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Carl_Sagan
Technology Understanding
“... we've arranged the society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is gonna blow up in our faces.”
- Source: Carl Sagen speaking in an video entitled 'CARL SAGEN - A Way of Thinking' posted on YouTube at https://youtu.be/J1cNaFG1VII , at 00:01:05 in video. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
Patrick_Vlaskovits
Faster Horse
“However, even if Ford didn’t verbalize his thoughts on customers’ ostensible inability to communicate their unmet needs for innovative products — history indicates that Henry Ford most certainly did think along those lines... Henry Ford froze the design of the Model T... Ford had no compelling reason to innovate in any other sphere other than cost and price reduction... But everything changed with the onset of the innovations introduced by General Motors in the 1920s, which took the direct opposite of Henry Ford’s tack of “Any color … so long as it is black” and is best summed up by Alfred Sloan’s consumer-research driven “A Car for Every Purse and Purpose”... In 1921, the Ford Motor Company sold about 2/3 of all the cars built in the U.S. By 1926, this share had fallen to approximately 1/3. And in 1927, when Ford belatedly responded (at tremendous financial cost and internal strife) to changes in the market’s tastes and competitive innovation by shutting down production temporarily to re-tool his factories and bring the Model A to the market, that percentage fell to about 15%... Yes, some customers in certain types of businesses are quite capable of verbalizing precisely what sort of innovative product one could build and sell them. And of course, customers in other types of businesses are wholly incapable of verbalizing, with any sort of fidelity whatsoever, what they need and why they need it. An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition. They should also feel free to ignore customers’ inputs. Because by now it should be clear that Ford’s adherence to his vision of the mass-market car and how to materialize that vision was instrumental in both his early success in growing Ford Motor Company as well as his later failure to respond in a timely and effective manner to rapid innovation in the marketplace.”'
- Source: Patrick Vlaskovits in the article “Henry Ford, Innovation, and That Faster Horse Quote”, published by Harvard Business Review, 2011-08-29. Online at https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast retrieved 2024-05-28.
- See Also:
- Keywords: Ford(topic)_quotes Sloan(topic)_quotes Verbalize_quotes Thinking_quotes Customer_quotes Requirements_quotes Ostensible_quotes Inability_quotes Communication_quotes Unmet_quotes Need_quotes Innovation_quotes Product_quotes History_quotes Freeze_quotes Design_quotes Model_T_quotes Automobile_quotes Compel_quotes Sphere_quotes Cost_quotes Price_quotes Reduction_quotes Change_quotes General_Motors_quotes Consumer_quotes Research_quotes Opposite_quotes Color_quotes Black_quotes Car_quotes Purse_quotes Ford_Motor_quotes Build_quotes United_States_quotes Share_quotes Market_quotes Belated_quotes Respond_quotes Tremendous_quotes Financial_quotes Internal_quotes Strife_quotes Taste_quotes Competition_quotes Shut_quotes Production_quotes Tool_quotes Factory_quotes Model_A_quotes Percentage_quotes Type_quotes Business_quotes Capable_quotes Precise_quotes Sort_quotes Sell_quotes Incapable_quotes Fidelity_quotes What_quotes Why_quotes Understand_quotes Problem_quotes Empirical_quotes Observation_quotes Anecdotal_quotes Method_quotes Intuition_quotes Feel_quotes Free_quotes Ignore_quotes Input_quotes Clear_quotes Adherence_quotes Vision_quotes Mass_quotes Innovator_quotes Materialize_quotes Instrumental_quotes Success_quotes Early_quotes Grow_quotes Later_quotes Failure_quotes Timely_quotes Effective_quotes Manner_quotes Rapid_quotes Marketplace_quotes Horse_quotes Faster_quotes
Robert_Watson-Watt
Give Them Third Best
“Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes.”
- Source: Quoted in the book 'A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives (1st ed.)' by L. Brown, (1999), published by Taylog and Francis.
- Keywords: Third_quotes Second_quotes Best_quotes Go_quotes Give_quotes Later_quotes Never_quotes Come_quotes
Gerald_Weinberg
True Consensus on Group Goals
“To achieve true consensus on group goals, there is no better method than having the group set the goals itself... To be sure, not every programming team can be permitted to set whatever goals it happens to fancy at any moment. A team is usually constituted to accomplish some task which has probably been set down before the team was even assembled. But programming tasks are not usually specified too precisely until much later than team formation, so that unless the upper management is very overbearing, much meaningful and interesting goal setting can be done by the team members in concert. The greatest danger is the manager who has come up through the programming ranks and wants to define every bit and byte before the team even sees the problem. Nothing is more sure to dampen the team enthusiasm and make them feel that they are 'mere coders... Of course, it is best if each team can have a single clearly defined goal, but the world is seldom so simple... When a team is not fully apprised of the emphasis to be placed on each factor, the members of that team may very well be working at cross purposes.”
- Source: Chapter 5. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.
- Keywords: True_quotes Achievement_quotes Consensus_quotes Group_quotes Goal_quotes Methodology_quotes Empowerment_quotes Programming_quotes Team_quotes Assignment_quotes Task_quotes Precision_quotes Later_quotes Before_quotes Management_quotes Overbearing_quotes Meaning_quotes Cooperation_quotes Danger_quotes Rank_quotes PreSpecification_quotes Requirements_quotes Problem_quotes Enthusiasm_quotes Coder_quotes Mere_Coders_quotes Clarity_quotes Singleness_quotes World_quotes Simplicity_quotes Complexity_quotes Emphasis_quotes Factor_quotes Work_quotes Cross_Purpose_quotes Assemble_quotes Interesting_quotes Concert_quotes Define_quotes Dampen_quotes Feel_quotes Member_quotes Cross_quotes Purpose_quotes
