Rule making & breaking

The below is in a constant state of flux and serves as rough guide and food for thought for my own creation process.

• Learn by doing
  • Take away a sound understanding of new concepts learned at the end of each activity
  • Transform knowledge into intuition
  • Share your learnings
  • Experiment to avoid/overcome procrastination
  • Go further, Carpe noctem

• Become literate in systems thinking
  • Create services, and products as artefacts of services
  • Always consider the surrounding context and environment of your output
  • Understand, utilize & harness economics of scale, network effects
  • Often the population (of ideas, opportunities & solutions, your network) is more important than the individual
  • Again, adopt creation processes which support this approach

• Use the right tool for the right job - make those tools!
  • Recognize too that each tool has limitations
  • Benefit from these boundaries set

• Encourage creative flow in your process
  • Utilize iterative, agile practices
  • Constant refinement & refactoring

• Be part of networks
  • However peers are not main source of inspiration
  • Apply recursion to your process, but don't (give in to) repeat yourself: creatively & practically

• Allow for recombination of ideas by adopting modular development
  • This applies personally & globally
  • Acknowledge you're standing on the shoulders of giants
  • Become your own giant
  • Embrace Open Source thinking and practice

• Be open to new influences
  • Encourage serendipity in your process
  • Evaluate new processes, techniques & technologies, adopt them immediately where beneficial

• Benefit from and accept that you're working towards moving targets (caused by your own doing and that of others)
  • Replace fixed, crystallized, pre-defined specifications with a shared vision as starting point
  • Be prepared and allow the vision to change
  • Define inputs as ranges, not constants, thus allowing your creation to be agile
  • Accept failure as part of your process
  • However, risk of major failure is drastically reduced in a continuous mode for issues can be recognized and addressed earlier on

• Use clear language without hype & buzzwords

• Be self-critical to promote quality & positiveness
  • Ask the important, uneasy questions if you're in doubt
  • Don't be afraid to change your opinion if new learnings require so
  • Your output & process is more important than your brand, let these things BE your brand

• Attempt to move away from isolated projects towards a continuous flow of activity
  • Small steps, more often
  • Work iteratively and think modular
  • Don't dilute the essence of a thing by giving in to feature creep
  • Attempt constant feedback loops