Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Compass > Map

Compasses are better than maps: so goes the current paradigm of starting from where you are to get to where you're going.

"... it is now usually cheaper to just try something than to sit around and try to figure out whether to try something. The product map is now often more complex and more expensive to create than trying to figure it out as you go. The compass has replaced the map, and “rough consensus and running code” has become the fundamental philosophy for the so-called lean start-up movement." -- Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab.

Making things up as you go, failing fast, iterating iteratively: these ideas are spreading.

This is a big deal.

Writing is a totally iterative process -- some first drafts are better than others, and things get better with polish.

The change we're living with now is that you have the power to show things to the world, after however many drafts you think you need, whether it's a blog post, a Kickstarter project, an iOS app or a 3D-printer project.

It's a flavor of change that old versions of the future utterly failed to predict, and it's better than jetpacks and flying cars.

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