Tag: innovation

What Is Waiting For Us Around The Corner [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

A few days ago I stumbled upon a Forbes article about 4 game-changing technologies for the deaf and hard of hearing. I read it with interest, as I keep rubbing shoulders with the tech/startup world, and the moment it intersects with hearing technology, I immediately wonder what the technological future for hearing-impaired people like me might look like (remember my excitement about mimi?)

Without being an expert on either innovation or the hearing aid industry, here’s what I see when I look around. There are startups, like mimi, who approach issues from original angles, and clearly try to disrupt the market. But big companies innovate too.

future-of-hearing-technology

Over the last year or two, for example, we’ve heard a lot about Made for iPhone hearing aids, that will connect directly to your iPhone without a streamer (there’s a price though, not least a battery life of 2-3 days).

Also featured in Yahoo News’s game-changing wearable devices, Phonak’s Roger Pen, a versatile device that makes hearing in difficult situations much easier. I have yet to test it (soon, hopefully!) but I know a bunch of deaf students who swear by it. Less conducive to attention-grabbing headlines than “bluetooth hearing aids”, but maybe more important, there is also Venture, the new platform for Phonak aids. This can seem “softer” innovation, as it is “the next version” (after Quest, which I also tried), but if it is so good you fall asleep with your hearing aids on and forget to use your programmes, isn’t that quite incredible? Not to forget Lyric, a truly invisible hearing aid that you wear 24/7 and change every few months.

Anyway. Back to the article that got me writing today, and the players it showcases, along with my somewhat skeptical comments.

We have MotionSavvy, a tablet and software that translate sign language into spoken language in real time. This sounds really exciting, but can it really bridge the deaf and hearing worlds? I don’t sign, so I’m not certain of the implications of carrying a tablet around and signing with one hand. Also, I know that facial expression is an important part of sign language — will MotionSavvy manage that? I’d be interested in feedback from people who use sign primarily to communicate on how “real-life-useful” this seems to them. From the technology point of view it’s clearly exciting, though. (Update: two MotionSavvy founders + other employees are deaf, so I’m reducing my skepticism a few notches and increasing my enthusiasm about the project — “scratch your own itch” is always a selling-point for me.)

Then there is Solar Ear, which is about getting solar-rechargeable batteries in hearing aids for developing countries. We’ve written a few posts here about the Hear Haiti Project, and I’m certain that in addition to hearing aids the volunteers with the Hear the World Foundation must be bringing many many packs of batteries with them in their luggage. So, clearly, batteries that can be recharged with solar power sound like a great advance. However, there are reasons we’re not already widely using rechargeable batteries in hearing aids. This is above my pay-grade, but I did peek at their specs for the 312 battery (those I use), and I see it’s Ni-MH, which I read in the other article suffers from issues like the memory effect and capacity fading. Have they found a way around this, or do they simply design a hearing aid that can deal with these issues?

Third, ISEEWHATYOUSAY (video). This is a speech-to-text device. You speak a message into your end, and the message appears typed on the other person’s device. This is the less convincing one for me, because I don’t see how it is very different than dictating a text message into your phone for the other person.

Last but not least, in the vein of pimping your hearing aids, Hayleigh’s Cherished Charms. Hayleigh started drawing hearing-aid jewellery when she was little to encourage her classmates to stop hiding their hearing aids behind their hair. Now 16, Heyleigh runs a proper business selling her charms, complete with Etsy store!

Trying Venture: It’s Smooth [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

A surprise was waiting for me on my last trip to Phonak headquarters in Stäfa, 10 days ago: Venture.

I had an appointment to try some Audéo hearing aids and tweak a few things that were bothering me with the fitting and the settings. As I arrived in the building, I bumped into Ora. I excitedly told her, “Do you know I’m trying Boleros? And I like them, there are really situations where they perform better than my old hearing aids.” She answered that she was delighted to hear that. I mentioned some of my beef with Soundflow. “You should try Venture! Are you going to try Venture? Tell them to make you try Venture.”

Venture? Phonak’s new platform (chip, software) for Audéo.

I headed towards the audiology lab and was welcomed by Michael and Simone. Here is what they had for me 🙂

Audéo V90 and ComPilot Air II

Venture! I didn’t even have to ask. They had planned it all in advance. I was pretty excited, I had to say. New functionalities, resolution of the Soundflow switching issues that had annoyed me in my car, smaller BTE. No purple, or pink, sadly, but I decided I wouldn’t be fussy about the colour and be happy with the silver that was offered me.

The fitting went smoothly and I got to know Simone, my audiologist for this visit. We did things wirelessly (I was wondering about that in my first post: both options exist for Phonak, it really comes down to the audiologists preference), selected some new programmes, and — even more exciting! — tested the ComPilot Air II and got to see the RemoteControl smartphone app in action.

Two and a half years ago, when I got fitted, I was dreaming about this. My initial assumption once I got over the wonder of hearing more was that there should be a way to interact with my hearing aids directly from my phone. I was shocked that it wasn’t possible. I was also shocked that the device I was provided with to “connect” my phone and hearing aids was so… 2001. With the ComPilot Air II, I feel we’re really getting there.

ComPilot Air II

Steph on Train with ComPilot Air IIIt’s not direct phone-to-hearing-aid connection, but the device is small, looks good, is actually wearable, and has an autonomy that makes it usable. About 4 hours of streaming, I’m told, versus 1 hours for the M-DEX I tried two years ago. And the app, though it is still quite simple, is also really on the right track. Unfortunately, due to iOS8 Bluetooth problems, I’m going to have to wait a bit for it to be available on iOS so I can really try it out (get it from Google Play though). While we’re talking about “in the right direction”, I can’t wait to see what EasyCall is like — a flat device that fits on the back of any Bluetooth-enabled phone and boasts upto 10 hours of talk time.

The ComPilot works really well. I got to try it for a few real-life phone calls, and once we had set the default behaviour to “mute the room” when streaming started (who on earth would like surrounding sounds to be amplified too while trying to make a phone call?!) it managed to be at least as good as my default “earbuds and no hearing aids” solution. I used it on the train home to listen to podcasts. Now I get to look even sillier when I laugh all by myself on the bus, because I don’t even have earbud wires dangling from my ears.

The smartphone app connects with the ComPilot and allows things like changing programmes through the app instead of cycling through them with the hearing aid button. It also allows control of the general amplification volume (up/down), and with the Speech in 360 programme, you can “lock” amplification in one direction if you desire, instead of letting it automatically determine where the speech you want to listen to is coming from.

In addition to the Speech in 360 programme, I got a dedicated Music programme with no Soundrecover. I also added a simple Calm Environment programme as a fallback if ever the automatic programme was doing things I didn’t want it to (I had been burned, but I needn’t have worried).

One little snag I hit with this new pair of hearing aids was linked to the little bend that has been added to the RIC part of the aid. It actually improves fitting — meaning it’s possible to fit more people with that bend. Sadly it’s not a good thing for me, as I seem to be one of the small number of people for who the bend makes things uncomfortable (outright painful actually!), but Simone managed to find some “old” unbent ones for me. And Michael told me that the bend could be tweaked by the audiologist — so no big showstopper. Just a snag.

It bends!

I really like that they now make the open tips black instead of transparent. Even if you’re squeaky-clean, the transparent ones always become yellow with time. No problem with black 🙂

We decided to take some imprints of my ears to prepare custom molds for me next time. Even though I don’t like the idea of “occlusive” molds, I did give them a fair chance with my Widex aids, and I’m willing to give Phonak a chance too. So, stay tuned, next time is probably going to be about that.

My ear!

It was a really exciting morning. I left the audiology lab with a huge smile on my face and a lot of hope for the future.

After a week or two of use, I am totally in love with my Audéo V90s. They’re smooth. I don’t notice them. We’ve solved all my physical comfort problems. I don’t need to take them out when I get a phone call (with or without ComPilot). I don’t hear any transitions between programmes. The sound around me feels completely natural. I never hear anything “weird” coming out of them.

The ultimate test: in the automatic programmes that come with Venture, there is a new one designed specifically for car noise, so I was curious to see how that would play out. Answer, a few days later: great. I had music on full blast, on the motorway, and I was singing at the top of my voice — on the automatic programme. And I never heard my hearing aids misbehave. It was as if I wasn’t wearing them, but could hear.

They’ll have to pry them out of my cold dead hands.

Vindication and Unintentional Plagiarism [en]

[fr] Je retrouve dans Here Comes Everybody plein d'idées "à moi". Sont-ce vraiment les miennes? D'où viennent-elles? Peu importe, au final. Un livre dont je recommande chaudement la lecture.

I’m reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. I should have read it a long time ago, like most unread books on my bookshelf. It’s about the behavioural and social change brought about by social tools. Each chapter is making me go “yes, wow!” and I get a sense of vindication, because so much of what Shirky so clearly explains is stuff that I’ve been saying for years. It feels like “he agrees with me”.

The truth is certainly more complex. These “theories” that I’ve come up with over the years to explain the online connected world to outsiders, and which feel like mine, well, I didn’t conjure them out of thin air. We all know about unintentional plagiarism, don’t we? Maybe I even read them on Shirky’s blog, once upon a time. Or heard them from somebody who read the book, or knows him.

Though Clay Shirky and I have never met, we have many friends and acquaintances in common. The Acknowledgements section at the end of his book is so full of people I’ve met and spoken with (when they’re not simply friends) that it’s a little surreal. I’m offline, or I’d check on Facebook and see how many contacts we have in common. Fair to say that we’re part of a tightly connected area of the network. (One notable difference, amongst others, though: Shirky took the trouble to write a book :-))

Another possibility is that these are “ambient ideas”. I’ve forgotten the reference for this (but Scott Berkun‘s book The Myths of Innovation almost certainly talks about it), but innovation is generally not an isolated event. The climate is ripe, and it is not rare that more than one person comes up with a new idea around the same time. These are possibly the “collective theories” in certain circles we are part of. It’s at the same time fascinating and frustrating that it is not possible to trace precisely how ideas travel through the network.

It doesn’t really matter, though. It feels good to see in print what I’ve been thinking and saying for years, even if I don’t remember how I came to these conclusions. Allow me to risk basking in the warm fuzzy glow of confirmation bias for a while.

Lift11: Ben Hammersley, Post-digital geopolitics [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors. Note: no kilt today.

Twenty-first year of the WWW. Bizarre situation we have now: splitting of generations. *steph-note: speaker tip, do what Ben does — pause in between your sentences :-)*

Mubarak had the same look on his face than Swiss industrials who’ve just discovered the Internet, or a newspaper which has just gone bankrupt. Interesting: psychological effects, particularly amongst the group of people who are running the world, people around the age of 50 or 60, who are supposed to be creating the future, but who are already so confused by the present.

What defines a country is distance (“in the beginning was distance”). We’re “us” because we’re here, and they are “them” because they’re over here. All the rest (language, religion, culture) develops purely because of distance. Distance defined us.

Society is structured through vertical distance. He’s up there, I’m down here. Hierarchical society. We know where we are, who is above, who is below. Freud gave us an explanation and a toolkit *(steph-note: worth what it’s worth)*. Dominant intellectual framework for the industrial age.

We judge ourselves by numbers which represent fictions (ie, popularity on Twitter). We have the wrong cognitive toolkits, in the 21st century. We used to know who the ennemies were, where we stood in society and business. Networks mess that up — initially just for nerds and geeks, but after that for more and more people.

Death of distance *(steph-note: what I’ve been preaching for years regarding multilingualism online — e.g. the boundaries today are linguistic, and not country/geographic)*

=> Diaspora. Many new forms of countries — culture, interests, principles… they all collate online. Stronger interests and links with people who are geographically distance than with our neighbours. => interesting situations! Mailing-lists with guns, for example. *steph-note: literally?* Very difficult to shoot a hashtag.

Older generation brought up in a world of hierarchy (pyramids), and the younger generation a world of networks (sheets), and us in the middle. And the young ones don’t understand hierarchy, and the older ones don’t understand how a network works. “Shoot the leader and everything else will go away!”

Don’t understand that they don’t understand how to understand this stuff. They lack the intellectual framework on which to base this new form of thinking. *steph-note: did anybody say “culture shock”? Another of my incessant choruses… 😉 — exactly what many people from the West are faced with when trying to “get” India.*

Explain, don’t complain. The reason communication breaks down over these matters is people lack the cognitive toolkit for the discussion. Our primary problem is not to encourage innovation, it’s to translate *steph-note: amen — and exactly how I view my work*.

De l'émergence de la classe créative à la créativité [fr]

Voici mes notes de la journée de la FER “De la créativité à l’action“. Si vous voyez des erreurs, merci de les signaler dans les commentaires!

09.08.2010: les vidéos de cette journée sont en ligne.

Anne Heleen Bijl

Parler en français => comme si elle devait refaire toute sa présentation! Intéressant…

La créativité casse les cadres, c’est la clé de l’innovation. La plupart du temps on n’en a pas besoin. 2% du temps, on se dit qu’il doit y avoir une “autre solution”. C’est là qu’on a besoin de la créativité. Problème: on cherche souvent une solution qui est trop proche du problème. Mais en fait il faut des fois chercher complètement ailleurs.

Créativité: relier deux aspects qui n’avaient pas de contact avant.

Osborne, américain dans les années 50. A cherché comment il pouvait faire en sorte que chacun de ses 500 employés produise des idées.

Expérience avec 4 personnes du public: A et B sur un panneau, les relier. Comment est-ce qu’on les relie? En général on a tendance à les relier par le chemin le plus court, le plus facile. Mais dans la vie c’est pas toujours possible… *steph-note: très tentée d’aller arracher la feuille pour faire se rejoindre A et B en la pliant… ah, quelqu’un l’a fait!*

Obstacles à la créativité:

  • peur d’être ridiculisé, surtout par soi-même (on est son juge le plus sévère)
  • “ça ne va pas réussir”
  • on ne voit pas l’avantage
  • tenir aux vieilles solutions (on n’aime pas le changement et les nouvelles habitudes, elles sont difficiles à installer! 30 fois un nouveau comportement pour qu’il s’installe, cf. FlyLady)
  • “Les Autres” le rendent impossible
  • se créer des barrières soi-même
  • être satisfait de la première solution
  • problème d’autorité: qui est le chef?

L’effet Eurêka: 10 phases

  • problème est un défi
  • le problème est le vôtre
  • recherche de solutions => échec
  • frustration
  • distraction
  • relaxation
  • moment de coïncidence
  • eurêka, inspiration (si on a de la chance!)
  • euphorie
  • réalisation

*steph-note: lire The Myths of Innovation!*

Conditions pour la créativité:

  • indépendance
  • liberté/espace
  • concentration
  • motivation intrinsèque *(steph-note: cf. la vidéo de Dan Pink dont je parle dans “Carotte et créativité ne font pas bon ménage“.)*
  • bonne définition du problème
  • breaking patterns/outside the box
  • donner une chance aux idées
  • humour
  • temps pressé/nécessité
  • chercher des alternatives

Conditions créatives en groupe

  • stimuation de nouvelles idées
  • rémunération d’idées
  • moyens (budget, personnes)
  • pas trop de contrôle: liberté
  • ne poses pas de questions trop définies
  • pas autoritaire

Sept règles de communication créative

  • suspension du jugement
  • écoutez attentivement: quelle peut être la valeur de cette idée?
  • fantaisie et imagination
  • quantité amène qualité
  • pollinisation croisée
  • 3x +++ (le droit de demander trois avantages de son idée à la personne qui la reçoit négativement, genre “oui mais bon, sois réaliste!”)
  • 28 ideakillers sont tabous (y compris non verbaux!)

Utile de garder à l’esprit le temps d’incubation de certaines idées, entre l’idée et sa mise sur le marché:

  • TV: 50 ans
  • pacemaker: 30 ans
  • fermeture éclair: 30 ans
  • stylo bille: 7 ans
  • radio: 24 ans
  • antibios: 30 ans
  • nourriture congelée: 15 ans

Xavier Comtesse

Réseaux sociaux et créativité: étude faite au démarrage de la Muse, sur Rezonance. Quelle est la part des créatifs chez Rezonance?

Parmi les abonnements payants de Rezonance, est-ce qu’un questionnaire va fonctionner? Réponse hallucinante: personne ne comprenait les questions. Problème de langue? Peut-être faut-il passer au hollandais… 😉

Mise en garde:

  • la créativité dans le contexte de l’innovation
  • un sondage via un réseau déjà existant (Rezonance)
  • démarche volontairement participative
  • le questionnaire est soumis au Conseil scientifique

En français, “créativité” c’est vraiment associé à l’art. Gros échec 🙂 => il a fallu tout revoir.

Ont monté un sous-groupe du comité scientifique, le “Groupe Montbrillant”. “Pourquoi est-ce que les gens ne comprennent pas nos questions, que nous on comprend très bien?” => ne plus poser les questions sur la créativité, mais partir du principe que la créativité fait partie du processus d’innovation.

En amont: créativité; en aval: amener au marché, stratégie commerciale. On s’est beaucoup préoccupés de l’aval, supposant que là est la difficulté, et moins de l’amont.

Résultats: dans la région lémanique, on aurait une classe créative deux fois plus dense qu’aux USA, par exemple, 62% ont participé à une start-up, 7% on déposé un brevet. *steph-note: attention, on parle de Rezonance ici, et non pas d’un échantillon représentatif de la région lémanique!!*

Par contre, seulement 5% fréquentent un centre créatif.

Ils ont appelé “net-ups” entreprises qui naissent dans un réseau social et se construisent avec lui. *steph-note: pas sûre que j’aime ce terme… c’est simplement le modèle de beaucoup de start-ups dans les nouvelles technologies: agile, crowdsourcing, etc…*

Creative commons.

Centres créatifs: existent-ils réellement dans notre région? Différentes générations de creative centres.

  • première générion, MIT etc: faire vivre des objets et des services avec des usagers, et les observer. Client-roi. Usagers ne sont pas co-créatifs.

Après, consommacteurs. Changement fondamental de percevoir le produit, l’économie. (On est des bêtes curieuses.)

Ces lieux jouent pour l’amont le même rôle que le prototype pour l’aval.

Mettre en place des méthodologies. Les méthodologies ne font qu’accélérer la créativité, rien d’autre. Ce sont des accélérateurs.

Xavier nous montre “la matrice”… “démerdez-vous avec!” — quand un matheux essaie de montrer les résultats d’un sondage. *(steph-note: image dans l’article de Pascal Rossini…)*

Elmar Mock

On ne cueille pas de champignons sur l’autoroute. Est-ce que ça s’apprend, la créativité? Difficile d’en parler.

Avait le sentiment qu’après avoir inventé la Swatch, il n’était plus possible dans la société d’inventer autre chose. => nouvelle structure. (Mais en fait le problème c’était lui… *steph-note: si j’ai bien compris*)

A la base plein de créatifs, mais on le reste pas tous. Métaphore moléculaire: l’être humain est une molécule d’eau (gaz, eau, solide, ça reste une molécule d’eau).

  • Gaz: créativité, imagination, exploration
  • Liquide: école, expérimentation, évolution (étape douloureuse)
  • Solide: éducation universitaire, formation professionnelle, maturité, réalité (ordre, structure)

Relation d’amour-haine entre créativité et structures/organisation (gaz vs. solide).

Le créatif finit toujours par créer des cristaux (les cristaux c’est une idée qui marche!) — c’est la réalité de la créativité! Permettre à la société d’avoir de nouveaux cristaux pour nous donner l’illusion que demain existe. (On a des budgets, des projets, des plannings, “l’année prochaine ce sera bon”. *steph-note: ça me fait penser à “The Black Swan“, livre à lire absolument d’ailleurs.*

Difficile de trouver l’endroit où les trois états de la matière coexistent (le point triple). Startups.

La métaphore de la perle. L’huître ne crée la perle que si quelque chose dérange. Il faut un élément perturbateur pour la créativité. Clé: identifier et définir cet élément perturbateur. Malheureusement, on s’adapte à nos éléments perturbateurs et nos difficultés. On n’a pas envie de modifier nos habitudes.

Après avoir trouvé l’élément perturbateur, phase inventive, puis phase conceptuelle, phase scientifique, phase commerciale.

Modèle en oignon: chacun est responsable d’un truc, départements. Ça marche pour la rénovation et l’évolution, mais pas pour l’innovation et la révolution. Il faut pour cela supprimer la notion de départements.

Caisse à outils de la phase gazeuse. (The Gas-Phase Toolkit.) Cartes (?).

Important: ça prend du temps. On va pas juste prendre 1h pour être créatifs.

  1. cerner: quel est l’élément perturbateur? définir le problème
  2. curiosité: s’intéresser par exemple aux gens qui vont utiliser ce système, qu’est-ce qui se passe au niveau de l’industrie
  3. idéation: (3 jours) contrairement au citron (plus on presse moins il y a de jus), eh bien l’homme, plus on presse, plus il y a de jus. Il faut prendre le temps d’aller explorer d’autres chemins pour trouver des champignons. On va se sentir perdus. Prendre les chemins de traverse. Energie pour traverser le tunnel. Divergence et convergence. Augmenter le nombre d’idées. Brainstorming (attention, c’est pas une discussion chaotique, c’est un système rigoureux!). Méthode 6-3-5.
  4. entonnoir: convergence, sélectionner, éliminer, trier les idées après la diarrhée intellectuelle qu’est le brainstorming. Critique constructive.  Intuition, imaginer ce que sera demain. Sur nos 100 idées, laquelle aura la médaille d’or, d’argent, de bronze?

Sans élément perturbateur, le brainstorming est de la masturbation.

Etre innovateur, c’est aussi être dans le faire. Ça nous aide à être de meilleurs innovateurs de les suivre jusque dans la dure réalité de l’actualisation.

Chaque fois qu’on a un problème, une nouvelle phase créative est ouverte.

A Few Words About Google Wave [en]

I wanted to write this post yesterday, to keep up with my good resolutions, but time caught up with me and I had to leave my computer to go and enjoy some time on the lake (we finished 13th, and I had a good windy sailing lesson before that — thanks Dad).

So, as for most of you I guess, Google Wave came up on my Twitter radar these last days. I thought I’d take a quick peek, without spending the whole day on it, so I looked at part of the demo video (the first part, where the actual demo is), and read a few articles (CNET, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb — there are tons of others, but I’m on purpose trying not to be exhaustive in my research… fight that perfectionism!)

In one word? Cool.

I remember many years ago, how taking collaborative notes in SubEthaEdit during the BlogTalk conference in Vienna would every now and then drift into us chatting in the document. (By the way: I’m on the Programme Committee for BlogTalk 2009 which will take place in Jeju, South Korea, on September 1-2. Send in your proposals now!)

I also remember, how many years before that, ICQ introduced “real-time chat” (or whatever they called it), where you could actually see people type when you chatted with them.

And I remember the many many days I’ve spent in endless wiki conversations — I think one of the best ways I can describe Google Wave is to say it’s a very accelerated wiki page with bells and a touch of Facebook.

Google Wave is marrying e-mail and IM, and it’s a good thing. It’s recording the process of the conversation, which makes it easier for outsiders to jump in. It has private, it has public, it has text, it has rich media, it has profiles.

People say it’s a bit hard to get at first, and that, in my opinion, is another indication that it is something really new.

I can’t wait to try it. I get all excited when I think of it. These are my totally uninformed first impressions. Over the years, I’ve come to trust those — Google Wave is going to change things.

Business Thoughts [en]

[fr] Je suis en train de me rendre compte de la valeur qu'il y a à investir dans ce que l'on fait et qui fonctionne déjà. Sans vouloir tirer des boulets rouges sur l'innovation (je serais mal placée), payer le loyer est important, et lorsque l'on lit les histoires de ceux à qui les risques ont souri, ne perdons pas de vue qu'on entend rarement parler des perdants.

I think a bunch of things I’ve been reading and thinking about over the last months are starting to come to something.

For example, one thing I’m realising is that it’s easier to pursue and grow existing business than do new things from scratch. I mean this in two ways:

  • existing customers
  • “stuff you do” that actually brings in money

If I look at the past two years, there are a handful of things that have consistently helped pay the rent. If I look back, I’ve spent a lot of energy over the past year trying to do “stuff I wanted to do” — experiential marketing, for example. Of course, it’s easy to say now with hindsight that I might have been better off concentrating on what had worked, but if experiential marketing had been a huge hit that had made me rich, well, it wouldn’t have been a mistake right now.

(I’m reading Fooled by Randomness these days, can you tell?)

Of course, taking risks and innovating is a chance to break through. I’m not saying one should always stick to what one knows. But remember we see the winners, not the losers.

But paying the rent is important.