says the controversial author Nassim Nicholas Taleb in “The Black Swan”. This is also the chapter in his excellent book (even though the tone is sometimes exasperatingly arrogant) where Taleb offers some hints on how to leverage the unknown unknown.
1. Avoid negative-Black Swan business where the unexpected can have a huge impact (e.g. Madoff) and expose yourself to positive-Black Swans (e.g. research or venture capital).
2. Invest in preparedness rather than in prediction (Black Swans are unpredictable anyway). Instead e.g. of trying to predict the next earthquake in San Francisco, prepare the citizens and the infrastructure necessary to mitigate the impact of the earthquake.
3. Therefore, seize any opportunity to be exposed to a positive-Black Swan. Taleb advocates for living in cities and going to parties to gain exposure to the odds of serendipity. Please have a look at the long list of examples of serendipity in science and technology.
Interested? The following video gives a short introduction to the current financial crisis viewed through the eyes of Taleb and his mentor Benoit Mandelbrot.
December, 2008
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“Nobody Knows Anything”
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008SAP’s approach to sustainability
Monday, December 8th, 2008Disclaimer: I’m an SAP employee.
Eventually, the two main topics of my professional career get together with SAP’s approach to sustainability. On the one hand the environmental management topics familiar since the study of environmental sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, on the other hand SAP as an employer of choice who encourages personal development, gives a tremendous amount of degrees of freedom to his employees, and offers a flexible workplace. This was about the “What”-dimension of sustainability which seems to be shared by most of the voters on the current SAP Vote on Sustainability (see also the vote results).
Moreover from a knowledge manager’s point of view, I’m glad that SAP encourages the 2.0-kind of interactions with its stakeholders (see the new Sustainability Report collaborative workspace).
Anyway, what do the figures in the report mean? Let’s take one example: the close to 400,000 metric tons of overall global carbon dioxide emissions by SAP employees (incl. business travel and car fleet) in 2007. The absolute number corresponds to the carbon dioxide emissions of the country of Bhutan. If you divide these emissions by the 44,000 employees you get about 9.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per SAP employee. This corresponds to the average emission by a citizen of South Africa. The ratio of GDP (aka revenue) per metric ton of carbon dioxide emission is about 33 for SAP (excellent in comparison with countries).
Thank you, James Farrar (see also SUN’s blog on Corporate Social Responsibility).
Add Visual Thinking to Your Toolbox
Monday, December 1st, 2008I remember the days when I first used mindmapping to sketch ideas, gather requirements just-in-time or plan projects. First, people are surprised and relunctant: they have learnt e.g. that you take note in a digital order, bullet by bullet. So, the adoption rate of mindmapping was not that high in those days. Meanwhile companies like MindJet have sold more than one million licenses of mindmapping software packages.
I must admit that I’ve been a bit powerpoint-overeaten for the first two years with my present company. So, the “Back of the Napkin” hit my attention:
Visual Thinking is an extraordinary powerful way to solve problems, and though it may appear to be something new, the fact is that we already know how to do it.
Dan Roam has published this very useful book on how to make use of the visual thinking skills each of us has. His website outlines the basic toolset, the Google Talk session gives a vivid introduction (see below), and his book shows a lot of real-life examples for your “visual thinking MBA”.
