Don't Panic Labs Reading List

DPL Reading List – July 28, 2017

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| July 28, 2017 | in

Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.

How Successful People Spend Their Weekends – “Successful people know the importance of shifting gears on the weekend to relaxing and rejuvenating activities.”

Why Business Leaders Need to Read More Science Fiction – “Exploring fictional futures frees our thinking from false constraints. It challenges us to wonder whether we’re even asking the right questions. It forces us to recognize that sometimes imagination is more important than analysis.”

A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy – “The story of the agency is well-known, which is that the space program may suffer irreversible consequences if any of its software is incorrect, among them death. The shock of that reality has allowed them to develop a certain attitude towards programming. It could be instructive to take a look at what they value.”

New corporate titans are rising faster than ever, but they’re also fading faster, too – “Even as the human race has relied on technology, innovation and research to achieve major strides in longevity, companies have suffered dramatic declines in durability. At a macro level, this means greater volatility as market leadership changes hands more frequently. At a micro level, this means companies will need to revisit how they think about everything from strategic planning to investment horizons to executive tenure. Reinvention, it seems, will be just as important as invention.”

Hold Your Employees Accountable Without Damaging Company Culture – “Many leaders are afraid of being “the heavy” and ruining company culture by suddenly holding employees accountable for their work. How can you create accountability throughout your organization without damaging morale?”

Innovation Is as Much About Finding Partners as Building Products – “To seize the opportunity before us, collaboration across the economy must become universal. Yesterday’s model of innovation is no longer adequate — instead, the entire ecosystem must work together. Smart companies, founders, and investors that recognize this have a far better shot at making history, rather than running the risk of becoming a footnote to it.”

Where Have The Users Gone? – “Changing behavior requires not only an understanding of how to persuade users to act — for example, the first time they land on a webpage — but also necessitates getting them to behave differently for long periods of time, ideally for the rest of their lives.”