Why Top Down Doesn’t Work
Killing the myth of the lone genius, why command-and-control work systems are failing, and how PopSugar is making the world safe from stock photos, one terabyte at a time.
BLUEPRINT // the future of work // ISSUE #7 OCTOBER 7th, 2016
Fellow Co-workers,
It’s Friday —if not the day of rest, it’s certainly the day of happy hour.
On the occasion of LGBT History Month, our correspondent Peter Moskowitz reports on how LGTB-friendly businesses are driving opportunities and work in Minnesota. “It’s not just about morals,” Peter writes, “it’s about what’s good for the city and good for business.”
Speaking of tearing down old shibboleths, columnist rosie yakob tackles the myth of the lone genius. “In the 1970s,” she writes, “Brian Eno posited instead the idea of Scenius…the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”
Rosie also had a moment to speak with Bud Caddell, the founder of management consultancy NOBL, which helps large companies define the future of work. Best quote in the piece: “If you’re starting a brand new company today, and hiring only 35 year-old white, male software engineers, then yes, holacracy is a decent fit.” Check it out.
More news and tools below.
Looking forward,
Dept. of Future Possibilities
What we’re reading
Driverless cars will change the sounds of the street, according to BUILDING YOUR SONIC BRAND, and excellent piece By Jack Hitt in California Sunday Magazine. The nut: regulations do not necessitate mimicking the rumble of a combustion engine. “With electric cars,” said Connor Moore, a 34-year-old San Francisco audio designer, “you can create the sound from scratch.”
- Pair with: Two Million Miles Closer to a Fully Autonomous Future, by the head of Google’s self-driving initiative [NewCo]
- And: MIT’s Moral Machine, “a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving cars”. VERY INTERESTING. Check it out. [MIT]
South by South Lawn celebrated tech and the changing world. Ten thousand people attended the SXSW-style festival which included, among other things, a hopeful message from Obama about the future [Daily Dot] and a talk by Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on fixing real-world problems [Techcrunch].
- Pair with: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny, a profile of the ambitious Y Combinator CEO [The New Yorker]
- And: Why the next 20 years will see a lot less technological disruption than the past 20 [Vox]
Dept. of New Tools
New software we’re excited about
Talla Task Assistant —An intelligent assistant for coordinating on all your team’s projects on Slack.
Dept. of Who to Follow on Twitter
Future of work thought leaders, irascible know-it-alls, and friends
- Jeanne Meister: co-author of The 2020 Workplace and the forthcoming The Future Workplace Experience.
- Sarah Sladek: founder of XYZ University, which bridge gaps between generations X, Y and Z in the workplace.
- Meghan M. Biro: founder of TalentCulture and of #WorkTrends, Biro knows from talent culture.
Dept. of Future Graphs
What we’re sharing
Dept. of Goodbyes
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