Alex Ko's Public Library

I'd rather be the one firing than the one fired

Those who haven't seen or experienced entrepreneurial success firsthand will often "tell you all the reasons why it just can't be done,"

Non-entrepreneurial-minded families also may advocate the stability and benefits that often come with a corporate job's health coverage, pension plans and 401(k) matches. Nearly three-quarters of company founders cited family or financial pressures to keep a traditional, steady job as issues that may prevent others from starting their own businesses, according to a November Kauffman report.

Empathy is about spontaneously and naturally tuning into the other person's thoughts and feelings, whatever these might be [...]There are two major elements to empathy. The first is the cognitive component: Understanding the others feelings and the ability to take their perspective [...] the second element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observers appropriate emotional response to another person's emotional state.

The human capacity to recognize the bodily feelings of another is related to one's imitative capacities

Put your CEO and CMO in San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. This provides close access to capital for expansion. VCs don’t like to travel. Also, this is where much of the media that covers tech and startups has become concentrated.

Have people in key urban areas such as San Francisco, Santa Monica, New York, London, Paris, and Berlin. Businesses need to understand the culture in which they want to be successful. If they aren’t in it they won’t know it. Cities are also where emergent cultures can first be spotted.

Have software engineering work done in low cost regions such as Bangalore, Manila

Use as much open software technologies as possible

Use independent contractors as much as possible, again, where applicable. We live in an increasingly atomic society, whether we like it or not.

Try to build up as much of the company without resorting to VC investments.

Analytical abilities enable the individual to evaluate, analyze, compare and contrast information. Creative abilities generate invention, discovery, and other creative endeavors. Practical abilities tie everything together by allowing individuals to apply what they have learned in the appropriate setting.

To be successful in life the individual must make the best use of his or her analytical, creative and practical strengths, while at the same time compensating for weaknesses in any of these areas. This might involve working on improving weak areas to become better adapted to the needs of a particular environment, or choosing to work in an environment that values the individual's particular strengths. For example, a person with highly developed analytical and practical abilities, but with less well-developed creative abilities, might choose to work in a field that values technical expertise but does not require a great deal of imaginative thinking. Conversely, if the chosen career does value creative abilities, the individual can use his or her analytical strengths to come up with strategies for improving this weakness. Thus, a central feature of the triarchic theory of successful intelligence is adaptability-both within the individual and within the individual's sociocultural context

Expert blogging is when people with special expertise, like scientists, blog on the subject they're trained in, and that's what I'm focusing on in this talk: scientists writing blogs about science.

Put research in context - often discoveries are sensationalized, or even when they're not, how a discovery fits into the general intellectual puzzle of the field is not clear from a news story.

Bloggers can also highlight neglected research. Stories in newspapers are often chosen for their news impact, but expert bloggers can spot gems in the literature that busy science reporters have missed.

all of the non-bizarre stuff in the paper had been plagiarized, something completely missed by the editors and reviewers

as more scientists do take advantage of the low publication barrier, science culture will change, and blogging and popular article or book writing will no longer be viewed as an irrelevant hobby with no bearing on one's main job

If we really are concerned about scientific literacy in this country, then what better step can we take than to create a culture in the scientific community where communicating with the public is viewed as a natural part of the job?

Richard Feynman's famous criterion for whether we understand something is whether it can be communicated at the Freshman level.

it's also great to get feedback and interaction, especially in a more informal, non-classroom format, where nobody's coerced into being there and folks aren't shy about asking questions.

These students had learned a lot of facts about science, but they completely missed the soul of science - the way of thinking that is central to its success, and that makes science such a fulfilling and compelling pursuit.

What I think expert bloggers can do best is open a window into the process of scientific thinking, into the minds of scientists.

He took you into his world - he showed you how he thought about problems, and this is what made his talks so compelling.

Traditional notions of management work great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-direction works best.

In tasks that involve focused, clear objectives and goals, incentives do work. However, in tasks that involve creativity, innovation, and generating original ideas, offering incentives actually distracts from the mind's ability to freely think outside of the box and be open to creative insights.

When we are offered a reward for a behavior, part of our brain is focused on that reward, which is how incentives work. However, if we are doing a task that requires creativity, narrow focus limits the range of necessary flexibility of thought that is essential to creative output. When we are given no incentive and thus free to completely devote our mental efforts to just solving the problem, our mind is able to generate these creative solutions faster.

Pink talks of companies such as Google and Atlassian who have pre-set "free work times"; during these times, employees have no restrictions on what they can work on, what time they have to be in the office, even whether or not they have be in the office at all to do their work. The only stipulation is that they have to get "something" done. It is these times, where they are basically free to work on whatever they want, that end up generating up to half of the total successful innovative developments for the company. Because the employees did not have to focus on anything like specs or any particular ideology, they were driven only by their own intrinsic motivation to work, thinking for the pure enjoyment of generating new ideas.

If we want engineers, scientists, or any type of worker to be able to function at their absolute creative best, allowing them to freely explore their ideas without having to worry about restrictive subject matter, methods, or ideology is the best way to reach that goal.

the X factor is the understanding of random rewards. Not expected rewards.