A Compass View of Some Unique Information Economy Rules

Following are a list of pretty good rules for Information Age Innovation

• The blue colored text is from Alidade.net
• The black-colored text are our comments 

The things that surprise you are good indicators of how innovative you are.
Seeing how unrelated things are connected together in an effective way is a better indicator of how insightful that a person is  Being mindfully insightful is the step before innovation.

Amateurs discuss principles and technology, professionals emphasize  process.

In any strategic-driven venture, the amateurs are always talking about the principles of general leadership and the tactical abstract. Talk is their specialty.  (The Cult of the Art of War is famous for that.)

The professionals are centered on utilizing their principles-supported (and rules-based) process models while mastering their logistics. The procedures supported the specific rules.  The specific rules supported the principles.  It is that simple.  

In order to succeed in a chaotic setting, they also built various contingencies strategies to their process model for pursuing opportunities.

"Innovations" that do not improve your process model (or product) more than 3- to 10- fold are mere improvements and not likely worth upsetting the status quo to implement.

A characteristic of Industrial Age processes is that information and decision making are captives of the physical structure.

The successful strategists are usually focused on making decisions that go beyond the physical structure.

Information-rich processes are characterized by and sustained with diversity.

A well-tailored information-rich system that is constantly updated with a diversity of relevant information, will benefits its implementers. 

Successful strategists are constantly assessing the state of their terrain (and beyond) while positioning themselves toward an effective state of influencing.

When diversity is lost, processes typically fail.

All good process models usually possess well-strategized contingency rules. They only fail when people failed to implement the "adjust to evolve" rule.

The criteria of a good process model must be generalized  enough to cover the requirements of the settings. The process model must have the rules that enable the implementers to adjust its scope. 

A brute-force solution wastes money and effort while remaining inferior to more clever solutions.

A solution with a limited scope, usually have negative impact when . Building and implementing a clever solution begins by seeing the big tangible picture of one's grand settings and beyond.

All the information about a system is contained within the system. Extracting the information properly and acting on it, is the most difficult task facing the chief decision makers.

The most trivial type of information in an information-rich process is the location of the physical elements.

The other trivia are people's opinions and gossips.

Prediction and causality have useful meanings in Industrial Age processes but are problematic for information-rich processes.

Sometimes, people make predictions without any sheer evidence. Their claims are worthless. The Dao De Jing declared that those who know how, do not say.

Simultaneously, we are overwhelmed with mountains of "high noise and low signal" information that possessed the value of near-zero.

The keys to prevailing over this situation are:

• Know the approach for collecting the right data; 
• Know the approach for assessing the data strategically; and 
• Know the approach for staying focused while avoiding contentment.

Information Technology has about as much to do with Information Age processes as the internal combustion engine has to do with Industrial Age processes (See Rule #2).
It should be obvious.

The Laws of Physics still hold. Particularly for information.

The physical laws of one's settings (and one's own technology) should always prevail over the scope of any information.

If you want a new idea, read an old book
To discover a new idea, read a classic that well-respected experts have considered as a super text. (Make sure it is a relevant translation.)

During your reading, focus on how things work and how things are connected.  It is that simple. The other alternative is to walk around and be aware of one's own settings.  


Food For Thought
Q: If your competition has a similar toolbox (resources, process, etc.) like yours, what would you do to gain a strategic advantage? 

Side notes: 

When efficiency hits its limitation, innovation becomes the immediate goal. The chief decision makers must now focus on the building of  a special tool that provides a higher performance standard to the users. When a high quality tool can be configured to many unique situations, the user now has a grand advantage against their competition.