Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Scott Adams on the Math of Success

“A smarter approach is to think of learning as a system in which you continually expose yourself to new topics, primarily the ones you find interesting.” [Scott Adams] More dots to connect from disparate bodies of knowledge create advantage. Even small improvements help us with product innovation, for example, and in making personal behavioral changes that stick. This is why learning to learn the most valuable skill. Learning helps us think better, thus make better decisions, and we are re-discovering why learning actively leads to wellbeing. Ancient philosophers knew that and if we look at the lives of famous scientists... Read more →

Expanding Perception to Learn about "Opportunity for Growth"

“Stories are data with a soul.” [Brené Brown] A few years ago, six weeks into her research, Brené Brown hit pause to understand why her questions about connection elicited stories that revealed quite the opposite -- heartbreak, exclusion, disconnection. In other words, she discovered shame. She says: What underpinned this shame, this "I'm not good enough," -- which, we all know that feeling: "I'm not blank enough. I'm not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough." The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow... Read more →

Smashing Psychological Barriers

An interesting take on reality imitating fiction in an article by The Guardian on the role of women in movies citing work done by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media where actress Geena Davis: [...] sponsored the largest ever study on gender depictions in family-rated films and children’s television (“I take everything too far,” she admits). The research spanned a 20-year period. It found that for every female speaking character there were three males, while female characters made up just 17% of crowd scenes. [...] even in a fictional setting, created from our collective 21st-century imagination, we seem... Read more →

You can Observe a lot by Watching

“You can observe a lot by watching.” [yogi berra 1925-2015] We can learn a lot by listening, observing, and orienting our actions. A video tribute to a master of simplicity. Read more →

Learning and the Act of Creation

When we look back at our careers, at our jobs, even at our lives, some of the things we are most proud of likely fall into two categories: learning new things doing good work We rarely think of these two items as how they translate into energy, but they do. Because what we choose to spend our energy on is what gets energized in return by our contributions. In the simplest terms, consciously or unconsciously, we grapple with one overarching question: Do we invest or do we disperse? This applies to other, but also to our selves. Our attitudes inform... Read more →

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Talk About the Beginnings

The video footage below is from the D5 conference where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates shared the stage. Each gets to answer Walter Mossberg's question about what major contribution the other made to the industry. At about minute 7.5, as Gates is getting deeper into engineering talk, Jobs says, “let me tell the story.” This alone shows how the two leaders' lives converged over the years. The conversation is peppered with data points about the not too distant past -- for example, Gates says Windows '95 was the year graphics interface became mainstream. According to Gates it was a combination... Read more →

APIs as Personal Systems in the Networked Marketplace

“What gives life to and sustains the corporation resides on the 'outside,' not within its direct control, and the customer is the primary mover of those external realities and forces. It is the prospect of providing a customer with value that gives the corporation purpose, and it is the satisfaction of the customer's requirements that gives it results.” [Peter Drucker, 1954] We are customers Some of us are also employees, managers, CEOs, investors, partners, and service providers to the very same organizations that produce and sell what we buy. With smartphones in our pockets, tools we can access in our... Read more →

How Greater Choice Paralyzes us and Makes us Poor Strategists

If we had the gift of knowing the strategy we should use to make good decisions, would we use it? It turns out we have it, but we don't use it. + What is strategy? We have different definitions of strategy floating around business halls. Many describe what strategy does -- it recognizes the nature of the challenge, it creates strength through its coherence, it's unexpected, it needs to be responsive to innovation and ambition. In Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: the Difference and why it Matters, Richart Rumelt says “strategy is at least as much about what an organization does... Read more →

Learning Through Play

Dubberly Design office, in collaboration with Satoko Kakihara, Jack Chung, and Paul Pangaro created a model of play “built on the idea that play is a type of conversation.” The interaction between to people or teams, in person or virtual creates a shared world in their imagination. Through the act of playing the participants engage in a learning cycle [image above.] What's interesting about this model is that engagement is a result of acting as a contribution to a conversation that builds a shared world: Play requires individuals to actively engage in conversation. Engagement reflects something of the quality of... Read more →

Opportunities for Choosing Simplicity

We are often conflicted about whether to multitask or single-task -- arguments have been made on behalf of each. In the life-changing Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn has an example of “the impulse [that] frequently arises [in us] to squeeze another this or another that into this moment.” He says: I've learned to identify this impulse and mistrust it. I work hard at saying no to it. It would have me eat breakfast with my eyes riveted to the cereal box, reading for the hundredth time the dietary contents of the contents, or the amazing free offer... Read more →