E-Day at Stanford focuses on Play at Work
I spent an enjoyable day at the Stanford engineering alum event called EDay. I've been to these every year, and I always come away feeling energized about the wonderful world of entrepreneurism. Great talks by David Kelly of Ideo, Michael Schrage of MIT Media Lab, Bob Sutton of Stanford GSB, and finally Richard Tait of Cranium. I caught a couple of famous VCs, Vinod Kosla and Steve Jurvetson, in the crowd.
Many helpful take-aways from the talks, most notably:
- Vu Ja De - Sutton's word for seeing the same old thing as something new
- T-shaped students - Kelly's visual metaphor describing the ideal student, depth in a particularly area, but breadth and empathy across disciplines.
- Example of the 20'x2' board placed on the ground, and asking people to walk along it. People will act silly, dance, do all sorts of interesting and creative things. But then when the board is raised 20' off the ground and people are asked to walk along it again, all creativity stops. Makes the point about over managing or creating a tense work environment and that it makes for less creative employees.
- "When you plan that seed in the ground, you don't dig it up each week to see how it's doing"
- Schrage's first slide was called "Opening Suckup" and it said "The content of the audience is more imporant the the content of the talk"
- Steve Jobs took the $400 mouse idea and figured out how to mass produce it for $10 each by building a prototype from a Ban Roll On ball.
- Schrage's advice to a question on "how can I used this at work", he said "find a tool that you use internally at work and figure out a way to use it to make it easier for your customers to buy your stuff. You'll probably find that it's too complex, and you can have fun making it super simple.
- One of my lunch partners mentioned about teaching kids to build with Legos, and the challenge of teaching them that you don't need to have the Legos to build things.
- Play is usually a risky affair, and there is always a chance that you'll kill yourself while playing. But the most intelligent creatures actually play more.
- Tait: if the buyer won't answer your call or won't return your calls, find out who his or her best friend is and show them your product.
- Tait's professional credo: "Orville Wright did not have a pilot's license."
Best quote of a quote, from Schrage when following up on Kelly's mention of the excitement inherent in all trips to NYC and the ensuing cab ride: Woody Allen from Manhatten: "You're so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter".
[Steve Jurvetson has some notes from EDay on his blog]
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