"I've observed that having an abundance mentality is crucial to a high performance organization. Leaders don't need to cultivate an abundance mentality to promote blogging, they need to promote an abundance mentality because that how you create an organization that works. The lack of an abundance mentality leads to an organization that doesn't communicate, doesn't act like a team, and eventually doesn't accomplish very much."

Phil Windley (Utah CIO),"An Abundance Mentality", Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog, 1 Oct 2002.

11:12:50 PM    

12. I'm not in college yet, but I think I'd like to work at IDEO someday.

That's great. We like to encourage design in everybody, but especially junior high and high schoolers. There are many books about the fields of engineering and design over the last hundred years. Here are some subjects you might want to learn more about.

You may have heard of the great inventors Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Alexander Graham Bell. But there are many others: Chester Carlson invented the copy machine; Douglas Englebart helped create the modern computer, including the mouse; Paul MacCready developed a human-powered flying machine, the Gossamer Condor; and Bert Rutan developed Voyager, a plane that flew nonstop around the world. Their stories are classics of how a determined visionary with an idea can change the world.

Architecture and industrial design have had a tremendous impact on society, and you should learn about such people as William Morris, Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, Harley Earl, Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, le Corbusier, Ettore Sottsass, and a very influential school called the Bauhaus.

There are also many books about design: Donald Norman's books (including The Design of Everyday Things) are about the difference between good and bad design; Henry Petroski's books (including Invention by Design and The Pencil) tell the stories behind everyday objects like aluminum cans and paper clips; Edward Tufte's books (including The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) address communication and graphics; and Jim Adams's book Conceptual Blockbusting can help you learn to think better. There's even a book about IDEO called The Art of Innovation, which you can read about here.

11:11:27 PM