Innovative Management Update

Online Appeal Unearths Historic Web Page

BBC

The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern) recently launched a public appeal for files, hardware, and software from the Internet's earliest days. Unfortunately, the files and data for many of those first pages have been lost because of the way the World Wide Web creators Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillou worked as they were developing the technology. However, Cern's outreach has produced a copy of the Web page demonstrated by Berners-Lee in 1991 as he was trying to get support for the idea of the Web. In those days, Berners-Lee had to carry around a computer with the Web files on it in order to demonstrate its capabilities. One of the people he showed it to, Paul Jones, kept a copy that has survived. There might be more relics from the Web's beginning on that machine, but for the moment they remain hidden because the password for the computer's hard drive has been forgotten, Jones says. Caillou and Berners-Lee carried out their early research at Cern, which wants to use any early artifacts it finds to create an online exhibit. Cern's Dan Noyes notes the organization's request for material has elicited a huge public response.

Nine Lessons for Innovators from a Nobel Prize-Winning Psychologist

Xconomy.com

A reminder to read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

The paradox is this: the whole world of venture-backed innovation is structured to reward people who take irrational gambles. In fact, you can argue that technological and economic disruptions of the sort that the tech ecosystem celebrates only come from people who display delusional levels of self-confidence and risk-taking. If every entrepreneur and investor were to read Kahneman’s book and become fully cognizant of the flaws in their thinking and the statistical realities they’re up against, Silicon Valley would have to put out a permanent “Gone Fishing” sign.

1. The illusion of understanding

2. Outcome bias

3. The illusion of pattern

4. Nonregressive explanations

5. The illusion of validity, also known as the illusion of skill

6. The optimistic bias

7. Overconfidence

8. Competition neglect

9. The focusing illusion:

Why Technology Is An Extension Of Imagination

PSFK

Filmaker and futurist Jason Silva discusses the emergence of human consciousness and the concept of The Mirroring Mind.Speaking at PSFK CONFERENCE 2013, Jason Silva introduced one of his documentaries titled The Mirroring Mind, part of a series of short documentaries exploring the cybernetic symbiosis betweens humans and technology. Particularly, Silva focuses on how technology has the potential to radically extend the boundaries of human possibility, and act as a conduit to extend imagination beyond previous limits.

Peace One Day – Sept 21^st

Peace One Day .org

Translation to Go Hi-Tech; C-DAC to Launch 'Translator'

New Indian Express

Technology is playing an increasingly large role in the translation industry, due to advances in machine-aided translation (MAT). The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) soon will release a pattern-directed, rule-based English to Malayalam MAT system called Paribhashika. C-DAC also will unveil a Malayalam book translated from English using the new system. “The key feature of the software is that intelligible translation can be carried out and it shows all possible translation," says C-DAC's Badran V. K. "Text input and file input facilities are provided, also post editing option is available." Translating a chapter from English to Malayalam typically takes three months, but work can be completed within a month using the Paribhashika system, he notes. The MAT system performs the bulk of the translating work, with human translators contributing the final editing. Government departments are expected to use the software to translate reports, and the State Institute of Languages is working with C-DAC to translate its publications. C-DAC will make a Web version of the software available online for users to test and provide feedback.

Daniel Dennett's seven tools for thinking

The Guardian  ß worth checking out

Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett is one of America's foremost thinkers. In this extract from his new book, he reveals some of the lessons life has taught him.

1.     USE YOUR MISTAKES

2.     RESPECT YOUR OPPONENT

3.     THE "SURELY" KLAXON

4.     ANSWER RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

5.     EMPLOY OCCAM'S RAZOR

6.     DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME ON RUBBISH

7.     BEWARE OF DEEPITIES

51 Practical Lessons for a Lifetime

Right Attitudes

One of my coaching clients recently turned 51 and, upon my encouragement, prepared a list of lessons he’d learned in the “school of hard knocks.” With his permission, I present below a distillation of his wisdom.

1.     Measure twice, cut once

2.     Learn to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

3.     Life is not about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.

4.     The best vengeance is living life well.

5.     Don’t smoke. Don’t abuse alcohol. Don’t do drugs.

6.     Love your country and fellowman.

7.     Don’t let misfortune steal your dreams.

8.     Things could always be worse.

9.     Don’t be afraid to fail. Keep in mind that mistakes are stepping stones to triumph.

10.  Don’t worry. Everything eventually works out.

11.  Don’t be resentful. Don’t take anything personally.

12.  You can always get more money, but you can’t get more time.

13.  Ask not for an easy life. Ask for the vigor to endure a difficult one and persevere.

14.  If you risk nothing, you risk even more.

15.  Never underestimate yourself or take your abilities too lightly.

16.  Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

17.  Never say die. Never say never.

42.  Learn something new every day.

43.  Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. Find it.

44.  Never underrate the power of accessibility.

45.  Acknowledge those who have helped you.

46.  Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.

47.  Pardon your enemies, don’t forget their names.

48.  Just start. Just take that first step and get started.

49.  Don’t expect of others what you don’t demand of yourself

50.  Don’t expect anyone else to support you.

51.  Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

How to Enjoy Your Decision

Scientific American

Decisions can be hard. We may be haunted by the path not taken. But the best way to feel better about the one choice we do make may be to put up a literal barrier to any of the other choices.  The study is the Journal of Consumer Research (pdf).

How Ancestry.com transforms mounds of data into legible digital records

GigaOM

Sure, genealogy nerds might have fun poking through U.S. Census records, birth certificates and other documents in pursuit of information about their relatives on Ancestry.com. When it comes to showing off individual records to friends and relatives, though, the presentation can lack punch, and telling the whole story of an ancestor’s life isn’t straightforward.

The people behind the Ancestry.com service have realized this. Now they’re making the most of their 4PB storehouse of official personal records, user-submitted information and other data with a new feature delivering sleek computer-generated but customizable summaries of information available on users’ ancestors.

Ancestry started rolling out the feature, known as Story View, earlier this quarter to a tiny share of its customers, and now it’s active for 10 percent of them. The plan is to analyze the use of Ancestry with and without Story View and round out the feature before making it generally available, probably later this year, said Eric Shoup, the company’s executive vice president of product, in a recent interview. Already Ancestry has made the feature more interactive by letting users move around a single page the images of documents and edit the associated bodies of text derived from the documents.

Teens, Social Media, and Privacy

Pew

Sharing, Social Media, and Privacy in the World of Teen Social Media

Still Charting Memory’s Depths

NY Times

MONTREAL — In many ways, the Obama administration’s new plan to map the human brain has its origins in the work of Brenda Milner, the neuropsychologist whose detailed observations of an amnesia patient in the 1950s showed how memory is rooted in specific regions of the brain.

“Prior to Brenda Milner’s discoveries, many behaviorists and some cognitive psychologists followed the lead of Freud and Skinner in abandoning biology as a useful guide to the study of memory,” the Nobel laureate Dr. Eric Kandel wrote in his memoir, “In Search of Memory.” “Milner’s work changed all that.”

The amnesia patient, Henry Molaison (known during his lifetime only as H.M., to protect his privacy), died at 82 in 2008; his brain is now being dissected and digitally mapped in exquisite detail.

But Dr. Milner is still very much alive. Two months short of her 95th birthday, she puts in full days at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, where she is studying left/right brain differences.

60 Experts on Human Emotion

Yale

The EIE Series provides a unique opportunity to explore the mysteries of human emotion guided by some of the world's foremost experts on the subject, ranging from distinguished academics to leading figures behind social media services like Facebook. In addition to tackling central questions such as what emotions are, why we have them, and how our understanding of them can lead to happier and healthier lives. You'll also hear first-hand about what first led these key players to study emotion and what they see as the most exciting frontiers ahead.

The Expert in Emotion Interview series is part of a broader educational mission to share the study of human emotion beyond the walls of the classroom, to reach students and teachers alike, both locally and globally, through the use of technology. This mission is generously supported by, and in collaboration with, the Yale Office of Digital Dissemination and the Yale College Dean’s Office

The Value of Big Data isn’t the Data

HBR

It is clear that a new age is upon us. Evidence-based decision-making (aka Big Data) is not just the latest fad, it's the future of how we are going to guide and grow business. But let's be very clear: There is a huge distinction to be made between "evidence" and "data." The former is the end game for understanding where your business has been and where it needs to go. The latter is the instrument that lets us get to that end game. Data itself isn't the solution. It's just part of the path to that solution.

The confusion here is understandable. In an effort to move from the Wild West world of shoot-from-the-hip decision making to a more evidence-based model, companies realized that they would need data. As a result, organizations started metering and monitoring every aspect of their businesses. Sales, manufacturing, shipping, costs and whatever else could be captured were all tracked and turned into well-controlled (or not so well-controlled) data.

Innovative Management Update: Reinventing HR and Restructures

Need a does of innovation? Here are the best articles on innovation from March 4 to 10th:

Does Free Food make for a Happier Workplace?

Forbes

Want to create a happier workplace?

Give your employees free food!

That is a conclusion drawn from a new survey of 1200 employees working in companies of 20 employees or more and conducted by Seamless, an online delivery and takeout service in the U.S. and U.K.

Among the survey results are:

•  60% said that having company-provided food around the office “would make them feel more valued and appreciated;”
• More than half said that a free lunch “would strongly influence their decision to accept a job offer;”
• 60% said such free lunches would encourage them to chow down with their colleagues; and
• One third said that free food at meetings would prompt them to attend optional meetings.

Granted these survey results come from a food service provider (Seamless), these findings do point out that it does not take much to incent and motivate employees. And as surveys such as these do point out that it is often the little things that stimulate interest and help employees feel better about their workplace.

7 Lessons From The Beatles' Biggest Failure

Inc Magazine

The words "failure" and "the Beatles" seldom appear in the same sentence. But the Beatles' early career was actually a series of failures--a record that culminated in their unsuccessful audition with the leading record company of their era, Decca Records. This particular failure nearly caused the band to break up.

Here are start-up lessons you can take from the Beatles' biggest setback.

1. Know your product.
2. Know your audience.
3. Gather the right team.
4. Timing is everything.
5. Know what you're getting into.
6. Set expectations.
7. Critics can be wrong.

The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field

Michael Roberto and SSRN

Timothy Gubler, Ian Larkin, Lamar Pierce have conducted a provocative new study regarding employee awards.  They collected data about an attendance award program at a private commercial laundry services company in the Midwestern United States.  One of the company's five plants chose to implement an award for good attendance.   Managers wanted to reduce absences and tardiness.   The other four plants did not institute this program.   The program was rather simple.   All employees without an unexcused absence or tardy in the prior month received recognition before their peers, and they became eligible for a drawing for a $75 gift card.  The program lasted for a bit less than a year.  Senior executives at the company eliminated the program because they felt it rewarded behavior that should be expected of everyone.
The scholars studied this program, and they found that the award produced two important unintended consequences.  Here is an excerpt from the paper's abstract:

First, employees game the program, improving timeliness only when eligible for the award, and strategically calling in sick to retain eligibility. Second, employees with perfect pre-program attendance or high productivity suffered a 6% to 8% productivity decrease after program introduction, suggesting they were demotivated by awards for good behavior they already exhibited. Overall, our results suggest the award program decreased plant productivity by 1.4%, and that positive effects from awards are accompanied by more complex employee responses that limit program effectiveness.

IT Skills Shortage: The Other Critical Cliff Facing Enterprises

eWeek

A gulf created by the information technology (IT) skills shortfall in such areas as Java, .NET, and C++ could severely curtail future U.S. economic growth, says Harvey Nash CEO Bob Miano. "We careened over the 'IT skills cliff' some years ago as our economy digitized, mobilized, and further 'technologized' and our IT skilled labor supply failed to keep up," Miano says. A recent IBM study found that the most pressing need for IT skills is in the areas of mobile computing, cloud computing, social networking, and analytics, while security skills also are in demand. A shortage of security experts with leadership and communications skills poses a direct challenge to global organizations, according to a recent International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium study.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's work-from-home memo is from bygone era

Guardian.co.uk

In a statement released to employees at Yahoo, head of Human Resources Jackie Reses wrote:

"We need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together."

This is an odd way forward, not just in the world of work in general where telecommuting is rapidly on the rise, but particularly in computer, engineering, and science fields where home-based work has risen 69% between 2000 and 2010. That makes itthe fastest growing telecommuting industry (pdf) in the country, according the Census Bureau.

The Most Successful Leaders Do 15 Things Automatically, Every Day

Forbes

Leadership is learned behavior that becomes unconscious and automatic over time.  For example, leaders can make several important decisions about an issue in the time it takes others to understand the question.   Many people wonder how leaders know how to make the best decisions, often under immense pressure.  The process of making these decisions comes from an accumulation of experiences and encounters with a multitude of difference circumstances, personality types and unforeseen failures.

1. Make Others Feel Safe to Speak-Up
2. Make Decisions
3. Communicate Expectations
4. Challenge People to Think
5. Be Accountable to Others
6. Lead by Example
7. Measure & Reward Performance
8. Provide Continuous Feedback
9. Properly Allocate and Deploy Talent
10. Ask Questions, Seek Counsel
11. Problem Solve; Avoid Procrastination
12. Positive Energy & Attitude
13. Be a Great Teacher
14. Invest in Relationships
15. Genuinely Enjoy Responsibilities

Three Questions That Could Save Your Career

LeadingWithTrust

Vincent Peale discuss in their book The Power of Ethical Management. In that classic best-seller they also offer an “ethics check,” three questions you should ask yourself when faced with an ethical choice point. Asking yourself these three questions could save you from making a decision that ends your career.

·       Is it legal?

·       Is it fair and balanced?

·       How will it make you feel about yourself?

7 Uncommon Ways To Be A Positive Influence On You and Your Team

People Discovery

The psychology of leadership simply fascinates me, and no more so than when leaders have a positive influence on their team. You may not class yourself as a leader, but you are a leader, whether you’re leading a team, a family or even yourself. In your role, as a leader, the energy you emit is vital, and cannot fail to affect yourself and others.

1. They owned a deeply held vision
2. Inner and self- directed, they listened to their intuition and the world around them became secondary if it didn’t accord with their inner guidance.
3. What they did/shared benefitted the greater good, even if they didn’t realise it at the time.
4. They were committed and dedicated; in fact most, if not all, view their achievements as their life’s purpose.
5. They weren’t deterred by popular opinion,
6. They acted fearlessly, even if inside they felt fearful
7. They are aspirational, they dare to attempt “the impossible,” feats and successes which any rationale mind may have said weren’t possible.

Inspirational people lead others by letting them see that their hopes, dreams, aspirations, and values are not only desirable, but are possible, by demonstrating they can be done. Once you have seen impossible being achieved, then the world has changed.

Beyond Marissa Mayer: The Future Will Blend Work and Home in New Hybrid Places

Forbes

For many knowledge workers, working virtually is already a fact, whether they happen to be working from home, in the office, or elsewhere. We are all dealing with networks of information technology and data streams that connect us both within office buildings and across time zones. We all have been shifting to lighter, more mobile devices and platforms that allow us to connect in multiple ways from many kinds of settings. These capabilities certainly call into question the logic of being there in an office full-time. They even call into question the very logic of office space and furniture. What is a desk for when you can find everything you need on a tablet?

Yet real places keep coming back to haunt us, almost as if to remind us that they are still where it really happens. Places where people can work together face-to-face are still fundamental to the most critical aspects of work performance and creativity. And that is why Marissa Mayer wants people back in the office. Technology and networks have not at all replaced the value of getting together in physical locations for the sparks of creativity that doing so creates.

Technology has not replaced place. Rather it is augmenting the places where the most important things happen. That is why cities, as the ultimate networks of networks, have reasserted themselves as the central drivers of creativity in our economy. It is why the technology industry in New York may now be giving Silicon Valley a run for its money, as technology firms, both big and startup, rush to get closer to other industries, to their users, and to the talent and experience of the city, as they create new ideas for products and services.

How Google Is Using People Analytics to Completely Reinvent HR

TLNT

“New path” firms dominate by producing continuous innovation. And executives are beginning to learn that continuous innovation cannot occur until a firm makes a strategic shift toward a focus on great people management.

A strategic focus on people management is necessary because innovations come from people, and you simply can’t maximize innovations unless you are capable of recruiting and retaining innovators. And even then, you must provide them with great managers and an environment that supports innovation.

“Top 10” of Google’s past and current people management practices to highlight its data-driven approach:

1. Leadership characteristics and the role of managers
2. The PiLab
3.  A retention algorithm
4. Predictive modeling
5. Improving diversity
6. An effective hiring algorithm
7. Calculating the value of top performers
8. Workplace design drives collaboration
9. Increasing discovery and learning
10. It doesn’t dictate; it convinces with data

Wisdom@Work

Wisdom 2.0 Summit

HuffPost

In February, 1,800 people gathered at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco for a four day conference on mindfulness called Wisdom 2.0 Summit.  This is a unique gathering of people trying to answer the following question “How can we live with greater presence, meaning, and mindfulness in the technology age?”. The speakers ranged from technology luminaries like Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn CEO) and Bradley Horowitz (Google VP), industrial titan Bill Ford (Ford Chairman), political heavyweights Congressman Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) to wisdom practitioners Jack Kornfield (Spirit Rock) and Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0 Founder).  

All of the main stage presentations were recorded and are available for viewing online

Below is a selection of some of the best presentation, I hope you can find something of value in these videos:

Opening

Bill Ford, CEO Ford Motor Company

Arianna Huffington, Founder Huffington Post

Leah Pearlman, Facebook

Meng Tan, Google, Jolly Good Fellow

Evan Williams, Twitter

Tim Ryan, Congressman

Soren Gordhamer, Founder Wisdom 2.0

Arianna Huffington famous for founding The Huffington Post summed up this conference, at which she was a speaker and participant, with the following “Last weekend I went to Disneyland. Not the actual Disneyland, but my version of Disneyland. Like a kid at "The Happiest Place on Earth," I wanted to go to every session and talk to every other speaker and everyone attending. And like many a Disneyfied kid, I was primed for overstimulation leading to an eventual meltdown.

Fortunately, given the nature of the conference, there were ample breaks for things like meditation, breathing exercises, yoga and healthy snacks. Which, of course, just left me that much more energized. I was in a mindfulness spiral!

If you are interested in learning more, connecting with like-minded Microsoft employees or sharing your own mindfulness practices please join the email alias “Wisdom@Work”.

Microsoft Lync’s bottom-up restructure

Financial Times  (registration might be required)

In most organisations, senior executives design structures and roles that they then allocate to people. It is an efficient process, but it ignores the fact that every individual has their own particular skills and motivations. By shoehorning individuals into predefined roles, senior managers do not get the best chance to let people use their full set of skills, and they risk demotivating and even losing them.

The WeOrg approach turns this logic on its head: first, hire a bunch of really good people, then allow them to self-organise to make full use of their skills.

The process takes longer, but it leads to greater engagement and harnesses the skills of the team far more effectively. It also requires managers and employees to trust one another fully.

The Most Innovative Articles of the Week

Need a does of innovation? Here are the best articles on innovation from December 9 to 16th:

How to Innovate Innovation: Takeaways from the Quick MIX Brainstorm (part 1)

MiX

Over the course of a few days, MIXers from around the world submitted over 100 answers to this question, many of them receiving lots of praise and tweets from the MIX community.  There was so much insight packed into the Quick MIX submissions that we decided to provide a summary of the major takeaways from this exercise, grouped into broad themes (you might recognize these from the Innovating Innovation challenge brief).  Below is our first installment, covering eight broad recommendations on how to make organizations more innovation-friendly. 

1. Develop clear definitions and metrics for innovation
2. Upgrade the innovation skills of every individual
3. Deploy innovation tools throughout the organization
4. Create widespread accountability for innovation
5. Knock down the bureaucratic hurdles that often frustrate innovation
6. Make innovation an important component in compensation and reward decisions
7. Carve out space for innovation in the midst of all the “busyness”
8. Create “stretch” goals that encourage break-out thinking

Six things that suck the life out of your productivity

Uncluttered

A recent article on Mashable suggested that there five things that you should stay away from so that you can get more done (like not sleeping enough), and I’m sharing six more that you should consider kicking out of your regular routine.

1. Having poor eating habits
2. Moving at the speed of light
3. Trying every productivity strategy
4. Working only on other people’s stuff
5. Taking on too much
6. Having no way to keep yourself accountable

Michael McDaniel: My 2013 Prediction, Mother Nature As The Ultimate Innovator

PSFK

In 2013, I believe Mother Nature will prove to be a major source for disruption across a variety of industries, particularly telecommunication. I do not mean that in an apocalyptic sense at all, but more as a catalyst for innovation.

Over the past few years we have seen social media arise and begin to challenge traditional media. It wasn’t too long ago that most social media channels simply echoed events after they appeared on TV or were reported elsewhere. Over the past year, we have seen those tables turn with TV now echoing events that were first reported via social media. In fact, this change is happening so fast and to such a degree that it has become a common source of comedic fodder for Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. The desperate attempts of 24 hour news outlets to chase the faster, collective voice of social media has provided a wealth of comedy gold. Case studies of this abound from the new events of the Presidential Election to Superstorm Sandy.

Creating a Question-Friendly Environment

American Management Association

·       Questions are the basis of all creativity.

·       Questions are the basis of all connection.

·       Questions are the basis of all understanding.

The challenge is creating a question-friendly environment. Although you have little (or no) control over the people in the environment, you do have (some) control over the environment itself. 

Some.

And that’s why you need to let things organically and naturally occur, organically and naturally .

If you create the right kind of environment, the right atmosphere, the right space and the right energy, the people inside of it will take care of themselves.

This doesn’t mean “getting” employees to ask questions. This means creating an environment in which questions can be comfortably asked and answered.

Jack Welch on Inspiring Loyalty:  Paint a Positive Picture of the Future

Total Trust

Jack Welch reminds us once again about one of the most important capabilities any great leader must have, and one that the leaders we’ve studied display again and again:  conveying a sense of hope and optimism:

When you aim to inspire company loyalty, you are essentially courting your employees. You need to paint a picture of how their future will be better if they stay with you. “You want your employees to feel like they are part of the company,” Welch says. “Tell them a story that makes them want to choose you.”

As you tell that story, you’re instilling a sense of common purpose, which gives employees a sense of excitement and opportunity. “Make that purpose come alive for them every day,” he says.  

When you aim to inspire company loyalty, you are essentially courting your employees. You need to paint a picture of how their future will be better if they stay with you. “You want your employees to feel like they are part of the company,” Welch says. “Tell them a story that makes them want to choose you.”As you tell that story, you’re instilling a sense of common purpose, which gives employees a sense of excitement and opportunity. “Make that purpose come alive for them every day,” he says.

Putting a Price on Emotions

BPS Research Digest

Would you pay more cash to experience intense happiness or to avoid intense embarrassment? Your answer may depend on the culture you live in.

A team led by Hi Lau at the University of Hong Kong used this "willingness to pay" approach to find out how students in Britain and Hong Kong value different emotions. For the first study, 97 British students chose how much they'd be willing to spend (from £10 to £150, in £10 increments) to enjoy various positive emotions intensely for an hour, or to to avoid various negative emotions for an hour.

Overall, the students were willing to pay more to experience positive emotions than to avoid negative ones. An hour's worth of love was the most valued, followed by an hour's worth of happiness and then an hour without sadness. Bottom of the list was disgust - the students were only prepared to pay an average of £43 to avoid an hour of disgust (compared with £95 to have an hour of love).

Buggy Software: Achilles Heel of Big-Data-Powered Science?

The Atlantic

Software defects are a growing concern in the scientific computing community. A recent workshop focusing on maintainable software practices discussed how software code errors caused retractions in major research papers. Kingston University professor Leslie Hatton addressed the issue in a research paper. "The defects themselves arise from many causes, including: a requirement might not be understood correctly; the physics could be wrong; there could be a simple typographical error in the code, such as a + instead of a - in a formula; the programmer may rely on a subtle feature of a programming language which is not defined properly, such as uninitialized variables; there may be numerical instabilities such as over-flow, under-flow or rounding errors; or basic logic errors in the code," the paper says. Although most of the defects are caused by human error, they are facilitated by the complexity of programing languages and algorithms, and the sheer size of the computations, Hatton adds. Columbia University professor Victoria Stodden recently launched RunMyCode, a Web site that helps scientists discover errors by sharing code and data, and accelerating the replication or experiments.

'For the Win': How Gamification Can Transform Your Business

Forbes

Can work be fun? Is it possible for customers to have the same deep engagement with an organization’s products or services that they might experience when playing a game? Can things game designers have learned about what makes games effective from the 40-year-old video game industry, which generates $70 billion annually, be applied to meet business objectives? Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach and New York Law School professor Dan Hunter say yes.

Lawyers and World of Warcraft players who created the first course on gamification at the Wharton School, Werbach and Hunter recently authored For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business, which helps business leaders to think like game designers in addressing business challenges and provides a roadmap for integrating gamification into business efforts. Knowledge@Wharton recently spoke with Werbach and Hunter about what gamification really is, how companies like Microsoft and Deloitte are using it, where game thinking works best and pitfalls to avoid when gamifying.

Wake Up Earlier By Competing Against Friends

PSFK

This "merciless" app makes waking up a fun, social experience. Wake N Shake is an alarm clock app that forces users to play mini games with friends as soon as they wake up. Also known as the “merciless” alarm clock, there is no snooze button to catch a few extra minutes of sleep. The only way to turn it off is by continuously shaking your iPhone or iPod. The app has recently debuted a version 3.0, in which it combines fun social features that will keep users motivated and help them get into the habit of waking up early. With Facebook integration, users can also play against and share their wake-up times instantly. Users earn achievements for being awesome at waking up and they can push themselves to wake up earlier and faster by competing with friends for wake up points.

Storytelling Software Learns How to Tell a Good Tale

NewScientist

Lotzi Bölöni of the University of Central Florida first fed Xapagy stories, which had been manually translated into a language the system can understand. But instead of using these stories to build rigid logic rules for future actions, as most AI systems would, Xapagy keeps them just as they are - a series of interconnected events.

When it comes across words in new stories, it looks for familiar connections in its memory. If it finds any, it uses them to predict what will happen next and then tells the story. The trick is that each word can have many different associations in Xapagy's memory, depending on the stories it has read. When it doesn't find any clear connections, it just substitutes in its own word that makes grammatical sense, like the sneezing wolf, and continues the story in a way that makes narrative sense (arxiv.org/abs/1211.5643).

"The idea of an architecture based on narrative is clever," says Stan Franklin of the University of Memphis, who developed the famous AI system LIDA. "It might lead to learning about narrative, an important topic in cognition."

Microsoft scores win with Santa Claus tracking

Yahoo

In the battle for Christmas, Microsoft has scored a win over Google as the official maps partner for Santa and his reindeer.

Microsoft announced this week it had sealed a partnership with the Pentagon's North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which monitors the skies over Canada and the United States, for the holiday season. "For more than 50 years, NORAD has helped children around the world track Santa during his Christmas journey, and this year Microsoft is partnering with NORAD to make following the big red sleigh easier than ever," Microsoft said in a blog.

"The Santa Tracker tool is built on the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud computing platform and Bing Maps, and anxious kids can even track Kris Kringle on Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps." The news marked a coup for Microsoft, whose Bing search engine is struggling to catch the Google juggernaut. Google had been the NORAD tracking partner since 2007.

AI designer learns to build games from scratch

NewScientist

Out today, the festive platform game, called A Puzzling Present, is the latest creation of Angelina, an AI system that designs its own video games. Released with a little help from its creator-cum-collaborator Michael Cook at Imperial College London, Angelina's latest was made by looking at the code of existing games and copying the features it thinks work best.

The ability to pick and choose design ingredients is a big advance, says Cook. Previously, the system came up with game mechanics by putting together rules it was given. "It would slot them together in new ways like a jigsaw, but I was never very happy with it," says Cook. "After all, it needed me to hand it the jigsaw pieces."

But now Angelina finds and test game possibilities - like reversing gravity, high-jumping and teleportation - on its own. It does this using "reflection", a technique that lets software look at and manipulate its own code. Cook starts things off by providing a game level that can't be solved, such as one with a wall between the start and the exit. Angelina then redesigns the level in an iterative process, using ideas it finds in existing games - making changes, testing them, and making further tweaks until the level works. "It's closer to what a human does when they program," says Cook.

Even more cunningly, it has found bugs in Cook's code and taken advantage of them to invent new game levels. In one case, the game code wrongly let a player teleport inside a wall and still allow the character to jump. So Angelina invented a wall-jumping technique, where the player could climb up a vertical wall by repeatedly teleporting and jumping. "This was why I felt it's so important to create a system that was independent of me," says Cook.

12 Enjoyable Names for Relatively Common Things

Mental Floss

A delayed tribute to 12-12-12

For 12-12-12, we’ll be posting twenty-four ’12 lists’ throughout the day. Check back 12 minutes after every hour for the latest installment, or see them all here.

Unbreaking American Innovation: Three Ways to Reinvent Reinvention

Forbes

What’s so bad about “innovation”? It doesn’t mean much…and maybe never did. Today, we use it to describe an iPhone newsreader app and the reinvention of space travel by SpaceX.

Here are three ways we can help make brilliant minds deliver bigger results.

1. Redefine “innovation”
2. Focus on real problems
3. Incentivize Econovation

GroupThink

New Yorker

The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they’ll end up saying nothing at all. The appeal of this idea is obvious: it’s always nice to be saturated in positive feedback. Typically, participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contribution. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations. Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. It doesn’t work.

…enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant—not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism—that doesn’t mean that they can be avoided. The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks.

Ravi Shankar, Open Mind

The New Yorker

Thanks to pioneers like Shankar, our ears are open to a diversity of sounds unimaginable to listeners sixty years ago.