Working Thoughts 2/3/09One final retail example is described beautifully by my friend Paco Underhill, a shopping-pattern guru. In his book, Why We Buy, he describes how shoppers who do not have a shopping basket or shopping cart go quickly to the checkout when their arms get full. Okay...so what? A casual observer says that is obvious. A savvier approach might be to interview people in a checkout line with an armful of goods to ask where they were three minutes earlier and if they would have considered buying anything else if it hadn't been so difficult to carry so many items. Underhill concludes that more establishments should consider putting shopping baskets in the middle of the store to keep customers in shopping mode longer (since research showed that few would go back to the front of the store to get a cart once engaged with shopping).

To have the mental fortitude to persevere through failures requires a true commitment to long term goals. Doing your best for countless hours of practice and still not being the best is heart breaking. But to gain mastery, you must accept pain and respond with resiliency.The best predictor of success the researchers found was the prospective cadets’ ratings on a noncognitive, nonphysical trait known as “grit” – defined as “perseverance and passion for long term goals.”
And then something happened that awakened my soul. Professor Dockery's eyes welled up with tears. Here is a man in his fifties, reading aloud to a class of drifting 21 year olds and he is crying. This story, this stringing together of words, stirred emotions in him to the point of having to stop to collect himself. James Joyce's "The Dead" provokes the reader to put himself in Gabriel's shoes. How would you feel? Life changes during the most ordinary of times.She was fast asleep.
Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair:and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.
Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech,from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face fora moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes:that would happen very soon.
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman,but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their way ward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.
An exciting new year is upon us. Working Thoughts has several projects that are nearing completion and will see the light in 2010. I hope each of you are happy, healthy, and keep reading. << MORE >>2010
My God! It's full of stars!
“These weren’t sloppy people,” Dunbar says. “They were working in some of the finest labs in the world. But experiments rarely tell us what we think they’re going to tell us. That’s the dirty secret of science.”
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Jobs Are on the Way!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/226493
Second, when demand begins to pick up, businesses prod existing workers to work harder. Which is why we've just witnessed the fastest two-quarter productivity surge since 1961.
Third, when growth persists, bosses give part-time workers more hours or bring on temporary workers. In November, the economy added 52,000 temporary jobs, the largest addition since 2004, and retail hiring for the Christmas season is up 37 percent this year.
The Census Bureau is hiring 1.2 million people in preparation for the 2010 census.
The big rap on the stimulus—it wouldn't happen fast enough—may turn out to be one of its virtues. Since it was passed in February 2009, only $237.6 billion (30 percent) of the $787 billion package has entered the economy
A growing global economy and the weak dollar point to a second source of support for job growth: exports. Exports fell from $164 billion in July 2008 to $122 billion in April 2009, but they've risen every month since then, to $137 billion in October. On Dec. 4, Boeing and Korean Air announced an order for five 747-8 Intercontinental jetliners totaling $1.5 billion.
Five years ago, Google had about 2,300 employees. Today, it has about 20,000. Did any seer envision that in December 2004? Economists can't forecast what will happen in five months, let alone five years.
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Ben, executives also need to know that they don’t have to go it alone.Companies can reduce risk AND improve their post-recession competitiveness by partnering with innovation specialists. If, that is, the innovation consultancy gets paid to perform, not just muse. At Fahrenheit 212, we share innovation’s risks and rewards with our clients. It’s a model that’s especially ripe for these times.I was intrigued and we did a little email interview that I posted back in June called An Interview with Joy Bergmann of Fahrenheit 212. Here's an excerpt:
7) If Fahrenheit 212 helps other companies be innovative, then you must have some very talented individuals working there. How would you describe them or what characteristics do they have?So I was happy to see on Fortune.com today a long feature piece on Fahrenheit 212 and the type of company they have. From how they are described, it sounds like they are set to grow tremendously over the next 3 years. And this is the work I often try to cite as the future: creative problem solving as a team. Math and science are very much needed, but so are those that can see something that doesn't exist yet and make it come to life.
The Fahrenheit 212 crew is without question the most remarkable group I’ve ever encountered. Everyone here is witty, well-traveled, energetic, caring and madly CURIOUS.
Lots of companies like to think of their culture as collaborative, but ours is relentlessly so. Teams propel each other to smarter strategies, better ideas and bigger wins.What’s extraordinary is how constructive, fun and supportive the whole vibe is.
We’re also quite diverse. Though a small firm, we hail from five different countries and celebrate our differences. For example, one innovation director was born in Lebanon, raised in France and Canada, studied architecture, has a foodie blog, aspires to be a perfumer and considers a typical morning to include revolutionizing consumer banking, inventing a new cocktail category and designing a necklace. One illustrator is also a licensed massage therapist, a weekend taxidermist and a museum-worthy oil painter. We’re not a dull group!
A recent study published by Bain &Company illustrates the potential benefits of making a bold move when the going gets tough.
Bain studied over 200 companies across categories and came to three conclusions worthy of consideration at this moment:
- Twice as many companies made the leap from laggards to leaders during the last recession as during surrounding periods of economic calm.
- More than a fifth of companies in the bottom quartile in their industries jumped to the top quartile during the last recession. Meanwhile, over a fifth of all “leadership companies” — those in the top quartile of financial performance in their industry — fell to the bottom quartile.
- Of the firms that made major gains in revenue or profitability during the last recession, more than 70 percent sustained those gains through the next boom cycle. The corollary was also true: fewer than 30 percent of those that lost ground were able to regain their positions.
The question is how?
As we said at the outset, calls for change can be more of a nuisance than a help if they don’t offer advice on “how” to change. We believe there are four critical steps in implementing a truly successful innovation program:
Step One: Break out of business as usual
Whenever you’re setting out to change the game, define the outcome you want to achieve and then assess what must be true to get there. Working backwards ensures you stay focused on the big goal and becomes a useful filter as you’re defining the challenges and key success factors that actually matter. A great example of this came from NASA in 1961. When President Kennedy proclaimed that the US would be on the moon by the end of the decade,the lead scientist at NASA said something along the lines of “We know where the moon is, we know where the earth is, everything else is just details.” Genius.



Spread Awareness. Support Data.
Each series we choose an open data source,analyze and visualize it, and design three original prints that each provides a unique view into the data. Each print tells you a story.
This series is on education. Buy the series for yourself, or send it to an education department near you.
Who We Are
Nathan Yau shares his thoughts on data, statistics, and design at FlowingData. He is a statistics graduate student, with a focus on data visualization, at UCLA.
Robert A. Di Ieso, Jr. is a designer and illustrator working out of Brooklyn, NY. Some of his recent clients are The New York Times, Time Inc., Fast Company Magazine, and Good Magazine.
Atley G. Kasky lives in Los Angeles and works as a graphic designer at GOOD; he also co-curates But Does it Float. He likes letters and the equally vital spaces between them.