can do with your uniqueness. If you find yourself indefinable, embrace the ambiguity, charge forward, leverage the ambiguity for infinite creativity & possibilities.

If you can't find the answer among choices A,B,C,D, it's because people haven't yet discovered possibility E. And you stand a good chance to be the first one to discover it. Better yet, be the innovator to bring it onto the table.
Or you can squeeze yourself between B and C until someone else discover and bring us the E.

* If you find yourself Indefinable, Stand Proud, Walk On, You are Not Alone.

Idea of The Day: Spectrum

Originally from an interview of Tim Brown by McKinsey Quarterly.

llllllll ll lll ll l l il it &^ -< style="font-style: italic;">CAN happen...

"...and you can't just pick a spot on the spectrum, you've got to move around..."

Aficionado (The Quote)

Talk is cheap, ACTION is EVERYTHING.

Quote from an 'extremist' friend who did something really cool that I regret I didn't do (which was to drop out of college that does not really teach you much).

Thanks dude, that was a great one, charged through my mind and made my day.

It's not just about being aggressive, impatient, or hyper-enthusiastic, man, it's not for everyone and no one should just imitate, to me it's more about standing for your own belief, genuinely living your own values, and being true to yourself...

Another quote I remember, not quite my cup of tea but some readers may like it...

Sniper Mindset: Winners Focus, Losers Spray.

de Zone

Vincent was there, W. AXL Rose was there, who else?

Elation and Pain.

'cos they reached to their souls, 'cos they gave a damn.
Who else?

Life-mission Entrepreneurs

We got entrepreneurs who sets up businesses...
We got social entrepreneurs who sets up schools, hospitals...etc
And if you can't find a place or passion in the categories above (or you found fitting yourself into either category kills your creativity...), try this:

Life-mission Entrepreneurs...

Figure out & Do what you TRULY care (it may happen to be what you do best and/or have fun doing), Do what gives your life Meaning.
You do this not for profits, not for acknowledgment from others (yes it's hard), but to make your life TRULY meaningful. And you can do it part-time.

Don't ever think about profits or to please anybody or your 'social responsibility/obligation', you're doing it for your own life (and life's Not a rehearsal). You may meet people who appreciate your work along the way, or you may not.

But when u look back fifty years from now, you'll be glad you have not been blinded by the mist around you today, and you didn't fail your life and let yourself down.

I repeat: Life Is Not A Rehearsal.

Push & Pull

Came across this Leading Philosophy, Push & Pull.
It made me think, and with all due respect, share my view below:

You push, you pull, and you don't do no back-slapping.
People love you, or people hate you, that's it.
Nothing in between.

If you 'succeeded' in making everybody 'like' you, you may no longer deserve the love from people who love you.

The Same Old Saying(for fellow TM): Be Yourself

"instead of trying to improve by 'imitating' others, why not bring the best out of yourself? "
"...if you feel comfortable standing still, then forget abt those stage trotters & surely you will figure out how to make a superbly amazing inspirational passionate sincere brilliantly elegant speech with you feet on the same spot for 15 freaking mins..."

on the other hand, you may want to
"...try a bit of something, new techniques old techniques...try anything...comfortable or not, go try em all... ...just remember to ask yourself, 'is it me?', 'does it reflect my personality?', 'could i feel my soul and heartbeat when using these techniques?' '' or 'have i lost yourself trying to be sb. else?'"

"Benchmarking is stupid," said Tom Peters and a bunch of cool fellas.
It's not, it's just so outdated, and we no longer wear corset in 21st century.