Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Also can be a condition for entropy and cognitive dissonance. I've always called the situation 'juxtapotato' for no other reason than that it sounds funny.

GOOD

I really liked this article on innovation published in the Economist in 2003...

Expect the Unexpected

Basically it states that the most successful form of innovation involves pure luck, followed by finding new uses for existing technology...

So maybe not all innovation is totally miscellaneous, but the most successful innovation is.

--Dylan

Dylan, thanks for the link to the Economist article.

When I read, "By contrast, the products that failed were based on cutting-edge or untested technology, followed a 'me-too' approach, or were created with no clearly defined solution in mind," I thought about some of criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry.

David, I hope by "miscellaneous" you're not meaning "random," in which case you're playing with Einstein's dice or flouting Pasteur's "Chance favors the prepared mind."

I can't imagine the human mind operating is such a fashion, recombining endless impressions, all with equal value. Very inefficient.

Hi,

Anything new to us that we cannot describe is usually tossed into the misc. bin (del.icio.us). Funny, I was listening to a presentation given by Malcolm Gladwell (the tipping point) that he delivered to etech. Anyway, it's on a podcast from ITconversations.com. He mentioned the poster theory that sheds light on why we cannot describe things that are new to us. http://www.enformy.com/$poster.html poster theory link from a quick google search.