Few in recent times, have been a force of inspiration as Dr.Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon Professor who passed away on July 25, 2008.

A man who in his dying days inspired the rest of us on how to live! (Not just through his talk but also on how he handled his terminal illness)

Be sure to watch his “last lecture” and his talk on “time management” if you have not yet done so. The videos, PDF and slide versions of the time management talk have been made available by Professor Gabriel Robins at his site.

This was The Edge Annual Question - 2008

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.

Read how some of the finest of intellectuals responded to this question on subjects close to them.

Extracts from some of my personal favourites amongst many others. Click on their names to read their complete response and to undertsand the context.

Jamshed Bharucha

To assess genuine understanding of an idea one is inclined to resist, I propose a version of Turing’s Test tailored for this purpose: You understand something you are inclined to resist only if you can fool its proponents into thinking you get it. Few critics can pass this test. I would also propose a cross-cultural Turing Test for would-be cultural critics (a Golden Rule of cross-group understanding): before critiquing a culture or aspect thereof, you should be able to navigate seamlessly within that culture as judged by members of that group

Kevin Kelly

It has always been clear that collectives amplify power — that is what cities and civilizations are — but what’s been the big surprise for me is how minimal the tools and oversight are needed. The bureaucracy of Wikipedia is relatively so small as to be invisible. It’s the Wiki’s embedded code-based governance, versus manager-based governance that is the real news. Yet the greatest surprise brought by the Wikipedia is that we still don’t know how far this power can go. We haven’t seen the limits of wiki-ized intelligence. Can it make textbooks, music and movies? What about law and political governance?

Chris Dibona

But, and here’s the thing I changed my mind about, is the tradeoff for silly high productivity that I have to run my projects the way we run the Summer of Code? Maybe. Can I keep my hands off and let things run their course? Is the team strong enough to act as this kind of mentoring to each other? I now think the answer is that yes, they can run each other better than I can run them. So let’s see what letting go looks like.

If you’ve read Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat”, you’ll realize how beautifully Brandy Agerbeck summarizes the book through this single picture.

She shares how she created this work here

“I have my own principles, which I am unwilling to abandon. I dislike falsehood and deceit. A building should be truthful” Laurie Baker

Laurie Baker, architect and humanist passed away recently. Today, when everybody is waking up to the effects of ‘global warming’, Laurie Baker lived and practised ‘eco-conservation’, recycling, using locally available resources and eschewing wastage through the buildings he created.

Some of the principles he lived by are worth reflecting as consultants and practising professionals.

Understanding your client / customer

“First, of course, is that I want to get to know my client and what is in his mind. If he merely wants to show off or flaunt his wealth, I don’t take him on. Otherwise, I enjoy getting to know him (or her, a family, an institution or even a Government department).

And I have to always keep in mind that it is they who are going to use the building and not me.”

The entire interview can be read
here

Some of his other principles he lived by included:

More on his work can be found at this tribute

Seth Godin on ‘This is broken’

Watching this video would be a great starting point for a discussion and debate in organizations pushing for change / people willing to take initiative.

If you have not yet seen thevideos at the TED Conference, do so asap!

From their website on what TED is about:

“TED is all about connections. The connections of ideas and the connections of people. It is based on the insight that to truly understand anything, you need to understand a little bit of everything that surrounds it. And that by allowing ourselves to be exposed each year to a diverse group of some of the most remarkable people on the planet, we transplant ourselves out of the one-dimensional mind-set of much of our working lives and into fertile country that will allow us - actually, almost force us - to grow.”

Richard Saul Wurman who originally founded the TED conference (and has since sold it) wanted the conference to be all about having great conversations with interesting people.

The quote below is from an interview of his (can’t remember now where I read it) that reflects what he wanted to achieve.

“If I played golf…a horrible thought-I might invite a biologist who could explain how the grass grows, a physicist who could explain how the ball flies, and ask what the connection between those is. I don’t want to do research; I just want to be in a receptive state and ask unrehearsed questions of people who would know about these things. I don’t want agendas; I want to be surprised.”

The following is an extract from ?The Dancing Toll Taker? by Dr. Charles Garfield. This appears in the ?Learning Journeys? a book where top management experts share their personal stories on lessons learnt, edited by Marshall Goldsmith and others. A wonderful and must read book.

Dr. Charles Garfield was a member of the team that sent the first two astronauts to the moon, where he learned how mission-driven teams can band together to accomplish extraordinary results.

I have been through every one of the seventeen tollbooths on the Oakland San Francisco Bay Bridge on hundreds of occasions, never once having had an exchange worth remembering with anybody until late one morning in 1984?As I drove toward one of the booths. I heard loud rock music. It sounded like a party, or a Michael Jackson concert. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the tollbooth. Inside it was a man dancing. ?What are you doing? I asked ?I?m having a party,?

He had found what Archimedes said he would need, along with his lever, to move the Earth: a place to stand.

Here are excerpts from the Commencement Address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.

Connecting the dots?

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

About Love and Loss?

We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.

?So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation?On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Thanks Gautam for pointing it out.

Bill Gates goes on a “Think Week” period of seclusion where he ponders the future of technology and to decide on the future direction of Micrsoft.

“It’s a twice-yearly ritual that can influence the future of Microsoft and the tech industry. A Think Week thought can give the green light to a new technology that millions of people will use, or send Microsoft into new markets”

“Think Week’s reading and thinking spawns a flood of e-mail and comments from Gates. A paper might inspire an e-mail to dozens of employees around the world.”

“Employees anticipate the week with hopes that their projects will get a green light or influence the company’s direction. “It’s the world’s coolest suggestion box,” says Stephen Lawler, a Microsoft general manager of the MapPoint group”

Read Bill Gates daily routine during “Think Week” here

The March issue of Fortune has 28 leaders and gurus from the world of business share ?The Best Advice I ever got?. It has the likes of Peter Drucker, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Howard Schultz … the list goes on.

Two that stayed with me:

Excerpt from Meg Whitman, CEO and President of eBay

?Always do the best job you can do at whatever you are assigned, even if you think it?s boring.? Jerry Parkinson, an assistant advertising Manager and my boss at P&G, told me this in 1979. Here I was fresh out of Harvard Business School, and I was assigned to determine how big the hole in the ivory shampoo bottle should be: three-eighths of an inch or one-eighth of an inch. I did research, focus groups..and I would come home at night wondering how I had gone from HBS to this. But I later realised that any job you?re given is an opportunity to prove yourself.?

Vivek Paul, Vice Chairman Wipro

?The second-best piece of advice was something I learned from Jack Welch on one of his trips to India. He was commenting that every time he lands in New York, he imagine that he?s just been appointed chairman and that this is his first day in the role, and the guy before him was a real dud. He said, ?every time, I think, what would I do that was different than the guy before? What big changes would I make?? I took that seriously.?

Try to read the entire article.

• Deepa