There is a role for randomness in every effort, but it needs to be understood. There was another article on the list today about failing a lot to succeed. Dedication and a great team will always overcome, but they will overcome only if they fail quickly and explore the chaos and randomness of the problem domain. At the risk of link-spamming, I wrote in my blog this morning about the role that divergent thinking has on social networks. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/10/do_you_want_m...
I think Paul and others make the same point in regards to how it's better to be in the valley than in Deluth -- you can harness the randomness better there.
As hackers and analytical people, we've been brought up to feel like we should take a direct path from point A to point B. But it never works like that in the real world. Good solution-based thinking is divergent, and understands and accepts that you're not following a recipe as much as you're playing a game of chance -- but playing very cleverly!
There is a role for randomness in every effort, but it needs to be understood. There was another article on the list today about failing a lot to succeed. Dedication and a great team will always overcome, but they will overcome only if they fail quickly and explore the chaos and randomness of the problem domain. At the risk of link-spamming, I wrote in my blog this morning about the role that divergent thinking has on social networks. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/10/do_you_want_m... I think Paul and others make the same point in regards to how it's better to be in the valley than in Deluth -- you can harness the randomness better there.
As hackers and analytical people, we've been brought up to feel like we should take a direct path from point A to point B. But it never works like that in the real world. Good solution-based thinking is divergent, and understands and accepts that you're not following a recipe as much as you're playing a game of chance -- but playing very cleverly!