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Kelly’s 14 Rules & Practices – Lockheed Martin Skunkworks

February 12, 2013 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.
2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.
3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).
4. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.
5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program.
7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better…

(Full Story: Kelly’s 14 Rules & Practices – Lockheed Martin Skunkworks)

gtd, innovation
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Kelly’s 14 Rules & Practices – Lockheed Martin Skunkworks

February 1, 2013 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.
2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.
3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).
4. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.
5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program.
7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better…

(Full Story: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/aeronautics/skunkworks/14rules.html )

gtd, innovation
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Napster, Udacity, and the Academy Clay Shirky

November 16, 2012 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

n the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Now it’s a hostage situation, required to avoid falling out of it. And if some of the hostages having trouble coming up with the ransom conclude that our current system is a completely terrible idea, then learning will come unbundled from the pursuit of a degree just as as songs came unbundled from CDs.

If this happens, Harvard will be fine. Yale will be fine, and Stanford, and Swarthmore, and Duke. But Bridgerland Applied Technology College? Maybe not fine. University of Arkansas at Little Rock? Maybe not fine. And Kaplan College, a more reliable producer of debt than education? Definitely not fine.

(Full Story: Napster, Udacity, and the Academy Clay Shirky)

clayshirky, e-learning, innovation, Kaplan
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Startups are Creating a New System of the World for IT

May 25, 2012 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

One reason for this revolution is explained by Etsy in terms of Conway’s Law:

When a team makes a product the product ends up resembling the team that made it.

I’ll extend this notion to say the team and thus the product end up resembling the underlying technology used to make it. When you change the underlying development infrastructure, by moving to a cloud, you are bound to change teams and processes they create.

(Full Story: Startups are Creating a New System of the World for IT)

architecture, cloudcomputing, innovation, opensource, scalability
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The Eight Pillars of Innovation | Think Quarterly by Google

August 31, 2011 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

Have_a_mission_that­_mattersThink_big_but_start_smallStrive_for_continual_ innovation, not_instant_perfectionLook_for_ideas_everywhereShare_everythingSpark_with_imagination, fuel_with_dataBe_a_platformNever_fail_to_fail

(Full Story: The Eight Pillars of Innovation | Think Quarterly by Google)

google, innovation
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Finding the Hidden Gems in Your Business Model – HBR

May 17, 2011 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

Making Red Hat completely free catapulted it to market share leadership. This meant that big, corporate customers could see Red Hat as a suitable partner — a really big Linux supplier. This made them comfortable with utilizing Linux for their servers and buying service support from Red Hat.

(Full Story: Finding the Hidden Gems in Your Business Model – HBR)

innovation, redhat
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Three Questions that Will Kill Innovation – HBR

March 28, 2011 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

1. “What is the return on investment on this project?”2. “Can you prove your case and back it up with hard data?” 3. “Are you meeting your milestones?”

(Full Story: Three Questions that Will Kill Innovation – HBR)

innovation, leadership
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Paul Saffo on rules for forecasting the future

January 26, 2011 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

Rule 1. Know when not to make a forecast.  distinction between setting out a vision that will drive inventors and innovators on the one hand and recognizing that a salient event has occurred that opens up uncertainties that you ought to factor in to your planning.Rule 2. Overnight successes come out of twenty years of failure. Rule 3. Look back twice as far as forward. The change you’ve lived through in the last 10 years is a predictor of what you are likely to experience in the next 5. Rule 4. Hunt for prodromes. Learned a new word. The observation that the “future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”Rule 5. Be indifferent. Don’t confuse your desire for a particular outcome with its likelihood.Rule 6. Tell a story or, better, draw a map. Trying to package your insights into a story helps reveal gaps, risks, and opportunities present in the events you are trying to understand.Rule 7. Prove yourself wrong. The essential wisdom of the scientific method. 

(Full Story: Paul Saffo on rules for forecasting the future)

future, innovation, saffoslaw, theory, web2.0

The Khan Academy brings Disrupting Class to life | Clayton Christensen

October 1, 2010 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

Khan talks about the origins of the Khan Academy—which are a far cry from an organization that receives millions from Google and improves the lives of people around the world. In fact, there is a strong parallel to what we suggested in Chapter 5 of Disrupting Class would be the spark for truly customized learning—the creation of a facilitated network. As we wrote (to take one excerpt): “Notice that these sound more like tools for tutors—and that’s the point. We’d love for every student to be able to afford personal tutors who have the skill to tailor the way they teach each subject to their students in a manner that matches the way the students learn. But it’s too expensive; hence, we’ve settled for monolithic instruction. These stage 2 tools disrupt the tutoring business; they can make it so affordable and simple that each student can have a virtual tutor through these tools.”
(Link: The Khan Academy brings Disrupting Class to life | Clayton Christensen)

e-learning, innovation

A-Teams of IT: How to build a crack strike force | Adventures in IT

September 21, 2010 by Brent Sordyl 0 Comments

You start by choosing a tough leader who’s backed by friends in upper management and can keep everyone working together. You’ll need infrastructure sherpas to keep the packets flowing and coding geniuses to keep your software development on track. You’ll need experts in physical and network security (Mohawk hairstyle optional). And you’ll want people who have their eyes on usability and trends, to keep current with the latest generations of software and devices.
(Link: A-Teams of IT: How to build a crack strike force | Adventures in IT)

innovation, leadership, skunkworks, tweet
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