Thought of the Day - Right Brained Computing

First it was widley belived that machines couldn't replace people at making things (pottery, textiles etc), then the industrial revolution happened. While the machines would never be quite as good at making some things (hand-crafted is still seen as a good thing) they do most of the making in the world today.

More recently it was thought that machines couldn't replace people doing knowledge based tasks that required left brain thinking and again they have been proved wrong again. If a computer can win at chess, properly programed it can probably replace a person doing anthing relying on procedure, decisions and memory. This is still progressing and there is still a gap where people are required.


Is the way forward to leap-frog people working on automating the left brained activites and start trying to automate more right brained work?

I suppose this is where researchers in artificial intelligence are going but is there a simpler approach? Does a computer have to be able to think and be self-aware to create? If a million monkey's at a million type writers will eventually come up with the works of shakespeare and a computer can do the same work in a considerably shorter period of time, is it not just a matter of selecting the best version. As the old saying goes; "ideas are like a**holes, everyone has one", surely this means that creativity is simply selecting the good ideas from the bad.

Book Notes - The Back Of The Napkin

The Back Of The Napkin by Dan Roam [2008]

Summary:
A book promoting the use of pictures and diagrams as a communication medium. It outlines why visual communication is effective and how to make your visual communications more effective. It contains a framework for selecting the most appropriate diagrams for certain situations as well as a framework for problem solving.

Notes:
Page 4: Reminder, develop an 'elevator pitch' for every project or idea.
Page 15: Six Problem Clumps:
1) Who/What
2) How Much/Many
3) When
4) Where
5) How
6) Why
Page 37: Process Of Visual Thinking:
1) Look - Collecting and screening
2) See - Selecting and clumping
3) Imagine - Seeing what isn't there
4) Show - Making it all clear
Page 57: Rules For Better Looking:
1) Collect everything you can
2) Lay it all out where you can look at it (literally lay it out)
3) Establish fundamental coordinates (use; Who/What, How Much/Many, When, Where, Why, How, as axes)
4) Practice visual triage
Page 72: Common Precognitive Visual Attributes:
1) Proximity - close things are related
2) Colour - hints at groupings
3) Size
4) Orientation - perpendicular angles are best
5) Direction - perceived movement (arrows etc)
6) Shape
7) Shading
Page 84: How = Who + How Much/Many + Where + When
Page 94: You can use the 6w's in order to Show as well as See.
Page 107: SQVID Visualisation breakdown:
1) Simple Vs Elaborate
2) Quality Vs Quantity
3) Vision Vs Execution
4) Individual Attributes Vs Comparison
5) Delta (change) Vs Status Quo
Page 108: You can either progressively go through all of the SQVID steps (idea focusing) or you can work out what balance of each extreme is the most important for the audience (audience focusing).
Page 131: The Three Steps of Showing:
1) Select the right framework
2) Use the framework to create the picture
3) Explain the picture to someone else
Page 134: The links between seeing and showing:
1) Who/What - Picture/Portrait
2) How Much/Many - Chart
3) Where - Map
4) When - Timeline
5) How - Flow Chart
6) Why - Multivari Plot
Page 141: Diagram linking the ways of showing with SQVID.

Quotes:
Page 13: "Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be created with the same set of tools and rules."
Page 133: "For each of the six ways of seeing there is one corresponding way of showing. For each one of these six ways of showing, there is a single visual framework that serves as a starting point."

Thought of the Day - Complex Decision Making

I just read an article in the 'Boss' supplement from The Australian Financial Review which was a reprint from the Harvard Business Review (June 2006). It concerns something that i have given a fair amount of thought to but never really considered from this angle; how to get a group to decide between many options.

In the past i have largely focused on tools like; the Pugh Matrix, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Impact-Effort Matrix and simple voting. While these techniques result in a decision, what i failed to consider is that just because an option is selected doesn't mean that there is broad agreement with the decision. The article focused on the CEO/Leader as a deadlock breaker and the negative aspect that they become a 'dictator by default' and while i suspect that is a frequent occurrence, the problem is equally valid in groups of peers.

The crux of the problem is summed up in this quote; "majority wishes can clash when a group of three or more people attempt to set priorities among three or more items ... different subsets of the group can generate conflicting majorities for all possible alternatives". E.g. Persons 1 and 2 agree on option A but persons 2 and 3 also agree on option C, by selecting option A you satisfy 1 and 2 but C would have been an equally valid choice as you satisfy 2 and 3.

Once you accept that point, it suggests that it is impossible to resolve this conflict. However this assumes that there are only fixed options, the article advises that you carry out the following steps to come to a better solution:
1) Articulate clearly what outcome you are seeking - Classic problem solving, you can't solve a problem until there is a common understanding of what the problem is.
2) Provide a range of options for achieving the outcome - Again classic problem solving, brainstorm as many solutions as possible.
3) Surface preferences early - There is no point wasting time on options that no-one has any interest in, by eliminating them you don't waste time on pointless debate. This step can be done through voting, possibly weighted, or other techniques.
4) State each option's pros and cons - See the good and bad on both sides, in the article it is recommended for someone to present the pros and another person to present the cons, one may have to play devils advocate.
5) Devise new options with the best features of existing ones - Again classic problem solving technique, synthesize new options by combing the best parts of old ones.

While these steps don't solve the decision making dilemma they will help. I think most important of all is to acknowledge that this problem exists, preferably within the group making the decision, so that you know the pitfalls while you are making the choice.

Thought of the Day - Traffic Management Idea

Last week i was sitting waiting in a traffic jam caused by road works and it occurred to me that traffic management is not run in the most efficient way.

If you consider the bottleneck in the process to be the physical bottleneck in the road and the number of vehicles passing as throughput, then it is clear that the bottleneck is grossly underutilised. As the traffic is running in opposite directions, it is clear that the bottleneck can never be fully exploited as you must wait for the last car in one direction before you can move in the opposite direction. However i think there are still significant improvements that could be made.

Firstly as soon as the last car clears the obstruction in one direction the next car should be moving in the opposite direction. Secondly the speed of the cars should be maximized past the obstruction to increase throughput. Finally the time taken for the cars to move off when the light goes green should be minimised.


So what might my traffic management system look like? I would set the lights back from the obstruction by the same length as the obstruction and have the lights change in the reverse direction based on when the last car leaves in the forward direction. This would allow the cars moving in the reverse direction to move off and get up to speed before the obstruction maximising throughput and minimising wasted time. This eliminates the lag in the system for the cars to move off, it also maximises speed through the obstruction meaning the bottleneck is maximally exploited.

There are 3 issues i can see with this system:
The first is if you get a boy racer at the start of the second set of traffic who screams past the lights and then has to jam on the brakes to avoid the oncoming traffic. This would disrupt the traffic behind and impair the throughput.
The second is if you had a very slow vehicle (crane, lorry or little old lady) they would act as a further bottleneck that would reduce the throughput. Unfortunately almost every traffic management system would retain this problem and by giving the vehicle time to accelerate before the obstruction the problem is minimised.
The final problem is that you cannot always see the full length of the obstruction, in this instance if there was a very slow vehicle passing the obstruction the two traffic flows could meet in the middle and come to a stalemate causing chaos. Unfortunately it is not possible to have good visibility on all roadworks so this may limit the locations where this system could be applied. It would also be possible to have an 'emergency stop' sign just prior to the obstruction to prevent this from happening if all of the traffic had not cleared the obstruction.

All of the above issues could be somewhat mitigated through public eduction either via signs or media sources and completely removed if you introduced two convoy vehicles to pace and control the traffic. While the latter option would greatly increase the cost of traffic management it could be used in high profile or high volume situations where throughput was critical.


While i'm sure every motorist would love spending less time in traffic jams and technically they are the end customer. In reality they don't control the cheque books and the cost of the additional equipment might discourage companies from using it. After all the because the motorists aren't paying, best case is that the company gets less complaints. But as with the Heroes Vs Planners debate they are unlikely to get positive feedback, there will still be a delay and the motorist won't know how bad the delay could have been if the system was not used.

Thought of the Day - Tasks I Achieve Flow In

This morning i read an article on how to achieve flow (link at bottom of post) and i realised that i really don't experience it in work a lot.

Some things in life i find it easy to achieve flow in, most notably; reading (both books and articles), researching a topic online and coding websites. At work it is much more rare, if i get some peace and quiet i can achieve it doing data analysis or creating a presentation. Unfortunately to achieve flow i normally need music on in the background, so it doesn't help that we aren't allowed to use headphones. One other area i think i might achieve flow in is delivering training, i must admit i haven't really thought about it but when i get going it does feel effortless, maybe something to look at in the future.

So if flow is an optimal state of working and i don't experience it in my job very often then am i in the right job?


Idea from: http://zenhabits.net/2008/06/guide-to-achieving-flow-and-happiness-in-your-work/

Thought of the Day - Ready, Fire, Aim

Sometimes a theory or and idea keeps coming up over and over again and in those situations it is hard to ignore. Recently i kept reading about the benefits of the "Ready, Fire, Aim" approach, it was in books, on websites and in podcasts and it made sense.

Most people use the "Ready, Aim, Fire" approach. Only it normally turns into "Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim ... maybe Fire", too much planning and not enough action. On the other hand "Read, Fire, Aim" relies on action straight away, the results of which can be used to improve your accuracy. It is like firing a gun for the first time, you don't know whether the sights are set correctly or if the barrel is straight, therefore until you fire the aiming might not matter at all.


Something i have been meaning to take action on for a long time (like since 2004) is updating my WebCV into the modern age. It was originally built like a site from 1996; a pain to update, not very modern looking and rubbish for search engine optimisation, frankly it was an embarrassment. At various times since then i have bought and read books about web design, i have felt guilty for not updating it and once or twice i have even started to put something together. But it never quite got done, i spent too long planning and worrying about how difficult it would be and how long it would take to get it perfect. Even the most recent time i made a start in March i had a big elaborate plan, it was gantt charted out over 3 or 4 months but of course after a week i lost interest and nothing ever came of it.

On Friday evening i was listening to a podcast from SXSW where various entrepreneurs who were renowned for being 'fast' were speaking on the topic. These were people who had built the likes of Twitter, Blogger etc which are rather complicated pieces of software and the timescales they were talking about from picking a concept to first release were ridiculously short, months if not weeks. At this stage i began to feel rather embarrassed, my WebCV really isn't that complicated, i have most of the skills to update it, so how come they can launch huge brands in a few months and i can't even build a website?

The answer is simple; they set a short timescale to get something out there, it may not be complete, it may not be perfect, but it is something that they can then build on going forward. Programmers call this "release early, release often". It is better to get something out and get real customer feedback about what needs changed than it is to spend years building what you think customers want only to find it isn't actually what they want or the opportunity has passed.


With this in mind i decided that 12 hours was a reasonable amount of time to build a website. I set key tasks that had to be done and decided if something was taking too long that i would accept something that was ok, rather than taking longer and getting something that was perfect. It was difficult, first off it is the weekend so it was hard to avoid distractions and secondly i had forgotten most of the CSS i used to know. But after 11 hours of work i updated my WebCV and uploaded to the site.

I would be grateful if anyone who reads this could go and have a look at my WebCV and provide any feedback they can think of through the contact link. So far my list of things to do includes:

• Validate the xHTML and CSS against the W3C standards
• Improve consistency across browsers (IE7 and Firefox 3 are ok but i suspect it needs work on IE6, Firefox 2 and IE8)
  
• Sort out the padding and margins to get the spacing between the headings and text right
• Make a better header (the current one will do but its not great)
• Make the navigation tabs a bit less bland and angular
• Think of some ways to make it more visually appealing without being tacky

At least i have something out there, a base to build on. It is a much less daunting task to make lots of small improvements than it is to come up with something brand new and perfect first time. So remember; if you are procrastinating, if a project seems to big to know where to start, set a tight timescale and "Ready, Fire, Aim".


Idea from: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-art-of-speed-conversations-with-monster-makers/#more-362

Thought of the Day - Life As A Laboratory

Something a lot of people seem to find strange about me is that i experiment with things, not only that but i actually call them experiments. I don't just buy a new pair of shoes, i experiment with near-barefoot walking. I don't become a Vegan, i experiment with my diet. I don't wake up early, i experiment with my sleep.

To me life is a laboratory, all parts of my life can be optimised, improved and if necessary changed wholesale. On the other hand i think a lot of people get into a (un)happy rut and don't see the need to change, to try new things. While i am sure that i am guilty of that in some areas of my life it doesn't stop me looking to change in others. The great thing about experimenting is that if it doesn't work out you aren't committed to the path, you were just trying it out. It also doesn't preclude the possibility of future improvements or changes. For me one of the most reassuring things about science is that scientists can admit when they were not exactly right or even outright wrong. There are no absolutes, it only takes one exception to break the rules and set you looking for new rules.

I'm sure other people experiment with things and maybe it is because my experiments tend to be a little more extreme, but most people i discuss my experiments see me as strange or at best eccentric. What convinces me that i am on the right path is a lot of the most interesting people that i've met and authors who's books i've read have had a similar attitude to experimentation.

Thought of the Day - Personal Crest

I came across an interesting site today, it has a flash based system to create your own personal crest:
Scion Personal Crest Creator

While it is a little tacky and random it got me thinking, what would sum me up, my values, my interests etc. I came up with the crest below:


At the top i went for a 'grease monkey' to represent my background in engineering. The circuit motif on either side represents electronics and computers which tie everything in my life together. In the middle i went for my interests; books, rock music, snow/cold and TV. Overall i'm quite happy with it, was interesting to have to only pick the 4 interests that summed me up.

Thought of the Day - ToC For Traffic

I just finished reading Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. First off a great book and yet again i wonder why i have left a Chuck Palahniuk book sitting on my shelf for more than a year before i read it.

Secondly i had an interesting thought about one of the concepts in the book. I could be totally wrong but the way i understand it, in the book the government split the population into day people and night people so that the roads would be less gridlocked and accidents would have less of an effect on traffic. But it is an interesting point, even the busiest, most clogged of roads tend to be just about empty between midnight and 6am. So many of the problems that we face with traffic are because we shock-load the roads at certain times of the day. The overall capacity of the roads compared to the total journeys is probably adequate but because everyone is trying to go places at the same time.

In the book the unintended side-effect of the split was that the night people became an underclass that resented the day people but i can't help but think there must be another way to better balance the flow of traffic on the roads. Every time i drive on motorways my mind drifts (more on that in the book too) to Theory of Constraints, i still haven't come up with a way to apply ToC to the roads without a massive overhaul of technology but there must be something that can be done. Strangely leveling the flow across the day hadn't occurred to me before but it would be a great way to remove the need for rigid rules and a drum-beat to pace traffic. Then the question is how to incentivize travel outside of the rush hours to balance the flow without becoming even more nanny-state like.

On the downside if the flow was leveled my 7pm to 3am drives up north would be much less effective.

Thought of the Day - Hydrofoils

Why do you only see hydrofoils in russia? I'm sure other places must have them, there must be big benefits from the reduction in drag, so why don't you see them all over the place?

Thought of the Day - Idea Execution

My idea execution sucks. As with just about everything else i try, whenever i put an idea into practice i am kind of ok at it but not great. Hmmm not terribly clear, an example might help.

When i was a bit of an audiophile i took it into my head to build a headphone amp. There aren't many sensibly priced commercially available ones and you can build a pretty decent one really cheaply. So i bought some soldering equipment, some parts and set set about trying to learn to solder and build electronics. Only it turned out that while i could solder and get a working headphone amp it was never going to be elegant.

What i am wondering is whether i just suck at execution and am desitned to live in my mind or whether i just don't give each skill required enough time to develop.

Thought of the Day - Customer Focus

What my jobs have been missing is customer focus. Sure i have had internal customers but its not the same as engaging with a real end user, someone who chooses to pay for the product, who uses it directly for its intended purpose and who's life you could make better.

Sure i may have bitched and moaned about customers and the public in the past and there are certain aspects of customer service that would drive me insane. But talking to the customer to understand their needs and coming up with solutions that exceed the customers expectations really appeals to me. Alas while my job in LifeScan somewhat involved that, i was never allowed to talk to real customers, heck i wasn't even supposed to talk to marketing. In my current job i couldn't be more isolated from the real customers if i tried, there is zero customer focus and it frustrates the hell out of me.

Maybe my next job needs to be in sales and marketing or in a company so small and directly linked to the customer that i can't help but get involved.

Thought of the Day - Actions Vs Ideas

I was only yesterday cursing that Steve Pavlina had forsaken me, his blog hadn't been updated in over a week and then he made a great post (see link at bottom). Unfortunately this post was about something that profoundly troubles me, the balance between ideas and actions. His argument is that an idea that is not implemented is worth almost nothing. While i completely agree with him, it troubles me because i have great ideas and i am ok at starting to implement them (though sometimes even that doesn't happen) but where i really fall down is sticking with the implementation. I get bored and move on to the next idea.

Coming back to my Strengths Finder Results, none of my strengths relate to action, they are all about coming up with ideas, thinking, analysing and planning. My concern is that i excel at the easy part - having the ideas - granted they are good ideas, but my strengths do not allow me to (nor do i particularly care if i) actually implement those ideas.

I have two questions; 1) Is there a way to be successful just with ideas and not necessarily the implementation? and maybe somewhat related 2) How could i avoid implementation or at least become more effective at implementation?


Idea from: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/the-value-of-ideas/

Thought of the Day - TV and Social Surplus

I read an article today which argued that television represents 'social surplus', an abundance of time that people don't know what to do with. It suggests that it is like a security blanket that we need to hold on to because of the pace of change in society. Lastly it argues that this security blanket is needed only for a generation, then uses are found for the surplus and society as a whole reaps the benefits. I have a few questions: Of most global importance; is TV too addictive for people to give up and put the time to better use? This would result in a brain-dead society as is portrayed so vividly in Mike Judges excellent Idiocracy. Of most relevance to me, as i watch more TV than anyone else i know; what could i be doing instead of watching TV?

According to www.myepisodes.com in the last 3 years i have wasted; 2 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes watching TV shows. I should note that is only counting the TV i care enough about to track, the real number is probably a good bit higher. As a comparison, that is probably round about the amount of overtime i have worked in various jobs in the same time period, but still it is not an inconsequential amount of time. We're talking about 1 month per year (~9%), including sleeping (~42%) and working (~23%). That means that 75% of my time is spent doing things that aren't really that exciting. I wish i could say i filled the remaining 25% with bungee jumping and dog sledding across Alaska but in reality most of it is probably filled looking at random stuff on the internet.

I initially went into this post wondering what i should replace my television watching with, but in reality i could keep it more or less constant and still have an abundance of time to be doing other things. The question from a paragraph above still remains though; what could i be doing instead? Something that adds value to me (learning, travelling, working out), adds value to the community (voluntary work) or adds value to the world (creating something new).

I don't have a shortage of things that i could be doing (improving my web design skills, learning a foreign language, selling my excess possessions on e-bay etc etc), i just can't think of something that i have enough motivation to do properly. I suppose the first step in any change is an awareness that you want to make the change, now i just need to work out what to change too.

Idea From: http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

Thought of the Day - Time Constraints

Today i happened across an advert for possibly my ideal job - Business Design Consultant with IDEO, the daddy of all creative consultancies. There was only one slight problem, the closing date was the 25th of April ... today.

It was 20:30 and my first reaction was; "stuff it, not enough time, why bother". Then it occurred to me that my CV would probably only need minor tweaks and really 3.5 hours should really be plenty to draft a cover letter and project report. So i whipped up a plan with some tight deadlines and set to it. Turns out i didn't even need until midnight, i finished 30minutes early!

About half way through the work i realised that if i had found the advert earlier i would have procrastinated or forgotten or not really worked on it until now. So really having a very challenging time scale was probably beneficial to me. Unfortunately we can't rely on serendipity to bring tasks to us at exactly the right time but it has convinced me that Goldratt is right in Critical Chain. What i really need to do is work out how to manufacture that tight deadline, that stress, so there is a cut-off to each task and i don't continue tweaking for longer than is required.


Ok so the chances of me getting the job are virtually zero, but i would have always wondered 'what if?' if i hadn't applied. The worst that can happen is i don't hear back from them, anything above that is gravy. If they call me i can ask what i could do to develop more, if they interview me i get a free trip to London to the meca of creative consultancies and while it is a million to one shot, i might even get a job out of it.

Thought of the Day - Limitations and Local Optima In Life

The strength of the human race is that we have adapted to survive, but now that survival is not really an issue for a lot of people, should we be questioning whether the adaptations are really the optimum?

The reason i bring this up is that i read an article on the benefits of 'barefoot' walking (see link at bottom), which blamed the 'features' of current shoes for various foot, ankle, leg and back issues. You can understand that in the past having a covering on your foot would be beneficial; less cuts, less chance of infection and a bit of protection. It then became even more critical as we moved to colder climates and didn't want our feet to freeze and fall off. Shoes allowed us to cope with conditions.

Of course it then became important that the sole of the shoe was durable and strong to prevent puncturing, which meant that stiffer, thicker materials had to be used. To make these stiff, thick soles more comfortable we added arch support, padding in the heel and rockered the sole to try to make the gait more natural but all we were doing was accommodating a limitation. Related to my notes on Beyond the Goal [coming soon] it seems that these local optima rules (padding, shaping etc) to accommodate the limitation were made so long ago that people no longer notice the rules or the limitation. With new advanced materials, a puncture-proof durable sole can be much thinner and more flexible, so why aren't they? One simple reason; people are used to what we have at the moment. Most people associate soft foam soles and thick padding with comfort, heightened heels are ubiquitous and hey if they are good enough for Olympic athletes they must be good enough for us, right?

Wrong. There is growing research which indicates that rather than making our feet more comfortable and protecting our joints from damage, that most current shoes actually cause these problems. So what is the solution? As with all good ideas it is very simple; use the millions of years of evolution in the human foot and interfere with it as little as possible. Provide protection without hindering the natural movement of the foot.


Recently i have had similar thoughts about a vegan/raw diet. That humans added cooked foods, dairy and meat so that we could overcome the limitation of seasonal fruits and vegetables. The only way to survive was to get calories any way we could and we adapted. But that adaptation is relatively recent and given that in the modern age we can get fresh fruit and vegetables year round is that adaptation the best decision or is it based on a local optima rule that helped us to survive in the past.


I am no Luddite, i love technology but i think we need to question the rules and assumptions of society to ensure that our choices are the optimum based on the current situation.


Idea from: http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

Thought of the Day - Simple Solutions

I have a problem ... all of my best solutions are too simple.

When i start working on a problem the solutions are not obvious at all and in many cases the company's plan is to do completely the opposite of what i end up suggesting, but sure enough by the end of the project the dissent has started. The suggestions that the solution was obvious, that the company would have come up with it without me, what have i been doing the last few months etc etc. It is really frustrating that the best solutions always seem obvious in hindsight and it does make it particularly difficult to get the credit you deserve. As Einstein once said; "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.", add to that spending money on things a company doesn't really need and you have the essence of my philosophy.

Which leaves me with a dilemma; should i make my solutions appear more complicated than they really are or can i somehow make the people involved realise how completely counter-intuitive my solution was to start with? The latter is definitely preferable but without knowing the solution how do you know what to record to prove the solution was not obvious at the time? More to the point how do you record the information so that it is undeniable and impossible to rationalise away when you present it?

Maybe i just screw myself by presenting potential solutions too early in the project. In one way you want the leadership to know that you have a plan, a goal an idea of what to do but in another you want them to see you struggle and then have that light bulb moment after the work has been done.

Thought of the Day - Speed Vs Velocity

The physics definition of 'speed' is what most people understand as speed, it is a scalar measure it only takes account of the magnitude of the motion. In physics 'velocity' is something different, it is a vector measure taking account of both the magnitude and direction of the motion.

At the moment in my career i think i have speed but not velocity, i am moving very quickly (in terms of responsibility, training and money) but in an unknown direction. To be both happy and succesful i really need to find a direction, the question is how do i find that direction?

I was kind of hoping that the above question might give me some ideas but i think i need to give it some more thought. Hey at least i have identified the problem.

Thought of the Day - TOC For Traffic Management

I must have TOC on the brain after reading the two books because while driving on the motorway today i wondered how you could apply TOC to traffic management.

How could you apply Drum Buffer Rope to cars? Could you convince people who like to speed and people who like to drive slowly that really they should all go at the same speed (drum) so that everyone arrives quicker. How could you keep the cars the same distance apart (buffer) and stop the whole queue of cars being disrupted if one car stops or slows down (rope)... More to the point what is the constraint; is it the slowest driver? or is it the speed limit?

Probably a pipe dream until all the cars are connected in a mesh network and can synchronize with each other though.

Thought of the Day - TOC For R&D

While reading It's Not Luck (see notes below) it occurred to me that Goldratt has tackled a lot of topics; Production, Marketing, Project Management and ERP systems. He has probably tackled even more in his ancillary books, but to my knowledge he has never applied TOC (Theory of Constraints) to R&D (Research and Development) or NPD (New Product Development).

You could argue that the marketing covered in It's Not Luck is all about NPD. You are devising new offerings for the market, but it's scope is restricted by the assumptions that: a) There is no money to make physical changes to the product and b) Provided you modify the existing offer to suit the customer that you can fulfil their requirements. What about situations where the existing product, regardless of how the offer is packaged does not sufficiently satisfy the customer?

I suspect there is an answer somewhere in his books and i can see how you could relax the constraints on the methods to construct 'unrefusable offers' to create 'unrefusable products' but i wonder if that is sufficient to cover the full spectrum of R&D. While i'm sure it would help you with re-engineering of existing products to better meet customer requirements and could even enable you to create new products from the ground up to optimally meet these needs, i fear it lacks the potential to imagine new products to meet needs customers do not even know they have.

In other words is there a way to apply TOC to the creative process and is it possibly linked with TRIZ? It might just be a coincidence but both are obsessed with conflicts, breaking assumptions and in love with simple solutions ...