👋 🎄 On time for your Twelvetide: this year’s last round-up of what was written or said at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design and #organisation, and stood out.
Thoughtforms will be taking a break through the end of the year. Back on Friday, January 8th.
📚 Reading
What comes after smartphones?
The first fifty years of the car industry were about creating car companies and working out what cars should look like, and the second fifty years were about what happened once everyone had a car—they were about McDonalds and Walmart, suburbs and the remaking of the world around the car, for good and of course bad. One could suggest the same today about smartphones—now the innovation comes from everything else that happens around them.
🤓 It’s the ecosystem that innovates, in the end—Benedict Evans
Do we really need ‘deeptech’?
Coming up with new technology in the research lab is not, in and of itself, a decisive contributor to a startup’s success. In fact, investing too much in cutting-edge technology upfront can even be detrimental to building a successful business: founders are then focused on the tech rather than the business, and the company needs too much capital before even meeting its first customer.
👷♀️ Build that innovation ecosystem, not ‘tech’—Sifted
Tobi Lütke:
I started a company because I love learning. I went into programming because I found it fascinating. During meetings, I just love to hear the things that teams have discovered. When you're discussing an idea or a decision, I want to know what has been considered. To be honest, I find myself more interested in the inputs of an idea than the actual decision.
👩🏫 The learning journey is the reward—The Observer Effect
🎧 Listening
Seeing the future:
The thing about new technologies is that it takes several generations for us to decide what they are good for. They are kind of like babies: technologies have to find the right job and it's our job as parent to help find the right role. It takes time and, more importantly, it takes use. We cannot figure out what they are good for by thinking. I call that 'thinkism' and it's a disease of our time.
Kevin Kelly—North Star Podcast
Parallels between open-source software development and online creators:
The thing that creators can learn from, and the difference with open-source software and any other sort of content that you put out, is that people are very actively relying on the work that you're doing.
Nadia Eghbal—Means of Creation (Apple, Spotify)
Activate Your Agile Career:
Creating and cultivating happy profitable employees. Cultivate career agility, don't reject it in your organisation. And it's a double-sided meaning: profits have to happen [and] if people are unhappy and unengaged, it’s going to be a detractor.
Marti Konstant—The Wicked Podcast
📬 Suggestions?
Please, feel free to send tips and ideas for a next issue by replying to this email. Or, send them directly to hello@futuring-architectures.com 🙏