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Fedora fails… and that’s a good thing!

Great post by Red Hat’s Karsten Wade on the role of failure in Fedora (and in life). One of the key tenets of both the open source and design thinking movements is the idea of “failing fast.” To innovate, we need to overcome the fear of failure, and learn how, as Karsten notes, failure is a sign that we have pushed things to their limits. Because that’s where you have to be if you want to innovate:)

One of the gurus of the failing fast mentality is David Kelley of IDEO— the guy who started the Stanford “d-school” and a leader of the design thinking movement. Here’s a Fast Company article from a couple of years ago where he talks some more about how to suceed by failing fast.

Rahm and the art of positioning

Was watching Rahm Emanuel on Meet the Nation this morning. No matter where you fall politically, you’ve got to be amazed at what a master of positioning he is. Republicans have been winning the positioning war for years, with Democrats not even understanding the game, let alone playing it well.

So what is positioning? According to Wikipedia, positioning is:

the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for their product, brand, or organization.

The name “positioning” was coined by Jack Trout and Al Ries and introduced in their book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, but the concepts they called positioning have been used to influence people throughout history.

Matthew Szulik gave me a copy of a positioning book by Jack Trout about 2 years after I joined Red Hat, and it was my first real exposure to the idea. Now, the art of positioning rules everything I do at work.

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