“I could be wrong now . . . but I don’t think so.”
– Randy Newman, singing the theme song from the TV show “Monk”
Writing in the August 2011 issue of The Retail Observer, Moe Lastfogel says that too many people in business fear being wrong. They confuse making mistakes with defects of character. Because of the perception of errors as a sign of weakness, they choke off a source of ideas that can differentiate their company from the competition.
He quotes Kathryn Shulz, author of Being Wrong, as saying that while making mistakes is part of the human condition, it’s viewed as shameful and degenerate in business. “In this rather despairing view our errors are evidence of our gravest social, intellectual and moral failings. Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list.”
The irony is that mistakes can lead to discovery, she says. “Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.” Think of the experiments that led to penicillin and the light bulb.
Lastfogel reinforces that view with a few ideas of his own. “At what stage in our life did we start believing that we need to be perfect at everything we do? In the real world, we need to be wrong, not deterred, just wrong sometimes. We need to push our comfort zones to get ahead.”
That’s especially true for creatives, who need that process of trial and success, of finding what works by working through what doesn’t. As a process it’s humble and inefficient but it can create breakout solutions. And as the twin forces of recession and contention continue to infect our spirit, all of us could use an infusion of unconventional thinking.
The kayak glides across the lake like an images in a dream, and only when I think about it, when the spinning paddles slow does the wind nudge small blue caps against the hull and the bow slaps the water like a fist.
A bear crosses the ridge this morning 50 feet from the house, a black hole of primal energy surfing the woods for the huckleberries that are beginning to ripen. We watch from the safety of glass as it passes and keep a weather eye on the dog, who sniffs the grass at the end of her lead, unaware of the animal. The bear is alone, no trailing cubs to spark an angry outburst, yet with its massive shoulders and haunch she is a force to avoid, like a tropical storm that could strengthen at any moment.
It’s trash day in our neighborhood and we wonder if she’s hunting for the garbage cans that line the road. We’ll know in a few minutes when we slide into cars for the trek to work. She lumbers down the slope toward the neighbor’s screened porch, unaware of the watchers at the edge of the woods, her legs like two humans moving under a blanket, her pace as easy as sleep.
The Associated Libraries of Monroe County will present the second annual Monroe County Book Expo on Saturday, July 23, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Eastern Monroe Public Library in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. The event is free and open to the public.
The expo will highlight books written and/or published by residents of Monroe and other Eastern Pennsylvania counties. The day is intended to encourage aspiring writers and support the exchange of ideas about the creative process and the publishing industry. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet and visit with local authors, and to purchase copies of their works. Books will be sold by the individual authors at their tables.
Two special programs will be featured during the day. At 11 a.m. there will be a panel discussion entitled “Self-Publishing: Pitfalls and Rewards.” This will be followed by a presentation at 2 p.m. by author Alissa Grosso, whose debut novel for young adults, Popular, was recently published by Flux.
Authors may register to participate online.
For more information, call library Director Barbara Keiser (570) 421-0800, extension 13.
The Monroe County Book Expo is a project of the Associated Libraries of Monroe County, which includes Barrett-Paradise Friendly Library, Clymer Library, Eastern Monroe Public Library, Pocono Mountain Public Library and Western Pocono Community Library.
More Americans own e-book readers than tablet computers, according to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Last year tablets like the iPad had a slight lead over e-readers such as Kindle and Nook. But by May of this year, 12% of U.S. adults said they own an e-reader while 8% own a tablet computer.
“The percent of U.S. adults with an e-book reader doubled from 6% to 12% between November 2010 and May 2011,” Pew reports. “Hispanic adults, adults younger than age 65, college graduates and those living in households with incomes of at least $75,000 are most likely to own e-book readers. Parents are also more likely than non-parents to own these devices.”
Owning one doesn’t mean you can’t own the other. The survey noted an overlap in ownership, with 3% of U.S. adults owning both devices. Nine percent own an e-book reader but not a tablet while 5% own a tablet computer but not an e-reader.
We’ve taken to walking in the evening after dinner. The road rises steeply to meet us, you can feel it in your calves, as if gravity increases with altitude. Trees reach across to shake hands, congratulating each other on another fine day. Lilies start to spiral inward, their yellow throats glowing in faces of orange. Under the pines the darkness condenses from the air and settles like silt in a pond. It rounds the edges, turns trees into hills, gives them a solid shape you can feel a hundred yards away. Reminds me of “Evening” from the The Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Passed.”
Richard Slee founded the precursor to biologics giant Sanofi Pasteur because he wanted to eradicate smallpox. And because he fell in love with the innkeeper’s daughter. The first wouldn’t have happened without the second.
Dr. Slee decided to launch his business in the Pocono Mountains after he visited the Swiftwater Inn, where he met the owner’s daughter, a 20-year-old beauty who got him thinking of things other than vaccines.
If you’d like to drop by the Paradise Township Municipal Building at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 5 we can talk about how Dr. Slee built a marriage and a career among the cows he raised to grow the smallpox vaccine. We’ll discuss why Slee founded the lab and how his personal story guided the writing of the company’s corporate history, The Spirit of Swiftwater: 100 Years at the Pocono Labs.
The occasion is the monthly meeting of the Paradise Township Historical Society, which is keenly interested in the old Pocono Biological Laboratories since part of the successor facilities lie within the township borders. To get to the meeting head east on Route 940 from Mount Pocono and take a right around the point where Route 390 splits to the left. The building is located at 293 Keokee Chapel Lane, Cresco.
Online retailer Amazon.com said today that it’s selling more electronic books than printed versions. The company says it sells 105 e-books for every 100 physical copies it sells.
Next Tuesday rival Barnes & Noble will ratchet up the competition when it introduces a new generation Nook e-reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.
B&N chief executive William Lynch told the Wall Street Journal that despite a late start his company has captured 25% of the digital books market. It has also grabbed a good chunk of the market for electronic magazine subscriptions. “We’ve also sold more than 1.5 million magazine subscription orders and single copy sales on the Nook newsstand.”
The irony of Tuesday’s announcement (or maybe the marketing strategy) is that it happens during the week of BookExpo America (BEA), which bills itself as the largest publishing event in North America. It has traditionally promoted paper copies. This year BEA will co-host a session on electronic publications with the IDPF Digital Book Conference 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Tom Wujec stands before the crowd at this year’s TED conference and talks about a tool that restores balance to the team-building process. As he says on his website, the Marshmallow Challenge is a “fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity.”
But it’s more than that.
The task looks simple: in 18 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. And after 18 minutes, it needs to stay there.
The real lesson has as much to do with creativity as with collaboration, as Wujec shows when he reveals who does well and who doesn’t during the challenge. The worst performers are recent graduates of business schools. The best performers are architects and engineers — no upset there. The surprise is that after that group, the best performers are kindergarten students.
Wujec is a fellow at Autodesk, which makes software for the design and engineering community, so he should know about visual collaboration and teamwork. So when he says that B-school grads do poorly because “they are trained to find the single right plan,” it’s time to re-examine the model. Kindergarteners do well because they build prototypes. They experiment. They have fun without latching onto a single solution at the beginning.
No right or wrong, at least not at first. Just an openness to explore the possibilities. Then we turn it over to the engineers. After all, we want whatever we’re creating to work.
Maybe it’s the wedding of Price William and Kate Middleton that brings it to mind but it seems as if Victorian England is all the rage in fiction. What might have started with Sherlock Holmes in 1887 has morphed into young adult books, mysteries and a branch of science fiction called steampunk that together deliver an apocalyptic message finely tuned for our times.
Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart quartet heads the list of YA books that bring London of the late 1800s to life. The lead figure in The Ruby in the Smoke and the novels that follow is a brave 16-year-old who surmounts her fears to discover the fate of her father, and her own strength.
Pullman populates his London of 1872 with finery and fops, dirt and decay. For every noble move by the Baker Street Irregulars who support Sally the underworld launches a counter offensive that would discourage all but the most resourceful. The author’s voice rings of an authentic England, from descriptions to slang to the narrator’s comforting address to the reader.
Pullman (The Golden Compass) has written other novels with resolute female characters but the Lockhart books stand as some of his best, a series that adults as well as teens will find refreshingly current.
Will Thomas could have been channeling Pullman in the first of his Barker and Llewelyn mysteries, Some Danger Involved, set 12 years later. Thomas’ characters, a private detective who calls himself an enquiry agent and his assistant, investigate the source of anti-Semitic activities and in the process provide readers with a swift course in forgotten history. As with Pullman’s work, the interest lies in a fast romp by sympathetic characters through a dark and secret world, an alternate reality that seems as real as our own.
Then there’s the wildly successful Anne Perry, who has penned two Victorian series, one featuring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt and a second starring investigator William Monk. Both evoke the class distinctions as well as the crimes of the era.
Steampunk pushes reality in an alternate direction. A subgenre of science fiction steampunk evokes an era where steam power, dirigibles and analog devices rule. One of the earliest examples is the 1990 novel The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. If you saw the 2009 movie version of Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, you have an idea of the visuals common to steampunk literature.
Much as its cousin cyberpunk mashes the exotic with the familiar to jolt readers out of time and place, steampunk creates an alternate history that can be both intriguing and chilling. As do many of the writers who set their stories in that era. They contrast the veneer of civility with its morally corrosive underside to create a dystopia that any post-9/11 reader can appreciate.
Let’s hope that’s not the case with the newest royal couple.
He quotes Kathryn Shulz, author of Being Wrong, as saying that while making mistakes is part of the human condition, it’s viewed as shameful and degenerate in business. “In this rather despairing view our errors are evidence of our gravest social, intellectual and moral failings. Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list.”
If you’d like to drop by the Paradise Township Municipal Building at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 5 we can talk about how Dr. Slee built a marriage and a career among the cows he raised to grow the smallpox vaccine. We’ll discuss why Slee founded the lab and how his personal story guided the writing of the company’s corporate history, 
