December 29, 2007

Insights from Mr. Twitter, Evan Williams in the Economist

Category: Technology, Entrepreneur, Internet — by Amit D. Chaudhary @ 2:42 pm

Economist has an article on Evan Williams, Founder and Creator of Blogger, Odeo and Twitter: The accidental innovator

Some snippets with minor grammer changes for continuity:

Ideas:

First insight, that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out; second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known;

Controlled Passion:

Mr Williams’s passion is solving new problems. In theory he could have done this at Google with his “20% time” on the side, but in practice he found it tedious to pitch ideas to the Google bureaucracy. Left and right brains clashed in other ways.

Radical Constraints:

One mental trick is to ask “what can we take away to create something new?” When he took Blogger and took away everything except one 140-character line, he had Twitter. Radical constraints, he believes, can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things.

Loves Frustration:

For the same reason, Mr Williams loves frustration. Blogger revealed itself when he was frustrated with something bigger: collaboration software.

Some other posts

    Excerpt: It was amusing, ironic and yet sad when I read in ...
    Excerpt: TED started as Technology, Entertainment & Design ...
    Excerpt: I knew the Math basics needed for choosing algorit...
• • •

No Comments »

No comments yet.

Comments RSSTrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Bot-Check

Powered by: WordPress Theme based on Sharepoint like theme from: ADMIN-BG