Better Place was a venture-backed international company that developed and sold battery-charging and battery-switching services for electric cars. A company many described as “born to be revolutionary.”
This article is a great piece on the failure of Better Place due to not going lean and perhaps also poor financial management.
“Before the data revolution, scientists could be thought of as a “T-shaped”—broadly skilled with depth in their fields of expertise. But in this data-rich era of discovery, Lazowska says scientists will need to be “Pi shaped” (π): still broadly skilled, but now with deep expertise in data science in addition to their scientific domain.”
from Big Data Grant from Moore, Sloan Aims to Make Pi-Shaped Scientists
The article states that after the data revolution we are not only in need of T-shaped people but Pi-shaped instead. Do you agree?
A very short TED talk by Angela Lee Duckworth who has been studying “who is successful and why.”
“One characteristic emerge as a signigficant predictor of succes – it wasn’t social intelligence, it wasn’t good looks or physical health and it wasn’t IQ.”
Although her points seems a bit vague, I think that she is on to something.
Since I found the “Inspire Someone” App Task quite challenging, I started looking for tangible examples of how to inspire and motivate others. I stumbled upon this article where Val Demings, former chief of the Orlando Police Department, gives some practical suggestions for putting “motivate and inspire” into one’s schedule. You will see that she mainly focuses on invoking emotional aspects.
It is also worth mentioning that the year before Demings became Chief, Orlando saw the highest rise in violent crime in its history. When she led the force from 2007 to 2011, they experienced a 40% reduction in violent crime – “a stat that is at least partly attributable to smart policing by motivated and inspired officers.”