August 2008
10 posts
Flickr Set - The End →
Steve Jobs On Innovation
From a 2004 Interview with Steve Jobs in Businessweek:
Q: How do you systematize innovation?
A: The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient.
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at...
Tom Waits On Getting Unstuck
Waits did offer one piece of songwriting advice that he tries when he finds himself stuck. “Take out your favorite line,” he says. “It’s hard to do. What you’re doing is, you’ve only got one line and you’re trying to hang everything on it. What you need is a better line.”
Working Overtime
According to the International Labor Organization, Americans now work 1,978 hours annually, a full 350 hours – nine weeks – more than Western Europeans. The average American actually worked 199 hours more in 2000 than he or she did in 1973, a period during which worker productivity per hour nearly doubled.
This NY Times piece on the subject points out that “by contrast, over the past 30 years,...
How We Tip
A study that involved giving customers a piece of candy with their bill showed an increase in tip percentage from 15.1% to 17.8%. Another study in which servers gave each customer two pieces of candy with the bill increased the tip from 19% to 21.6% of the bill. Still another study showed that the way the server gave the customer the candy had the largest impact on the increase of the tip: This...
“ “In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question...”
– Bertrand Russel