Digital Sanctum

Marissa Mayer gives some insight into how Google flourishes with innovation in a Forbes article. Number five caught my eye:

5. SHARE AS MUCH INFORMATION AS YOU CAN
“People are blown away by the information you can get on MOMA, our intranet. Because there is so much information shared across the company, employees have insight into what’s happening with the business and what’s important. We also have people do things like Snippets. Every Monday, all the employees write an email that has five to seven bullet points on what you did the previous week. Being a search company, we take all the emails and make a giant Web page and index them. If you’re wondering, ‘Who’s working on maps?’ you can find out. It allows us to share what we know across the whole company, and it reduces duplication.”

Imagine what could be done at a much larger scale with the catch being that there would be no firewalls, no corporate security…no isolationism. Everyone knows what every one else is doing…no fear…just effective and pure synergy on a planetary scale.

Take the red pill.

I read Paul Graham off and on and find most of what he writes about interesting even if I don’t agree with all of what he has to say. His latest essay, “Six Principles for Making New Things”, is one that seems to echo a lot of what’s been said before about solving problems with software. In his own words the steps are:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

To summarize, find a simple solution to a problem and release early and release often.

1. Divide and conquer: break down large, complex problem into smaller, solvable problems
2. Hill-climbing strategy, (or – rephrased – gradient descent/ascent, difference reduction) – attempting at every step to move closer to the goal situation. The problem with this approach is that many challenges require that you seem to move away from the goal state in order to clearly see the solution.
3. Means-end analysis, more effective than hill-climbing, requires the setting of subgoals based on the process of getting from the initial state to the goal state when solving a problem.
4. Working backwards
5. Trial-and-error
6. Brainstorming: a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution to a problem. The method was first popularized in the late 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive and one of the founders of BBDO, in a book called Applied Imagination. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output by using the method of brainstorming.
7. Morphological analysis: a method developed by Fritz Zwicky (1967, 1969) for exploring all the possible solutions to a multi-dimensional, non-quantified problem complex.
8. Method of focal objects: involves synthesizing the seemingly non-matching characteristics of different objects into something new.
9. Lateral thinking: a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician and writer. It first appeared in the title of his book The Use of Lateral Thinking, published in 1967. De Bono defines lateral thinking as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.
10. George Pólya’s techniques in How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton Science Library): a small volume describing methods of problem solving. This book was published at Princeton University. It suggests the following steps when solving a mathematical problem
11. Research: study what others have written about the problem (and related problems). Maybe there’s already a solution?
12. Assumption reversal (write down your assumptions about the problem, and then reverse them all)
13. Analogy: has a similar problem (possibly in a different field) been solved before?
14. Hypothesis testing: assuming a possible explanation to the problem and trying to prove the assumption.
15. Constraint examination: are you assuming a constraint which doesn’t really exist?
16. Incubation: input the details of a problem into your mind, then stop focusing on it. The subconscious mind will continue to work on the problem, and the solution might just “pop up” while you are doing something else
17. Build (or write) one or more abstract models of the problem
18. Try to prove that the problem cannot be solved. Where the proof breaks down can be your starting point for resolving it
19. Get help from friends or online problem solving community (e.g. 3form)
20. Delegation: delegating the problem to others.
21. Root Cause Analysis: (RCA) is a class of problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. By directing corrective measures at root causes, it is hoped that the likelihood of problem recurrence will be minimized. However, it is recognized that complete prevention of recurrence by a single intervention is not always possible. Thus, RCA is often considered to be an iterative process, and is frequently viewed as a tool of continuous improvement.

Books on Problem Solving

World Problems

1. Twelve World Problems: How Hans-Georg Gadamer offers openings to a postmodern perspective
2. World Problems and Global Issues Project

I recently read a post about a gym called Gym Jones. What caught my interest is that I recently saw the movie “300″, in which the Spartans had near perfect human physiques. I’ve always been fascinated by men and women that have the pure determination and discipline to attain such beautiful bodies.

Curious to learn more about the gym used as a medium to sculpt such beauty, I visited the site and my curiosity turned to awe. Watching the videos and reading the site’s content, you are left with nothing but respect for Mark Twight, the founder, and the “disciples”.

Here’s a taste of the “300″ workout:

25x Pull-up +
50x Deadlift @ 135# +
50x Push-up +
50x Box Jump @ 24” box +
50x Floor Wiper @ 135# (one-count) +
50x KB Clean and Press @ 36# (KB must touch floor between reps) +
25x Pull-up
300 reps total