Problem Space Mapping

What is problem space mapping?
Problem space mapping refers to the exploration, discovery and build-up of a map of the problem situation. Without an effective map of the problem, we could easily end up solving the wrong problem.

Why are problem space mapping skills important?Because outside of the school environment, we are rarely given a problem - often, we have a vague discomfort that something is amiss and without problem space mapping skills, we will take a long time getting to a sensible formulation of the problem, not to mention developing an effective solution to the problem.

Give an example of this situation.As I embark as a project manager on a new project, I could draw on past experiences and various books to map out the problem space. However, on some other endeavors, like starting a new business, the problem space map is a blank.

What is the problem with our current education?
The problem with our current educational system is focused on solution space searching i.e. given a problem, search for appropriate solutions to the problem. The problem is already given.

What are cases where this the notion of problem space mapping has proven effective?
In the introduction to the book "The PRIMES", author Chris McGoff relates a story where his partner, Michael Doyle explained to the Director of Strategy for the World Bank the reason the existing plan for change is doomed to fail. One of the reasons was that:

".. the design won't work because it violates the 'Rule of Parity': People need approximately as much space to talk about the problem as they do the solution. This design creates far too little space for the bank's senior leaders to get sufficiently clear on the problem and too much space for solution.

Deliberately build a shared vocabulary of effective terms

How many ideas are in the title?
 There are two separate ideas in the title:
1. The first is to deliberately build a shared vocabulary
2. The second is to build a vocabulary of very specific terms that represent effective ways of working.

Why is a shared vocabulary useful?
It quickly communicates the intention of the speaker and the listener quickly understands what's being communicated.
 What's a more effective way of saying "terms that represent effective ways of working"?
Say ewow words instead; the word ewow stands for effective ways of working.

What is the take-away from this post?
The thing to do then is as follows:
1. Identify an effective way of working from studying cases where it has been used.
2. Associate an ewow term with the identified effective way of working
3. Use the ewow term individually and in groups and communities

Other open questions:
What are cases of shared vocabulary contributing to success?
- I'd imagine in highly specialized activities e.g. surgical rooms or air traffic control
What are cases of not using shared vocabulary contributing to failure?
- Cases of failure from misunderstanding - would a shared vocabulary have helped?
What are cases of using ewow words contributing to success?
- I'd look for highly effective teams with some ewow terms e.g. extreme programming practices?
What are cases of not using ewow words contributing to failure?
- Need some work here.

Mechanism Design and Entering a New Market

It is possible to design incentive structures to reveal hidden information*.

Applied to business, we can use this idea to help our customer choose vendors of high ability. The way to do this is to suggest a long multi-phase project of some fixed cost and an initial phase which will reveal the cost of each vendor.
 * The lesson on Mechanism Design shows how one can design incentive structures to reveal hidden information.

Inline #keywords are useful

Memiary's design involves using inline keywords to tag a post which i think is a fantastic idea.
Inlining in general is a better because it lowers friction.

A swipe tool for before-after images

A swipe tool and some tinting are extremely effective for before-after visualizations.
See here for implementation.

A peer-to-peer search engine named YaCy

YaCy is a fantastic idea - a mature peer to peer search engine.

• Home: http://yacy.net/en/index.html
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy

What is the complementary product of teaching?

Suppose we develop a firm that offers classes at very low cost and recoup the cost in other ways.
E.g. teach how to setup web sites but recoup the cost from affiliate marketing of DNS and webhosts.
Or teach programming for free - sell laptopss.

Teach cooking for free, sell ingredients.

Buy a large plot of land.
Establish a free center of study.
Make money from rentals.

Complementary Products

The notion of complementary products are very helpful in generating product ideas.

Preconditions for a self-organizing system based on Lyapunov Functions

Self-organizing systems based on Lyapunov Functions

Lyapunov functions can explain how a city/system self-organizes.

Consider Disneyland with 5 rides and 5 customers. Each ride can only service one customer.

• Each customer first waits at the gate and writes down the sequence of rides they plan to take
• Once the gate opens, each customer goes to the first ride on their list
• If more than one customer goes to the same ride, then someone have to wait and a ride somewhere is empty.
• To avoid waiting, customers in queue will then choose rides with no queue.
• This behaviour collectively result in every ride being occupied and no queues.
• The system self-organizes.

Pre-conditions for self-organization

However, self-organization happens only if certain preconditions are true:

1. Perfect information - e.g. all customers know exactly which rides are empty (say within visual range)
2. No cost to switching - e.g. customer can switch to another ride without cost
3. No barriers to switching - e.g. all customer can switch to any other ride at any time
4. No externalities - e.g. customers behaviour are independent, one taking a ride does not affect another taking a ride

Consider if the the opposite conditions hold:

1. Imperfect information
• e.g. customers cannot see which rides are empty (e.g. rides are in housed the buildings) so they'd rather continue queuing rather than risk going to another ride which may have a longer queue
2. Costly switching
• e.g. rides are very far apart and to walk to the next nearest ride takes half a day - then customers may rather stay put
3. Barriers to switching
• e.g. rides are segregated to VIP zone and normal zone - normal customer cannot access VIP rides even if they are empty.
4. Externalities
• e.g. when Customer A is a sloppy person and leaves behind a trail of food and grime everywhere - other customers will then be reluctant to go on a rides that Customer A has been on

Other examples of self-organizing systems

• Checkout queues in a hypermarket encourages self-organizing customers
• Consider what happens if the checkout queues are split into 3 separate groups
• Multi-storey parking buildings with the number of free slots at each floor prominently displayed
• Drivers get better information and make better decisions
• Consider a crowded parking building with zero information