p.17 The way to begin is with little bets.
p.27 The counterinsurgency approach is one of discovery and experimentation, a creative approach to warfare.
Preconceived templates or plans are obsolete. The cornerstone of counterinsurgency operations is what Army strategists
call developing the situation through action. Central to the process is acknowledging that mistakes will be made...
because soldiers are operating in an arena of uncertainty. They must be willing to seize (and retain) the initiative
by taking action in order to discover what to do, such as by launching frequent reconnaissance probes... Haskins says, "You
have to catch people making mistakes and make it so that it's cool. You have to make it undesirable to play it safe."
p.33 Successful experimental innovators... tend to view failure as both inevitable and instrumental in pursuing
their goals.
p.35-36 One of the striking characteristics of those who have learned to practice experimental innovation
is that... they understand (and come to accept) that failure, in the form of making mistakes or errors, and being
imperfect is essential to their success. It's not that they intentionally try to fail, but rather that they
know that they will make important discoveries by being willing to be imperfect, especially at the initial stages
of developing their ideas.
p.46 The key is that we can teach ourselves to think differently about failures and mistakes, seeing
them as opportunities for learning and growth.
p.49 Our creative capacities won't be liberated unless we let go of the subconscious need to always be perfect
or have the immediate answer... Practicing little bets frees us from the expectation that we should know everything
we need to know before we begin. Redefining problems and failures as opportunities focuses our attention
on insights to be gained rather than worrying about false starts or the risks we're taking
p.52-53 Pixar director Andrew Stanton... "My strategy has always been: be wrong as fast as we can. Which
basically means, we're gonna screw up, let's just admit that. Let's not be afraid of that. But let's
do it as fast as we can so we can get to the answer... I won't get it right the first time, but I will get it wrong
really soon, really quickly."
Failing quickly to learn fast is also a central operating principle for seasoned entrepreneurs
who routinely describe their approach as failing forward.
p.64 Discovery doesn't happen in a vacuum, which is why doing things, however imperfectly at first, opens
up [creativity].
p.69-70 Throughout the Pixar creative process, they rely heavily on what they call plussing...
The point of plussing is to build upon and improve ideas without using judgmental language. Creating an atmosphere
where ideas are constantly being plussed, while maintaining a sense of humor and playfulness, is a central
element of Pixar's magic... people accept the starting point before suggesting improvements.
p.76 as [Pixar's Chief Creative Officer] John Lasseter expresses his perfectionism, "We don't actually
finish our films, we release them."
p.77 "The realities are these constraints," he [Disney Concert Hall's designer Frank Gehry]
says... "Nobody realizes this." ...Instrumental in this process was the way in which Gehry and his team made use of
the constraints imposed on them for the project.
p.78 As Google's Marissa Mayer has put it, "Constraints shape and focus problems and provide clear
challenges to overcome." ...productively creative people use constraints to limit their focus and isolate a set of
problems that need to be solved... [Gehry] "I think we turn those constraints into action."
p.79 Disney Hall did not appear to Gehry as a fully developed image, or a singular idea.
It emerged through a process of little bets through which Gehry and his team worked within constraints to
frame and identify thousands of problems.
p.80 "...the design," Gehry says, "It grew out of the project."
p.81 They considered a wide range of possibilities... An important early decision was to discard the standard
shoebox concert hall design
p.83 Throughout building design process, Gehry's team constantly checks a project's progress against its
constraints.
p.84 using self-imposed constraints is a powerful technique. The key is to take a larger
project or goal and break it down into smaller problems to be solved, constraining the scope of work to solving a key problem,
and then another key problem.
This strategy... is what Bing Gordon, a cofounder and the former chief creative officer of the video
game company Electronic Arts, calls smallifying.
p.85 Takeuchi and Nonaka compared the way Japanese product development teams organized themselves with the
way a Rugby team might drive down the field in a scrum formation, passing the ball back and forth to the right person
for each moment of play. Rugby teams make creative decisions according to the challenge just before them, from which the specific
path downfield emerges.
p.97 One of the best ways to identify creative insights and develop ideas is to throw out the theory
and experience things firsthand.
p.108 "Creativity is just connecting things," [Steve] Jobs told Wired magazine. "When you ask creative
people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed
obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things..."
p.115 Specifically, what is the purpose of education? Is it to convey knowledge, as the current system is
weighted, or is it to inspire and nurture an ability to learn?
p.116 acting like anthropologists is one of the most powerful ways to help us formulate the questions that
will uncover invaluable insights and answers. And in so doing, it's important not only to dive deep into particular, selected
environments... but also to go wide.
p.148 Or take the case of agile software development. Recall that, in agile development, software emerges
through an ongoing discovery process. Key to this is that developers seek out small wins to validate their direction.
p.152 we can't plot a series of small wins in advance, we must use experiments in order for them to emerge.
p.152 This brings us back to the fundamental advantages of the little bets approach; it allows us to discover
new ideas, strategies, or plans through an emergent process, rather than trying to fully formulate them before we begin, and
it facilitates adapting our approach as we go... It's not a linear process from step A to step B to step C.
p.153-154 As we have seen, [certain successful experimental innovators] all do things to discover
what to do. At the core of this experimental approach, they use little bets to discover, test, and develop ideas
that are achievable and affordable. Little bets are their vehicle for discovery, whereby action produces insights
that can be analyzed
p.155 As General Petraeus says about counterinsurgency operations, "The side that learns and adapts
the fastest often prevails."
p.161 Invention and discovery emanate from being able to try seemingly wild possibilities and work in the
unknown; to be comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a keen observer, with an openness to experiences
and ideas; to play with ideas without censoring oneself or others
p.162 It all begins with a little bet. What will yours be?
