Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
Scenius or Genius?
Musician Brian Eno defined a scenius as “the intelligence of a whole operation or group of people,” in contrast to the classic archetype of the lone genius. We debate scenius vs. genius in the context of product—is one more conducive to innovation than the other?
FOLLOW-UPS – 01:42
The Mentats in Dune
McDonald's ordering system suffers McFlurry of tech troubles
How Apple Sank About $1 Billion a Year Into a Car It Never Built
• Bloomberg (paywall)
• Apple News (iOS-only)
How “Jobs To Be Done” Can Help You Make, Better
IDEO‘s Three Lenses
Jeff Bezos’ 70% rule (start of page 3)
SCENIUS OR GENIUS? – 15:22
Yanis Varoufakis & Brian Eno
Brian Eno is More Dark Than Shark
The Technium: Scenius
History of Braun Design: Electric Shavers
History of Braun Design: Kitchen Appliances
“Anfangs war ich für Aicher Luft”
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
The Greatest Night in Pop
Double Diamond Framework
The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius
No more amateur scientists
The Story Of Miles Davis ‘In A Silent Way’
WL Gore: the company others try and fail to imitate
WEEKLY RECS – 45:40
The Ringer on ‘Halt and Catch Fire’
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
pandora’s vox: on community in cyberspace, by humbug
CLOSING & PREVIEW – 56:55
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Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello, and welcome to learn, make, learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim, and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Groeger. Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:Hey Ernest, I am recovering from having lost my voice, which prevented us from recording. It feels normal again ish, it was incredibly scratchy last time. I didn't want to inflict that on anyone. Whoever's out there. I know there's a couple of you, but yeah, scratchy voice would not have been so fun. But it sounds like your house is just taking more of a beating. I feel like you've been sharing details about things crashing through windows.
Ernest:Oh yeah, yeah. For anyone who follows me on Instagram, you might have seen a big tree limb landed on one of our skylights and shattered it. Fortunately, I think it was really well engineered. It's a not sponsored. It was a Velux spotlight skylight. And, It features a safety glass, fortunately. So none of the glass came through because, um, this particular skylight sits right above our bed. So that would have been really bad, but, um, uh,, yeah, it all kind of stayed, it all shattered, but stayed in one piece So, uh,, we're going to have to get that repaired, but, it could have been a lot worse. Um, Well, jumping ahead now, today our topic is scenius or genius. And we'll dive into this, in just a minute, including an explanation of what a scenius is for anyone who isn't familiar with the concept, but let's start with some followups to our previous episode, can restomod culture go mainstream? Joachim, you have any followups to share?
Joachim:I have a very quick one. Since neither of us has really talked about Dune, but only in passing or Dune part two, I should say, some bits of our podcast episode on Restomods and resurrecting old technologies. It just got me thinking about stuff in June. Now, in this June movie, they don't really hop on a lot about the different types of skill sets that are in the galaxy. there's a hint about the navigators who use spies to travel through space the better. GEs obviously a huge part of, of both movies, but the men hats in the book have a slightly bigger role, and I don't know. If you've read this, Ernest, if you know about the Mentats, but they are the human beings whose eyelids go funny when they start thinking about stuff, right? So, that's very visible in the first movie. but there's a little backstory to the whole thing that Frank Herbert had, built into the lore of Dune. And there's this notion of the Butlerian Jihad. which was a huge war, and the result of that was the prohibition of all quote unquote thinking machines. And so that's Frank Herbert's word. And that means no computers, no robots, no AI of any kind is allowed to, exist. You can have You know, there is some technology obviously, because they're traveling through space and so on, but the only true computational engines that can reason and do things are Mentats. And so I really liked this idea that in some weird way, they're kind of restoring and modifying human brains to fulfill the role of artificial intelligences. And so they, they go through early training, they're selected at a young age. and they. develop these incredible skills, uh, that are also enhanced, um, chemically enhanced. So that gives them the characteristic red lips that is only hinted at again in the Villeneuve, version of the movie. If you want to go completely off piece, check out the Lynch one. It's a little bit more obvious with the red lips. but this notion of the mentat, I just liked this idea. It really resonated with me as a kind of restomod thing. And, It goes back to this resilient computational machine. actually someone that you're connected with via social media mentioned, they commented on our podcast, one of the episodes where we're talking about resilient product innovation, and they were linking to the story about McDonald's having a massive cloud outage that brought down, all the restaurants basically. and so I always liked this idea of the Mentat as a resilient piece of computation that just. It needs a human being, of course, but human beings are pretty resilient. And so I just wanted to bring that up as a fun example of what could we possibly be able to do maybe a few decades down the line, that would be interesting. maybe it isn't all about generative AI. Maybe it is about, unlocking some more clever little tricks that the human mind is capable of doing. It sounds a little mystical, but I, I like exploring that and, and living in that funny little space for a bit. So that was also just to stay up to date with Dune part two. So everyone should see that as well. It's brilliant.
Ernest:I'm glad you mentioned that. When I first read the books, that concept of Mentats and just the idea that there was this revolution against thinking machines, was one of the things that really most impressed me about Herbert's conception of this universe. and as you mentioned, it's one of the things that's not really brought over into the movies and particularly not in the second movie. So that's a great one. I have a little bit of a long follow up and I get, I could say I'm making up a bit for my lack of substantive thinking on the main topic by sharing a little bit more of a follow up at the front end. In our last episode, I had mentioned the news that Apple had canceled its car initiative known internally as Project Titan. And in the week following that news, Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett at Bloomberg published a long piece chronicling Project Titan's tortured decade long journey from concept to cancellation. And we'll include a link to the piece in the show notes. Unfortunately, it's behind the paywall at Bloomberg. But if you own an iOS device, the article is ironically enough available for free via Apple news. And so we'll provide an Apple news link as well for those folks who are on iOS devices. The reason I highlight this is that I think it's worth a read for people in the business of making products, primarily as a cautionary tale that brings to light warning signs that a project you're leading or participating in could be headed down the wrong track. The article is just full of red flags. Flags and I'll just highlight a few that caught my attention. First, this quote from early on in the piece, Adrian Perica, the mergers and acquisitions chief who pushed, who had pushed by Tesla told the Apple car team that the company should build the first bird, not the last dinosaur. The lesson here is beware the snazzy catchphrase that executives love, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with your customers needs or desires. This is something I've seen happen firsthand, and it's just never a good sign. I don't know if you've encountered this, Joachim.
Joachim:The pithy little one liner or the fun little image it flattens the complexity of the problem that you're dealing with. And it just makes you feel like, oh yeah, I, I want that. Dinosaur's bad. First bird's good. what does that even mean? You know? Yeah.
Ernest:So if you were to find yourself in that sort of a situation, what could you do about it? I think really the only advice I have is to, Do what you can to shift the language around the project to the language of your customers, whether it's through that jobs to be done framework that we've discussed previously, or some other tool that you already use within your organization. If you find yourself in this situation, do whatever you can to reframe the goals of the project around authentic customer opportunities. So in this case, it would be about shifting the narrative away from internal navel gazing, which is all that A little piddly statement was and to an opportunity statement rooted in the voice of the customer. And this leads to the second red flag I encountered in the piece. So quoting from the article again, while the initial prototypes operated like traditional cars, internal supporters of the project eventually pursued more radical redesigns invoking a transportation technology experience. They said would give Give people time back. The ultimate plan was a living room on wheels where people who no longer needed to drive their cars could work or entertain themselves with Apple screens and services instead, unquote. Now, the article goes on to note that Doug Field, who had been hired away from Tesla to lead Apple's car project, pushed for Apple to scale back their self driving goals, quote, to level three, which requires a human driver to be ready to take over at a moment's notice, not watching TV or FaceTiming in a backward facing seat. But Field's bosses wanted level five. unquote, where level five represents full autonomy. And this kind of gets to the whole Butlerian Jihad and mentats thing, giving up control of a, your, your car. Well here, the goal of giving people time back is a true customer opportunity. You know, I think there are a lot of people who would love to be able to use their commute time to do things other than driving. I think here you can apply another framework we've talked about in past episodes, which is IDEO's three lenses of innovation or three lenses of human centered design as IDEO now refers to it. Put simply, the three lenses framework posits that for an innovation to be successful, it must satisfy three criteria. It must be desirable from a human perspective, it must be economically viable, and it must be technologically feasible. In the case of project Titan, the goal of a fully autonomous car that would give people time back was certainly desirable. Whether it was viable from an economic perspective is is an unanswered question, but when it came to technological feasibility, the best experts at Apple, including the person leading the project, were very clear that the goal of full autonomy was not feasible, at least not within the timeframe within which the company wanted to launch a car. So as to why executive leadership at Apple wouldn't heed the recommendations of the person leading the project, a person who by dint of his tenure at Tesla had an intimate understanding of what was and wasn't possible in the domain of autonomous driving, the article strongly suggests that it was due in large part to hubris. So quote, Apple executives weighing whether to enter the market, joked with one another that they'd rather take on Detroit than a fellow tech giant. Would you rather compete against Samsung or general motors? They joked to each other. The profit margins in cars were far lower than in consumer electronics, but Apple was coming off a stretch during which it had reshaped. Not only the music industry, but the mobile phone market to the project supporters, the idea of getting into automobiles had the potential to be as one Apple executive put it. One more example of Apple entering a market very late and vanquishing it. Unquote. Now the technical term for this is getting higher in your own supply and Apple clearly got very high on themselves. So. What can you do if you find yourself in this sort of situation where senior leaders simply won't heed the recommendations of the project team with respect to the fundamental questions of desirability, viability and feasibility? In my experience, the best option is to do what Doug Field did and leave, because at this point, it's highly likely that no amount of persuasion, logical or otherwise, is going to change the minds of your leaders. I know this may sound defeatist, but my advice here is informed by real world experience. I just don't think it's worth spending your life trying to persuade higher ups who aren't interested in being persuaded. All right. So the final red flag, again, quoting the article for Field, Mansfield and other leaders on the team, Cook's indecision was frustrating. If Bob Mansfield or Doug Field ever had a reasonable set of objectives, they could have shipped the car, says someone who was deeply involved in the project, they'd asked to take the next step. And Tim Cook would frequently say, get me more data and let me think about it. In that setting, it was hard to retain talent. This phenomenon of the leader who wants perfect data before making a decision is something I've also experienced firsthand, and I found it to just be soul crushing because there is no such thing as perfect data. all this leader is really doing is creating an excuse for their own indecision. And the reason it's soul crushing, at least in my experience, is that it leaves you as the product team in limbo. And here I'm a big fan of Jeff Bezos, his 70 percent rule for decision making. And as I've said in the past, I'm not a huge fan of Jeff Bezos, the person, but, I do think he shared some great insights over the years when it comes to leading a business. His 70 percent rule is something he shared in his 2016 letter to shareholders. So I'm going to quote that here. He said, Quote, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you're probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you're good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure. Unquote. And at an estimated cost of 10 billion with nothing to show for all that investment in time and capital, Tim Cook's slowness when it came to decision making was certainly very expensive. So lots to take away from this Bloomberg piece, uh, that's titled how Apple sank about 1 billion a year into a car it never built. All right. Yeah. It's a pretty amazing. yeah,
Joachim:I was just gonna say Tim Cook's obsession with wanting to get more data is, as you had said, you'd also encountered this type of thinking. Yeah. Same. This is one of those things that sounds very scientific where you say, oh, I'm going to wait for the data, but it's completely unscientific because you should realize. There is no data, you know, a lot of these decisions have to be taken and you, and as the Bezos quote highlights, it's about fixing when you're in crisis and you will hit crisis in some form. I think that's also part of the resilience and product design is resilience and the ability to just make a mistake and realize you've made a mistake and then fix it and keep going and realize that yeah, we've now just spent after the first billion dollars, you think you'd ask a question or two, right? But I guess not. That's a really interesting, interesting, interesting summary of the whole situation.
Ernest:I, and I have to admit, I, as someone who's been a long time Apple fan, it really did concern me reading the article because there were so many signs that I've seen at other companies. Uh, that are early warning signs of a company that is kind of at the beginning stages of a downward trajectory. I hope that's not the case, but, it's worrisome when, companies is so unable to do what they're supposed to do. core purpose is meant to be, which is making products. But as you've said in the past, a system is what it does. Right. Um, and, uh, it's apples. It looks like it's become a system that's actually not very good at making products, so I know that was a long one. So that's it for the follow ups for today. Let's get to our, our main topic, scenius or genius? Joachim, can you set this up for us?
Joachim:Yep. I would love to, this topic came to me because I, I stumbled on this great YouTube video where Brian Eno and Yannis Varoufakis had a conversation. Yannis Varoufakis is well known amongst economists, I guess, as being the Greek finance minister during one of the most crazy financial crises that Greece ever faced and Europe ever faced. He was just kind of a rebel who didn't follow orthodoxy. Eventually he was forced out because he was such a vocal opponent and, didn't mince his words he's now a public speaker, writes a lot of things, and he had this discussion with Brian Eno. He seems to be a friend of Brian Eno's, and Brian Eno is, of course, pretty famous. I think people know who Brian Eno is at this point, but if you don't, he's a pioneer. He has been around for such a long time. As a musician, he is responsible for the creation of ambient music. He also was one of the early innovators in generative music. generative music is different from what we call what we think about generative AI. This is about actually writing explicit rules, and with a little dose of randomness to create cool music. So he's one of those pioneers. And as a music producer, he's worked with all the greats. He worked with U2, Peter Gabriel. he also appeared on David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy albums. but he's also this really interesting thinker. And in this conversation with Yanis Varoufakis, he brings back this notion of seniors. And he said that the band, you know, the rock band is generally the best representation of how amazing things come together. So bands generally are composed of individuals who are in their own way, excellent at what they do. They're specialists, right? By virtue of the fact that they're focused on a single instrument. And usually there is one person who's louder than everyone else in the traditional rock format. That is the front person, usually the singer and everyone's ego is in constant conflict. But the band is kind of a mini seniors in Brian Eno's thinking. he talks about the fact that they bring together the chemistry of all of these people. And for him, he means chemistry, not in the way that we talk about in this loosey goosey way of, Oh, we really get along. He really means it in this chemical way. he talks about steel. Steel being composed, of course, of iron and the addition of carbon, the two things combined to create something far more powerful and strong than iron. And that's how he thinks of bands, strong egos coming together under the umbrella of a band. And yes, there is one voice that kind of sits above everyone else by virtue of being the front person, but there's some magic in that collective. This word that he used, seniors, it sounds so it's a slightly clunky phrase, but I'm going to just work on trying to get it, out there. I really want people to use it more and more, but it's his counterpoint to genius. At a festival, he actually describes a little bit more detail when he was studying art, what seniors actually means to him. So to quote him,, from a 2009, A festival in Sydney called the Luminous Festival. he says the following. Like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto, and so on, who sort of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolutions. As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that really wasn't a true picture. What really happened was that there were sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people. Some of them artists, some of them collectors, some of them curators, thinkers, theorists. People who were fashionable and knew what the hip things were. All sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent and out of that ecology arose some wonderful work. So I came up with this word seniors, the intelligence of a whole operation or group of people. I think that's a more useful way to think about culture. Let's forget the idea of genius for a little while. Let's think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work. So, by my description, you can actually already hear that I'm very, very biased towards this idea of the collective, intelligence that emerges. Sorry, I'm going to keep pushing on the fact that I think that collectives generate far more powerful outcomes than singular individuals. And I strongly believe that the evidence is, is, is there. in favor of our seniors types, because every example of a singular person showing up and pushing something forwards is actually building always on the shoulders of another person. in product innovation, one of my favorite examples is actually Dieter Rams. So we're going to talk about Apple tangentially again, right? So Dieter Rams is of course, the industrial designer, the head of the design studio at Braun. and he joined them in the fifties. Now we always think of Braun products as being Dieter Rams but I think what's really. Interesting about the Braun example is actually tucked under that whole Dieter Rams as the leader of this design studio is actually this whole group of people. And Dieter Rams was always at pains in the early days of Braun to point out it's not just me. Yeah. I'm sitting in front of you. I am the voice right now for this group. However, It is the work of a collective that makes this stuff come up. So he was very intent on getting that message across. and we'll link to this article because I found it super interesting. It's about the Braun design department. And in particular, it looks at a single product. And it's evolution over time in the hands of this design group. And they start with the 1955 300 special razor, which was an electric razor designed by Arthur Braun, who was the son of the founder, Braun, Bodo Futerer, Fritz Eichler and Dieter Rams. So these are, four names that are associated with this product. The product does not have the full quintessential Braun design language there, but there are echoes of it coming through. And then this electric razor is iterated on. By multiple people, Gerd Muller is added into the mix. He does two of them, one together with Rams, one by himself, a technological innovation leads to, the ability to actually change the foil that sits on top of the electric razor. so that changed the design, Gerd Muller and Hans Gugelot load were responsible for that design. And then Dieter Rams gets thrown back into the mix, he together with Florian Seiffert, Robert Oberheim, they design the next iteration and so on and so forth. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous to think of Braun as a single company with a single visionary designer like Dieter Rams is absolutely incorrect. They're literally feeding off each other and they're passing these designs to each other. And you can see them processing each other's ideas. Another brief excursion, coffee machines. There's a beautiful coffee machine, which is the KSM, and Reinhold Weiss. I'm not just showing off that I can pronounce these names properly because I speak German, guys, but I just, I can't help myself right now, it's getting a bit much, but But Reinhard Weiss designed this wonderful coffee grinder, in such colors that were so fun, and Dieter Rams then takes that and iterates on it and comes up with a new design, and it's just such a wonderful, Evolution that you can see of these people coming together and you just know from the outputs that there's so many discussions happening here. So I really like that on product design version of that. I'm going to do another one here on scenius that I think part ofceniuors. And Brian, you know, hints at it is sometimes it's not even the person who's actively engaged with the project that gives you scenius and the power of, of a collective. Sometimes it's someone who sits apart and just has good taste, you know? A different example is Bell Labs. Bell Labs, of course, was the research group, that AT& T were able to finance because they were a huge monopoly. And that laboratory is unbelievable. the innovation that we have today is 100 percent due to the possibilities that Bell Labs were exploring in those early days. And the number of things that came out of that place are just ridiculous. Essentially the information age, the theory of how we actually think about data as binary. The idea of a bit, a binary digit that came from Bell Labs, it's Claude Shannon's work. I mean, the list is, is long. But one of the interesting things that comes out, from Bell Labs is, there are a lot of people that, Really didn't have their name on the patents, but without them, the patent would never have come about. and so this is quoting from a book called the idea factory bell labs and the great age of American innovation by John Gertner. He describes a funny moment that the lawyers inside of bell labs were confronting. This is about. A person called Harry Nyquist, who was a theoretical guy. But here's the story. Quote, some lawyers in the patent department at Bell Labs decided to study whether there was an organizing principle that could explain why certain individuals at the labs were more productive than others. They discerned only one common thread. Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn't the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, he drew people out. He got them thinking. More than anything, Nyquist asked good questions. Now that's pretty, that's pretty special. You could now start seeing how important those conversations are with people that are not in your field and you have to explain your problem and what you're stuck on. And sometimes they just say something that's wild and shakes you out of your situation. And then something amazing comes out of that. So I find that also an interesting piece to add to what makes a seniors. There are of course downsides to scenes and having groups coming together. I think the worst bits are just this idea of herding and the groupthink. Groupthink is the enemy of all of this stuff, but it's something that could emerge in a senior's type situation, right? So Anyway, I'm a big believer in this. I believe that seniors plus flat Decision making hierarchies, more egalitarian structures can really lead to a lot of interesting things. And I've experienced this a lot in my own work when I was a researcher as well. The best moments were the ones where we all felt like we were on the same level. We're all exploring the same question at the same time. Some of us have got different tools. Some of us have got decades more experience and have made many bigger contributions to the subject matter area. But in those moments where we're actually trying to figure something out, we're Pretty much all in the same footing. before I go on too long, it would be really nice to have your perspective, Ernest, on all of these things we've operated in similar arenas and we've been in innovation groups, what do you see coming, from this, this discussion? Are you more of a, you know, Hey, maybe we need one strong voice and a senior, or is it all seniors? Is it all genius? Where do you land on that spectrum?
Ernest:I'm glad you posed it like that because I do think in, after hearing your perspective on this, that our, points of view are more a difference of degree than of kind. If even that in that, having. Played music in the past and been part of bands. I absolutely recognize, um, the experience that Brian, was describing and the value of a seniors that, that kind of vibe that you develop with a group. And, um, I would say that in my. Um, the work experiences that I most enjoyed, uh, kind of can think of specific situations at Wieden and Kennedy, and then also at Nike, um, the times when you could feel that I guess seniors, develop amongst a team of people were the most exciting times and the times when we generated the best work, So, I guess, as you put it, my perspective would be that you, you need both, at least from what I've seen, I yes, you, to, especially to achieve things at, bigger scales, you definitely need people who are going to offer different perspectives and different domain expertise. But I do still think that you also need someone who's going to be that spark who. Keeps the core of the idea alive and moving forward. and that example I think about is something I said a few episodes back, that Netflix documentary about the greatest night in pop and, the recording of we are the world. And in that case, it was both, Lionel Richie, as well as Quincy Jones, who was the producer for the session, who had the vision for this song and, in this room full of creative people had the kind of like conviction, I guess, or, that spark that,, was able to galvanize all these people towards one purpose. And I, I think that not all the time, but in many cases that it typically is that that comes from a, a single person, at least from what I've seen, the clarity of vision, you mentioned that herding phenomenon. I think that absent that really clear vision, you do, at least I've seen that you do tend to get this sort of herding. And, um, so that's why I guess I feel like you need a balance of the two. the thing that comes to mind, I don't know if there's a word for this, but there's a diagram that gets used a lot in, product management and strategic planning of the double diamond, where you have, two diamonds side by side. And, you start at a point. and the idea is that you start at a point where you have, fewer things you're looking at, but I think you could also say that it's a point where you have fewer people and perhaps even just one person. And then as that idea gets established, you start to bring in more people and maybe the domain, that you're looking at can broaden, but then you reach a point where you decide, okay, we're going to do this. thing, take this path. And so then you get, that diamond narrows down again. And then once you get into the commercialization phase, you've got to go through that same process of starting narrow, going broader as you explore a few different potential design directions, and then you narrow down to one solution. So. In that diagram, you have that combination of those individual points where I think you do need that clarity of vision, which oftentimes I feel comes from that person who has that strong vision. And then over the course of the project, you get more people coming in and then at certain points, some, those folks drop off and then again, as you get into, other phases of the project. So. I guess I'm just saying, I think that, in my experience, you do need that combination. it's very difficult to do anything big on your own. So you know, obviously you need, to collaborate, but I, at least in my experience, it is really important to have that spark that comes from, an individual person's passion. And honestly, though, I'm, part of me wonders whether. My perspective here is just me and my contrarians streak. I have this tendency to kind of push back whenever I feel like, there is a bit of a herd mentality. And, I actually, Preparation for this. I just did a Google search for lone genius and the only results that came back were the myth of the lone genius. I even changed my search to the benefits of lone genius. And still the only results that came back with the myth of the lone genius. So, clearly there's this. perspective now that's very much shifted away from the lone genius idea and towards the idea that that's a myth. And I do think that this tendency that we have had in the past to lionize that individual is bogus. but I do think we've gone a bit too far in suggesting that, there's no place for that. individual, whatever you want to call it, genius or whatever, that individual person who really acts as, as, Essential spark to, whether it's music or creating products. I do think that there's a role for that. I came across this article, this blog post that I, I enjoyed it kind of helped to catalyze my thinking around this. Um,, we'll, share a link to it in the show notes, but it was titled the myth of the myth of the lone genius. And it was written by a person who writes under the name Rogers Bacon. I thought their perspective maybe an oversimplification, but interesting. Basically, they said that, um,, we should want exceptional people to believe they can do exceptional things on their own if they work hard enough at it. If everyone internalizes the myth of the lone genius to such a degree that they no longer even try to become lone geniuses, then the myth will become a reality. And I think that's an intentional overstatement, but I think there's some truth to that. Um, you had brought up the example of the mentats and Dune earlier, I think. It kind of reminds me of the pretty much disappearance of the citizen scientist, a hundred years ago, I think it was much more common that you'd have everyday citizens who would develop an interest in a specific area and would contribute, significant work. Into, learning in that area, and I think we've really lost that. As now people have been told, that's the domain of experts. You can't, you have nothing to add here because you're not an expert. And I think that's a loss for society. maybe this is overblown a little bit, but I do think that there's some truth to it is that we, if we all start to believe that there's no such thing as a lone genius, then, it'll become a self fulfilling prophecy. That'll be true. So I still, hold a candle for this idea that there's a place for the lone genius. Um, and the, um, my recommendation for the week this week, I'll kind of come back to a different example of that as well. But, sorry, it's a little bit of a meandering perspective on this, but, um, that's my take on it is, but, I don't know. Do you have any reaction, Joachim?
Joachim:I think what's coming to me right now is. A refinement of what I think Cines really is. I'm sure, you know, probably understands this. but you're right, Ernest. There's so many levels that you're right on, which is, you use the word spark and the kind of initial spark, the idea that something has to come from somewhere. And I think maybe the way to refine the idea of seniors is as opposed to it being just a collective thing and everyone just shows up and that just doesn't happen, right? It has to be an initial spark. And that initial spark is the magic thing. And the magic thing is that it could come from anywhere. It could be anyone that contributes to that initial spark. So if you wanted to really write down the protocol for seniors, it should be a collective where anyone can be that initial spark. And when that initial spark emerges, you all Join in on that journey and try to throw everything at it to get, to get it to emerge, to be something more powerful. When I talked about the spectrum, it feels like maybe that's the spectrum is that there is the spark, you move from a phase of that initial spark and. Everyone who gets excited about that can join that effort or they can pursue another group thing, but we're all operating together in a single scene and we can feed off each other that way. and you're right. There is also a certain degree of delusion. Self delusion is necessary. I say this a lot, you know, it's really funny. It's only when you mentioned this blog thing that I realized that I say this a lot, which is you have to delude yourself a little bit. You have to imagine that you're going to crack everything. You're going to figure this out. Because then you're going to start thinking about a problem deeply, and you're going to start applying yourself to that problem, and then hopefully you can operate in an environment where you can bring that very precious initial spark, show it to other people. And if you are in a healthy seniors, they will say, okay, yeah, I can see. It's not really what I'm into. I don't really get it. Yeah. But I think I can see how I could help. I think that's part of it, right? It's the ability to move from, delusional initiator to supportive, co conspirator in the project. And I think that maybe that's what makes up a good member of a seniors is that they're able to move seamlessly between latching onto someone's idea or being the person that starts the wagon going. You mentioned music. I really think music is maybe the smartest analogy to have in your mind when you're trying to build seniors in a corporation or in your group. Someone has to come up with that first riff, right? Someone has to have an idea of which people to bring in. My favorite one actually is, It's a, it's a cliche to talk about Miles Davis, but Miles Davis had so many phases in his career. But to me, the most interesting album that he ever did that I think is still probably one of my favorite, uh, quote unquote, jazz albums still up for debate, whether it's a jazz album, but it's in a silent way. Have you, have you listened to that one, Ernest, at
Ernest:I don't think so.
Joachim:Okay. So it's his, It's a transitionary album from his modal jazz period to a little bit more of a fusion sound. You know, he gets electric guitars on there. and he brings in Joe Zawinul on keyboards and Chick Corea is there as well. I mean, the mix of people on it is, is amazing. is unbelievable. But he had a vision for what he wanted to do on this album. And I think one of the things that he really wanted was he wanted this notion of like a drone, and when you hear the album, it's totally there, but everyone's contributing to that drone in different ways. There are organs, there are roads, there's a guitar, there's bass, there's the drums. everyone contributes to that vision of having this thing. But then the crazy thing about this album is that once it's recorded, once all the sessions are done, the records producer Tio Macero goes off. And he then edits the album together. So it's not one take, put a mic in a room. Everyone plays, here's the head. Everyone does their solo, repeat, done. they recorded stuff and then TMSR comes in. And after the fact in the studio by himself, he starts splicing things together. He starts looping things again. In fact, the opening track, the first couple of minutes repeat at the end of it. So it's a sandwich of. the same recording at the beginning and at the end and in the middle there's a kind of more trippy section a crazy idea where does that come from and you know miles is letting him get away with this stuff and he's saying that's cool you know that gets at the idea that i was trying to push for and you know let's go with it it's not a jazz album so i think the fact that Someone like Miles Davis could say, I've made jazz albums. I don't want to make another jazz album. That's that initial spark. And then they gathered all these musicians together. And, I would recommend first listening to the album as it is, because it's perfect. but then if you're comfortable with it and it's locked in your mind enough, then you can go off and listen to the complete sessions because that's. really interesting to just see how those first sessions sounded. they sounded nothing like where they were,, in the end. It was very, I don't want to call it traditional because it was already a little bit non traditional, but there's a little bit of swing in some of those beats and then slowly they iterate and they strip away things and the musicians start taking a backseat to just creating, And ambience and something pretty cool comes out of it. it's a great album, but I think it gets at that idea of what you're pushing for and it's, which is, I think, and I, I agree with that, it's a combination of the vision and everyone coming around that and saying, yeah, I could get behind that. I can see what, and also having been chosen to join that album says something, right? It's saying, this is the direction I want to push into. So whatever you're feeling from this direction, that's what I want on the record, I'm not going to micromanage. we're creating something together, but it still has to be in line with this overall overarching goal that we're trying to hit of whatever this new sound is. Definitely would recommend that album. And I think it's also a great musical embodiment of seniors. I think you're, you're right on the money with that one, Ernest, that musics and bands and this moving from singular vision to seniors and that seamless shifting of your perspective is kind of where the magic lies. It can't just be groupthink. I think as you were speaking, I just had this nightmare vision of what it was like, in typical corporations where you all just sit in a room with an empty whiteboard and they say, okay, idea time, brainstorm, you know, and you know, this is not, this isn't good, I've mentioned this example in the past, which was Gore, people, the makers of Gore Tex, they run a culture that moves very much from, initial seed idea. and then bring the idea to the group, bring the idea to the scene and everyone gets to kind of poke at it and learn more and contribute if they want to. And the strength of the number of people that are contributing to it is, a measure of how good the idea is and how you've been able to attract people to the concept. But that feels very much, there's a single person who is delusional enough to think that they have figured something deep, deep out. And they've gone to this room and they say, here's the idea. And. The scene emerges from that. Someone is pitching, someone has an idea, and then you can decide whether you want to go with that or do something else by yourself. But the interesting thing there is, of course, if you decide to go it alone and no one believes in you, you're going alone. You're the lone wolf, right? And so there's a natural way that you have to ask yourself, is this a moment where I just really need to pursue this thing and there's no need for seniors? I think even this conversation is like, let's not get too meta, but there's aspects of how we've even come into this conversation, right? I presented here and say, look, senior says everything. And then you're here, Ernest, there's another voice that says, wait a minute. I don't buy that. And then something much more practical comes out of it where we actually think about this idea more deeply and think, well, actually, yeah, it's, it's, it's a hybrid. It never is one or the other. It's, it's moving between those two phases. The double triangle, what was the
Ernest:Yeah, double diamond, yeah.
Joachim:double diamond. Yeah, what a great overused image, but probably captures the essence of what we're trying to get at better than, uh, in most sittings. But as with all corporate stuff has been abused so badly that it's lost its meaning. So let's try and save it in this context. I'm glad you brought that back. we'll make that the drawing maybe for the thumbnail for the episode.
Ernest:Well, I think the examples you've shared are really persuasive. Brawn and then also,, Bell Labs. I think that's such a great example of this. seniors in action. And then Gore as well as a more contemporary example of showing that, this isn't just something that worked in the past. It's absolutely something that can continue to work today. I think I can imagine that it would be really fun to work in that kind of environment and fulfilling because you I mean, it's kind of like being in a band. You just feel like you can kind of riff off of each other and can, and are building something rather than always starting from scratch. Uh, at least that's my sense of it from the outside. It sounds like it'd be a really exciting environment to work in.
Joachim:I agree. My group at Nike, that was led by Santosh. we had a real mixed bag of people in it. Santosh's, the manager's background was signal processing. He'd been at Nike for a long time. He'd worked on various projects there in hardware. And then we had, Ian, who is a biomechanics specialist tons of experience in, sports and movement. And we had a biostatistician, Priti, and then me, who's an economist. And when Santosh introduced the team to me, I thought, what the hell are we going to do? Everyone had their own perspectives, their training shaped that worldview. You come into that scene and you say, this is the direction, I think this makes the most sense. You're planting a flag and everyone just looks at it and goes, is that. Is that really what we want to do? And how would you do it? And having people outside of your discipline, asking questions and not in an aggressive way in a much more, explain it to me like I'm five, It's a very precious thing. When you say here's my sandbox, I feel it's a very emotional thing to say. Here's the sandbox. This is what I've been thinking about. And then everyone comes in and they sit in that sandbox and there's nothing worse than someone kicking everything over. or like building their own stuff on top of what you've made. It's like first, if they're respectful, there's a kind of, first a moment of tell me what's in the sandbox and then I can see what we should do about it. And is this the right way to go?
Ernest:Right,
Joachim:I still hold that, that dynamic and the cross disciplinary, interdisciplinary nature of that group in high regard. I think it was a pretty, a pretty cool spot to be in. And, yeah, I enjoyed it. So yeah, kudos, Santosh, if you're listening. Um,
Ernest:that's awesome. I think it's great to have a concrete example, that you can point to as well. Well, all right, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you. Do you believe a scenius is the best way to foster innovation or are you a believer in the lone genius? Let us know what you think at learnmakelearn@gmail.Com. Now let's move on to our recommendations of the week and I'll get us started. But, uh,
Joachim:Ah, Ernest, I'm so, I can't believe you're doing this. I'm going to interrupt the normal flow because to the listeners, Ernest has written down in a document that we share what his recommendation is. And I'm, I am, I have no words. But. Well done. Well done for getting there. Well done for getting there first. Well done.
Ernest:I must admit, it was sparked by a conversation we've had offline via text, Joachim had brought this up. So my recommendation is a series called Halt and Catch Fire. It was an American TV series that debuted in 2016 and ran for four seasons in the US. It was on the AMC network, but, it's something that, Joachim had brought up, I think in the context of the, intro and the music, right?
Joachim:Such a great opening credit scene. Yeah. And the
Ernest:that That inspired me, your text from a little while back inspired me to start re watching it again. It's a series that I loved when I first encountered it. And, so I started re watching it and just, you Uh, was wowed again by how phenomenal it is in, really every way. Um, Like you're, he was saying the intro is phenomenal and it's beautiful, but also the intro music is fantastic. but also the writing and the acting, and the production for a show that was on basic cable in the U S it's just has no business being as good as it was. and it was it to the best of my knowledge created by first time show runners, Christopher Cantwell and Christopher Rogers. I think maybe a great example of people who just didn't know better, so they created something amazing, but for anyone who hasn't seen this series, it depicts a fictionalized insider's view of the PC revolution of the eighties. And then the early days of the web. and each season it's really, I think, cleverly structured. Each season is kind of a different sort of epoch in the evolution of PCs and then into the web. and, but it's, follows the same characters, so I forget the names of the characters, but the actors are Lee Pace, who plays sort of like a Steve Jobs like figure, at least in the first season, Scoot McNairy, who's kind of like um, uh,, Steve Wozniak kind of figure. Um, he's sort of more of the true, Engineer, whereas Pace is more, he actually calls himself the product manager, which is really interesting, but more of the marketing guy and then Mackenzie Davis, who's phenomenal and who's very much sort of the lone genius programmer. in the first season, she writes the BIOS for this company's, a PC clone and then Kerry Bishé, who's the wife of Scoot McNary's character and who's a fantastic engineer in her own right and the evolution of her character over the course of the four seasons is also very interesting. But um, an amazing series. If you have any interest in technology, I think it's just a phenomenal thing that you'll love. What's great about it is that it is set in the real world. So, you know,, I mentioned Lee Pace plays this sort of Steve Jobs like character, but in the world of the show, Apple and Steve Jobs exist, and Bill Gates exists, and they refer to them. So I thought that was very interesting that they didn't try to pretend that these real figures didn't exist. but at the same time, they pull in these, attributes of these icons in the space, over the course of the four the reason I highlighted wanted to highlight it today is I do think that there are elements of this, I think combination of lone genius and scenius that you see playing out over the course of really all of the seasons, but, I'm on the first rewatching the first season and you can really see those dynamics playing out where there are different points where different individuals have to play this genius role. But Then they bring it back into the context of the scenius that's been created it only through the scenius are they able to ultimately create this remarkable product that's kind of greater than the sum of its parts. Another reason I love it is because, like I mentioned, Lee Pace mentions that he's the product manager and I, this is something I'd mentioned to Joachim, I think it's the only thing I've seen that address why really smart, talented people would want to work for someone as terrible to work for as Steve Jobs is said to be, Lee Pace really, I think does a great job with embodying that person who's just incredibly self centered, and yet at the same time has this magnetism and this clarity of vision that inspires these very talented people around him to do the best work of their lives. And a lot of people who've worked with Jobs have said that he's in so many ways a terrible person, but he, they did the best work of their lives when they were working with him. So, that was, Something that I had hoped would be confronted in the Steve Jobs movie, and I don't think was at all, but I think the series, Halt and Catch Fire does an incredible job of capturing that and then really building on that in subsequent seasons in interesting ways. So Halt and Catch Fire. I think it's phenomenal. Um,, I purchased it through iTunes. I'm not sure if it's. last time I checked it wasn't, which is a bummer, so I think you may have to purchase it, but, um,
Joachim:It is on I
Ernest:Oh, okay.
Joachim:to that channel somehow, you can do it through, I think some of the big platforms. Then you can watch all seasons
Ernest:That's I'm glad you, you saw that. so I'd say, start with the first season and see what you think. And I think you'll get hooked. Um, but, uh, so that's my recommendation that we cover to you. Do you have a recommendation?
Joachim:I can't, let you get away with that. It's such a good show. I, it is such a good show. My wife and myself, we periodically will rewatch it and it has so many elements that are fantastic, it is the, it's the lone genius succeeding and failing and being terrible and being great, it's the seniors coming together, falling apart, it's absolutely great, it goes through so many phases, and for such a short run, they really just hit all of the notes, and The character development is absolutely just off the charts. It's so, it's so brilliant. I didn't realize that this was their first show, but I can kind of see maybe how they pitched it, because they probably said it's like Mad Men, but with computers because, Lee Pace's character right at the beginning, Joe McMillan, is way too cool for school, and he's got a great suit, and he is, of course, a very handsome man, so it all plays into the Don Draper, Jon Hamm, dynamic, so they found the right character in that to get the show kicked off, um, But, the show evolves so much more. I've read interviews where the creators have pointed this out, that they started seeing these four actors together. And the dynamic that emerged from that, they just realized this is a much bigger show than just, the character of Joe McMillan being the head and everyone kind of being a side character. This is more scenius plus genius, right? Everyone is. somehow gifted in their direction, and they all have very strong opinions. It kind of comes out much more in second season onwards. The first season is very much more of a, let's follow Joe. But then everyone does their thing and says, no, no, no, we listened to Joe. And as you said, they're leaning on real events and, They're alluding to innovations that we all experienced if we were growing up around that time, especially the latest seasons around World Wide Web and the development of that just absolutely. It's so good. Yeah. I, I'm just lending more weight to what you've said, Ernest, because it is an incredibly underappreciated show I really, man, it's time to re watch it, I think. I'm ready to re watch it again.
Ernest:Yeah.
Joachim:back into that, yeah.
Ernest:Sorry for stealing it from you. Right.
Joachim:together, right? The, the communal part. And I'm just adding weight to what you spearheaded there. But Yeah, I would very much recommend that show. And stick with it because the first season is, I think it really picks up towards the end of the first season when they, have to work together and you start seeing them as characters and mesh in each other's lives and then work together. Well, on that note, actually, it's funny. Yeah. My, my recommendation is something, quite focused and small in some ways, but touches on these early days of community and especially community on the web. I was watching a documentary by Adam Curtis. I think I've mentioned him in the past and this was a documentary. I have watched too many of them now and they're all blurring into one, but I believe this one came out in, one of the episodes of his documentary called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which is about the early days of Silicon Valley. cyber libertarianism, the strange connections to Ayn Rand and so on, but he does. Pull out this really interesting blog post. And it was written by, the user handle was humdog and they wrote this in 1994, and it was called Pandora's box on community in cyberspace. So the use of the word cyberspace kind of ages the document. But I just wanted to read one quick paragraph from it. It's a really interesting take on things. and so humdog wrote this. I have seen many people spill their guts online. And I did so myself until at last, I began to see that I had commodified myself. Commodification means that you turn something into a product, which has a money value. I created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board I was posting to. And that commodity was being sold to other commodity consumer entities as entertainment. That means that I sold my soul like a tennis shoe and I derived no profit from the sale of my soul. So I just, it really struck me as a incredible, incredibly incisive, piece of writing. This is 1994, so 30 years ago. we're very much in the game of saying this time is different, but, in so many ways, this time has kind of happened before, and so it's heartening and disheartening at the same time to, to understand that in some ways, this is a repetition of what's come before, in a slightly modified way, but the underlying essence of what we're facing as a problem is still there. So, we'll link to that text. There's a lot more to it, of course, but this was basically humdog sign off where she's saying, I'm done with this online culture and bulletin boards and all of that. Yeah, an interesting look at the past and looking at the present as well. So that, that's my recommendation for this week.
Ernest:Oh, that's a great one. All right. Well, I think that does it for us. Thank you so much for joining us here at learn, make, learn. As I mentioned, we want to hear from you. So please send any questions or feedback to learnmakelearn@gmail.Com and tell your friends about us. Now our next episode is going to be a doozy. We're going to discuss whether products can or should be political. Joachim and I haven't talked through this in advance, so I don't know where he stands on this and vice versa. So it should be a lively conversation. And we hope you'll join us for that conversation on the next Learn, Make, Learn.
