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March 15, 2005
Mysteries to heuristics
Victor pointed to an essay in the Rotman design issue, which also contains some other good articles, including “The Design of Business” by Dean Roger Martin:
Value creation in the 20th century was largely defined by the conversion of heuristics to algorithms. It was about taking a fundamental understanding of a ‘mystery’ – a heuristic – and driving it to a formula, an algorithm – so that it could be driven to huge scale and scope…. organizations. I would argue that in the 21st century, value creation will be defined more by the conversion of mysteries to heuristics….
See then also Paul Graham’s latest essay, “How to Start a Startup”:
Ideas for startups are worth something, certainly, but the trouble is, they’re not transferrable. They’re not something you could hand to someone else to execute. Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who had them to continue thinking about.
Along these lines of thinking differently about technology-based businesses, Kottke posted about businesses that he admires. It’s a nice companion to the interview with Jason Fried that everyone’s already pointed to.
Posted by Andrew at March 15, 2005 12:20 PM