Under­stand­ing The How

Since the ear­li­est mem­o­ries of our child­hood molded by some of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple we will ever encounter, our teach­ers, we have been taught to lineup, con­form and learn our A B C’s.

Life became struc­tured at a very early age as did our beliefs, ways of think­ing and our own sense of identify.

We all remem­ber our home­work assign­ments, research, find­ing the right answers, doing what is expected — a tetra­he­dron does not fit into a round hole.

Mem­o­riza­tion is para­mount if we want to pass our exams. Con­di­tion­ing and ver­ti­cal, lin­ear, sequen­tial think­ing has over­taken our cre­ative, ran­dom, abstract think­ing process of youth.

Now as adults we have roles and expec­ta­tions to live up to. Hus­band, Wife, lover, friend, mother, father, pro­fes­sional and social life. The role demands and tugs on our life is never-​ending.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

We are either cogs in a machine, doing what our supe­ri­ors expect of us, tak­ing their direc­tion, down­siz­ing, out sourc­ing, clo­sures or new career choice, the rea­sons are end­less and sud­denly find­ing our­selves in unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­tory. The Glad­i­a­to­r­ial arena of cre­ativ­ity and inno­v­a­tive think­ing for our very survival.

Those of you read­ing this arti­cle on a tablet expe­ri­ence first hand how mod­ern, advanced tech­nol­ogy is defin­ing how we do things and man­age our life. Some­thing new, hor­i­zon­tal, inno­v­a­tive think­ing is chang­ing our life once again.

Per­haps you are a busi­ness owner, an entre­pre­neur, a per­son look­ing for a career change or want­ing some­thing more in life.

Money will not make you happy but it cer­tainly makes life more comfortable.

What will make you happy you ask? Ful­fill­ment will.

Thus… The Why.

The How Never Pre­cedes The Why

The How is assem­bling and uti­liz­ing the under­stood, the process to achieve an end, a desired outcome.

If I do this, because it is a known expe­ri­ence, that will hap­pen. Ver­ti­cal, sequen­tial, lin­ear think­ing is learnt in acad­e­mia. Our A, B, C’s.

Many busi­ness peo­ple, pro­fes­sion­als, ama­teurs, devel­op­ers and design­ers are con­di­tioned by ver­ti­cal think­ing, ‘The How’.

Few know or under­stand ‘The Why’.

Change the Game Rules

Albert Ein­stein wrote, “Insan­ity is doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results”. Admit­tedly, not the most bril­liant math­e­mati­cian, he began with the end in mind, hav­ing a hypoth­e­sis, Ein­stein wanted to prove a the­ory that came to him — the birth of an idea — by pure math­e­mat­i­cal means.

In order to accom­plish this ‘game chang­ing’ the­ory that super­seded a 200-​year-​old the­ory of mechan­ics elu­ci­dated by Isaac New­ton, Ein­stein sur­rounded him­self with the best inno­v­a­tive, pos­i­tive, math­e­mat­i­cal minds in academia.

Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­ity and Gen­eral Rel­a­tiv­ity later to become known as The The­ory of Rel­a­tiv­ity, or Rel­a­tiv­ity took the Sci­en­tific Com­mu­nity mind-​set of the era by storm.

Inci­den­tally, Einstein’s teach­ers said he would never amount to any­thing. Now they are gone and he is famous.

The rest is his­tory: E=MC²

Think Hor­i­zon­tally

After all, fif­teen hun­dred years ago every­body knew the Earth was the cen­ter of the Uni­verse. Five hun­dred years ago, every­body knew the Earth was flat, and fif­teen min­utes ago, you knew what you know, ‘it is what it is’. Right? Wrong! Now think potentialities.

Imag­ine what you will know and expe­ri­ence tomorrow.

Retain­ing the Best

Inc. Mag­a­zine writer Keith Cline, Tal­ent Scout, reports on Decem­ber 19, 2011, the 5 hard­est Jobs to fill in 2012 are:

1. Soft­ware Engi­neers and Web Developers
2. Cre­ative Design and User Experience
3. Prod­uct Management
4. Mar­ket­ing
5. Ana­lyt­ics

Hir­ing the best of the best is an absolute must if you are going to build a suc­cess­ful company.

You will need to be pre­pared to com­pete against big com­pa­nies with deep pock­ets and other up-​and-​coming star­tups that also have blue chip investors and a game-​changing idea.

So, what are the most com­pet­i­tive areas for tal­ent these days? Here’s a look:

Soft­ware Engi­neers & Web Developers

The demand for top-​tier engi­neer­ing tal­ent sharply out­weighs the sup­ply in almost every mar­ket espe­cially in San Fran­cisco, New York, and Boston. This is a major, major pain point and prob­lem that almost every com­pany is fac­ing, regard­less of the tech­nol­ogy “stack” their engi­neers are work­ing on.

Cre­ative Design & User Experience

After engi­neers, the biggest chal­lenge for com­pa­nies is find­ing high-​quality cre­ative design and user-​experience talent.

Since almost every com­pany is try­ing to cre­ate a highly com­pelling user expe­ri­ence that keeps peo­ple engaged with their prod­uct, it is tough to find peo­ple who have this type of expe­ri­ence (espe­cially with mobile devices includ­ing tablets) and a demon­strated track record of success.

Tablets are Personal

Tablets Rule The Evening Hours

In a recent arti­cle by Johanna Werther, Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ager, Google Mobile Ads, dated Sep­tem­ber 26, 2011, she writes.

Are you read­ing this post from your PC at work, from your mobile phone as you wait in line at a café or from your tablet at home before bed?

The screen a user chooses to engage with is largely dri­ven by con­text and users are match­ing their device type to their situation.

At Google Mobile Ads, we’re inter­ested in the way the pro­lif­er­a­tion of these screens is impact­ing user behav­ior, espe­cially search behav­ior. We looked sep­a­rately at searches from tablets, PCs and mobile devices.

The data show that dur­ing the work­day users are search­ing from their com­put­ers and they use smart­phones steadily through­out the day