Hi, I’m Jeff. My goal today:
Convince you that the Liberal Arts equips you with
a unique set of skills ideally suited to today’s world
Share the story of how I got where I am
And a bit of what I’ve learned along the way
And why it is that I’ve reached this conclusion
2nd year
(2006&7)
Media in Society*
Ancient Philosophy*
Early Modern Philosophy
Intro to Theory of Knowledge*
Intro to Philosophy of Mind*
Intro to Medieval Philosophy
Philosophy of Science*
Conceptual Development of Mathematics
Writing 101**applies directly to my job today
…meanwhile…
Some of my favourite classes:
Speculative Fiction:
Science Fiction & Fantasy*
Intro to Early Modern Philosophy
The Crucible of the Modern Age
Creative Non-Fiction*
Killer Culture
“Business strategy think tank”
“Syndicated research”
10-15 “internal resources”
+ many “external contractors”
Our job: Find cool ideas and sell them to big companies.
What I madeWrote, co-wrote, or ghostwrote
“Checking-in” to the future
Process mining
Life imitating art
Continuous strategy for a
networked world
Making strategy real
What’s measured counts
Marketing 2.0
Presented
Prediction markets
Gamers as customers and
employees
Mining everyone’s business
Overview of social media
The new who and the myth
of customer empowerment
Case studies
OkCupid
Valve Software
T4G in 30 seconds
We design, develop, and
implement technology
solutions that help our
customers run their
businesses better.
AnalyticsDigital
Marketing
Managed
ServicesOmnichannel
Custom
Development
Here comes the dialectic.
Most people just copy others
This also copies thinking
Thoughts include hidden assumptions
Old thoughts are from old times
And contain old assumptions
Change invalidates assumptions
This means you have a bunch of
assumptions about the world that
are both invisible and incorrect.
This problem is endemic.
Examples
Music industry
Video rentals
Fire alarms
Scarcity of education
The cost of starting a business
How failure works
How do we solve this?
1. Go back to the fundamentals
2. Solicit critical feedback
3. Pick absurd goals
1&2: Elon Musk, 3: Google
Who better to do this than those in the Liberal Arts?
1. Critical analysis
2. Communication
3. Creativity
4. Problem-solving
5. Thinking
What to do:
1. Give every document a goal.
2. Be incurably curious.
3. Always look for a better way.
