Paul Graham of Y Combinator notes that startups have many counterintuitive characteristics; he suggests the way to get startup ideas is not to think of startup ideas. “ Turn your brain into the type that has startup ideas unconsciously. So unconsciously that you do not even know at first that they are startup ideas. Yahoo, Facebook, Google and Apple all started this way. None of these companies were suppose to be companies at first; they were just side projects. The very best businesses almost always have to start as side projects because they are such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies. You make this type of mind by learning about things that matter in the world, working on projects which interest you and working with people that you respect…At its best, starting a startup is merely an ulterior motive for curiosity and you’ll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive at the end of the process.”
Tesla quotes from Tesla, Inventor of the Electrical Age: My method is different. I do not rush into constructive work. When I get an idea, I start right away to build it up in my mind. I change the structure. I make improvements. I experiment. I run the device in my mind. It is absolutely the same to me whether I operate my turbine in thought or test it actually in my shop. It makes no difference, the results are the same. In this way, you see, I can rapidly develop and perfect an invention without touching anything. When I have gone so far that I have put into the device every possible improvement I can think of, that I can see no fault anywhere, I then construct this final product of my brain. Every time my device works as I conceived it should and my experiment comes out exactly as I have planned it...(pg 9)
....Then follows the period of direct effort. I choose carefully the possible solutions of the problem I m considering and gradually centre my mind on a narrow field of investigation. Now, when I deliberately think of the problem in its specific features, I may begin to feel that I am going to get the solution. And the wonderful thing is that if I do feel this way, then I know I have really solved the problem and shall get what I am after. (Pg 405)
From Future of the Mind: Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, concludes, "Your grades in school, your scores on the SAT, mean less for life success than your capacity to delay your gratification, and your capacity to focus your attention. Those skills are far more important - all the data indicate - for life success than your IQ or your grades." This statement is backed up with the theory that the connection between the brain's prefrontal and parietal lobes seems to be important for mathematical and abstract thought, while the connection between the prefrontal and limbic system (involving the conscious control of our emotions and pleasure centre) seems to be essential for success in life."
From How to Create a Mind: "Although we experience the illusion of receiving high-resolution images from our eyes, what the optic nerves actually sends to the brain is just a series of outlines and clues about points of interest in our visual field. We then essentially hallucinate the world from cortical memories that interpret a series of motives with very low data rates that arrive in parallel channels...ganglion cells sends information only about edges (changes in contrast). Another group detects only large areas of uniform color, whereas a third group is sensitive only to the backgrounds behind figures of interest."
From The Rise of the Creative Class: "The bohemian ethic is more hedonistic. It says that value is to be found in pleasure and happiness – not necessarily in gross indulgence or gluttonous excess, but in experiencing and appreciating what life has to offer. (Pg 160)...
The great cultural watershed of the 1960’s, as it turns out, was not Woodstock, but something that had evolved at the other end of the continent. It was silicon Valley. This place in the very heart of the San Francisco Bay area became the proving ground for the new ethos of creativity. (Pg 169)...
The tone of the creative economy was set. Bohemian values met the Protestant work ethic head on and the two more than survived the collision. They morphed into a new work ethic – the creative ethos- steeped in the cultivation of creativity. Everyone from software evelopers to circuit designers could now work as creative people, coming and going, virtually as they pleased, taking breaks to exercise, working to blaring rock music if they so desired. Employees at Apple wore T-shirts that read “ 90 Hours a Week and Loving It” and why not? Their work was fun to them, and besides, they were changing the world."(Pg 175).
Young workers have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city’s bottom line. But in the creative age, they matter for several reasons. Young people are workhorses: they are able to work longer and harder and are more prone to take risks, precisely because they are young and childless. In rapidly changing industries, its often the recent graduates who have the most up to date skills. (Pg 340)
The great cultural watershed of the 1960’s, as it turns out, was not Woodstock, but something that had evolved at the other end of the continent. It was silicon Valley. This place in the very heart of the San Francisco Bay area became the proving ground for the new ethos of creativity. (Pg 169)...
The tone of the creative economy was set. Bohemian values met the Protestant work ethic head on and the two more than survived the collision. They morphed into a new work ethic – the creative ethos- steeped in the cultivation of creativity. Everyone from software evelopers to circuit designers could now work as creative people, coming and going, virtually as they pleased, taking breaks to exercise, working to blaring rock music if they so desired. Employees at Apple wore T-shirts that read “ 90 Hours a Week and Loving It” and why not? Their work was fun to them, and besides, they were changing the world."(Pg 175).
Young workers have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city’s bottom line. But in the creative age, they matter for several reasons. Young people are workhorses: they are able to work longer and harder and are more prone to take risks, precisely because they are young and childless. In rapidly changing industries, its often the recent graduates who have the most up to date skills. (Pg 340)
Books
The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida, 2012
Tesla, Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson 2013
The Future of the Mind, Michio Kaku, 2014
How to Create a Mind (The secret of Human Though Revealed), Ray Kurzweil, 2012
Tesla, Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson 2013
The Future of the Mind, Michio Kaku, 2014
How to Create a Mind (The secret of Human Though Revealed), Ray Kurzweil, 2012
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Albert Einstein at the blackboard
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The Brain
