KFD&P

The lifeguard hack Who am I to walk up to someone at a party and introduce myself? Who are you to start a new project? Who are they to give a talk on the main stage? Don’t raise your hand–someone else mig…

The thing about the oxygen mask It feels odd to hear the flight attendants remind us to put on our own mask before helping others. That’s backward, isn’t it? The theory is that if you can’t breathe, it’s p…

Success is about solving problems!

The next big idea There are two confusions. The first is that the next big idea must be fully original. The second is that it have no competition. This is almost never the case. Henry Ford didn’t invent the ca…

In search of amusement Business models rework the world. Organize assets. Add labor. Sell something for enough money that you get to do it again, but more. That’s how we ended up with a $5 chicken in many pots, a c…

Each one leads to more We can choose to commit to a recursive and infinite path that elegantly creates more of the same. We can choose possibility. We can choose connection. We can choose optimism. We can choose justice.…

Three types of kindness There is the kindness of ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ And the kindness of “I was wrong, I’m sorry.” The small kindnesses that smooth our interactions and help other people feel as th…

I admit, I really enjoy Seth's stuff regarding business and marketing and especially when he talks about science and art. Here's a list of some interesting books if you want to nerd out on some science/art/and everything in between things.

Seeing differently Here are some books for the end of the year… fifty years of ideas that have helped me understand the world differently: Gödel, Escher, Bach — Before meta was cool, Douglas Hofstadter won a Pu…

"When I taught at the NYU graduate school of business, I was amazed. Not by the caliber of students, which was very high, but at how little emotional enrollment and intellectual curiosity many of them had in learning what was on offer. A few realized how much they could learn, but many of the students were simply concerned with what was on the test."

On getting a fancy MBA… If I was admitted to a prestigious business school and scheduled to begin in January or even September, I’m pretty sure I’d defer. Take a gap year, take two. For many students, the two …

The cold open No one ever bought anything on an elevator. The elevator pitch isn’t about selling your idea, because a metaphorical elevator is a lousy place to make a pitch. When you feel like you’re…

In support of the hard-working teacher Sometimes I talk about the education-industrial complex on this blog, rarely with kindness. I captured much of that in Stop Stealing Dreams. Readers will see that not once have I criticized a hard-…

A too-simple answer to a complicated problem The problem: how can we get people what they want and need? It turns out that the simple short-term answer is the market. The marketplace makes it possible to buy a nail clipper made of hardened st…