Take Five. A List of 2018's best. (Books, Podcasts, Youtube Channels & More).

Every new year comes with new hopes, habits, notes to self and reflections on the passing year.
It's not important what you have covered this year, but what did you discover.

Keeping up with the festive tradition here is a list of the best 5's I have stumbled upon this year.

5 podcasts 

1- Big Questions with Cal Fussman:

First stumbled upon him with Tim Ferris (another great Podcast), then was thrilled to find that he started his own podcast. Fussman is a New York Times bestselling author, longtime Esquire writer, corporate consultant.

The format is simple, it's one on one interviews with diverse driven,accomplished and success figures I highly recommend stating with Kobe Bryant episode

2- Leadership & Discipline:
Because motivation is like showering we need to do it everyday in the morning Jocko Willink  is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.


3- The Message:

The first confirmed signal from outer-space has reached us, a team of specialists is trying to decode the message. Documenting the whole process is a Cyphercast podcast host Nicky Tomalin.

The reason why this is not all over the news, is that it's fake. The Message is fictional podcast about a podcast that was described as a sci fi serial. Interesting concept worth discovering.

4- You're not so Smart:

The easiest person you can persuade and manipulate creatively is yourself, as it turns out your brain sometimes takes part in self delusion as well.

you are not so smart is a podcast dedicate to the exploration self delusion. It covers topics like why your memories are not reliable, the idiot brain and naive realism.


5- HBR Ideacast:

Some podcasts are great at capturing the start up life, the silicon valley spirit of positive productivity at work, other podcasts are great at theoretical academic analysis of theory and philosophy of business.

It is very rare (at least for me) to find a podcast that does both greatly. HBR Ideacast is a weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.

5 Youtube Channels.

1- Jablinski Games:

This is Jack Black's gaming channel, as I am writing this now the channel got more than 2.5 Million subscriptions and 13.4 Million views with only 79 seconds of video content.

No Spam, No sponsorships, No Ad campaigns just jack speaking for 79 seconds.

2- Nerdwriter1:

This is a weekly video essay series that visualize and articulate beautiful a wide variety of thoughts and concepts.

The Channel covers diverse topics, From how to understand a Picasso and why did Dylan won the Nobel prize?, to topics like Fidget Spinners and why Apple needs a Samsung.

The Videos are average of 6:00 minutes long which makes them a perfect refresher in the middle of the day.

3- The Hot Ones From First We Feast:

Inbound Marketing in action at it's best.

The Idea is to interview celebrities over while they eat 12 spicy chicken wings. While the concept is extremely simple, the questions are very well researched and the host is extremely competent.

The series of videos gained traction of both celebrities and viewers alike, some of the guests of the show were Natalie Portman, Kevin Hart, Jeff Goldblum & many others.

The show is a great case study for inbound as the whole show is build around promoting and increasing sales of the products of the Hot Ones.

So the viewer not only opt in for the commercial by subscribing and viewing the content.
The celebrities endorsements adds to the mega influence campaign that is the Hot Ones.

Worth watching if not for the content then for the concept.

4- Kurzgesagt:

This Channel creates one animation video per month about scientific concepts and it is beautiful.

The visualization of concepts like aliens under ice, why beautiful things make us happy and time: the future and history of everything.

The channel is also known as in a nutshell as they chunk down scientific concepts into a bite size animated video. In an age where our digital world is overwhelmed by massive quantities of content, such a channel provides a quick intelligent breeze that pays respect to our very short attention span.

5- OnePercentBetter:

"I wish I can read more books" and "I don't have time to read any more", are two statements that I hear very frequently.

One Percent Better provides animated book summaries! featuring the key lessons from success and self-development books in 10 minutes or less.

While a recent article published by Inc. Magazine, says you only need 417 hours a year to read 200 books.The  average person spends 608 hours on social media and 1,642 hours on TV.

If these stats are not enough and you still don't have time then I do recommend 1% better.


                                                                     5 Books

1- Becoming by Michelle Obama:

Only 46 families got to live in the same house that she lived in, and only one family of her heritage and back ground got to be the residence of the White House.

This is a story of existence, resilience, tolerance and acceptance. The book provides an eye on a very rare life in the human experience and an insight into a survival spirit.

2- Educated by Tara Westover: 

Born and raised on a mountain in Idaho. her survivalist family didn't believe in schools, collages or any form of education; But Tara did.

This is the story of her ascendance from a young girl raised by her anti- education family to a woman with a PhD from Cambridge University. The story is unbelievable, captivating and above all true.

3- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke:

The average amount of remotely conscious decisions an adult makes each day equals about 35,000, Annie offers a better mechanism to increase the quality of the decision making process. 

The poker champion shares her insights, on what kind of decisions we should be making and what actions we should be taking.

On a side note you can find Annie's google talk and other interviews online.

4- The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks:

From "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" to "Hallucinations ", Oliver Sacks's work is a must read.

In this collection of essays the professor of neurology, explores his own evolution on ideas, memory, innovation, and sickness,along with a range of subject matter from Freudian psychoanalysis to Darwinian evolutionary theory.


5-  Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi:

In this work of fiction we get introduced to a city, where the sins can be eaten.
When a sin-beast is killed, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on the mind.

The story is captivating and the narrative is unique.     

                                                                        
                                                                     5 Movies

1- A Quiet Place:

Other than dominating the movie theaters by becoming the number 1 movie in USA,
getting recognized by the king of horror himself Stephen King.

A Quiet Place is a great piece of content and storytellers can view this movie, not just as a successful cinematic experience but a great piece of content as well.

2- Searching:

This is a story about David Kim. A father who becomes desperate when his 16-year-old daughter Margot disappears and an immediate police investigation leads nowhere.while the story sounds very familiar we have never seen it implemented that way before. the story is told from the perspective of phones, laptops and Ipads.

This is a classic story retold with digital technology. Innovative and brilliant.

3- Bohemian Rhapsody:

Because Queen.

4- Green Book:

This is a journey of A working-class Italian-American bouncer who becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

The car ride doesn't only reveal the struggle throughout the long road, it also reveals the characters differences, similarities and most importantly their personal stories.

5- Hereditary:

Very unsettling horror movie.

Having said that as a storyteller, content creator and a movie buff, I deeply appreciated the strong visual storytelling aspect of the movie.

The story is engaging, captivating and disturbing. Worth watching.


                                                                  5 Articles. 

1-  A Few Principles for Thinking Clearly by Charles Chu

A quote from the article:

"It gets worse. When people are exposed to evidence that contradicts their identities or tribal affiliations, they’ll actually double down and become more confident in whatever they believed. This is why it’s important, when trying to think clearly, to avoid identifying with any particular tribe."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2NINGlu 

2- The (Very) Best Books I Read in 2018 by Ryan Holiday

A quote from the article:

"I know that people are busy, and we don’t always have time to read as much as we like. Nothing wrong with that (though if you want to read more—don’t look for shortcuts—make more time!). What matters is that when you do read, you pick the right books."


Read More here: https://bit.ly/2F3pngB


3- The 10 Biggest Archaeology Stories of 2018 by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor

A quote from the article:

"The inscriptions are actually similar to speech bubbles in comic books, because they describe the activities of the characters, who offer explanations of what they are doing,"

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2Ql9aVR

4- Why CRM Projects Fail and How to Make Them More Successful,
     by Scott Edinger

A quote from the article:

"CRMs today also serve a lot of masters, from executives in the C-suite, technology, marketing, finance, and, oh yeah, sales. They try to address more objectives than are reasonable for any software system."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2SZbyU1

5- There Is More to Behavioral Economics Than Biases and Fallacies. By Koen Smets 

A quote from the article:

"The proliferation of biases masks the truth that human behavior is fluid and fuzzy. The use of discrete, distinct labels implies a rigor that is simply not there."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2NIZHa1


That has been a recap of my best lists of fives, Thanks for reading.

Twitter: @Fouad_Khafaga

Brand Biology (Define your species).

Brand Biology

“Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”

Marty Neumeier

Brand biology is a metaphorical term that I will be using during this series of articles, to refer to different types of elements, factors, cognitive phenomena, and components, that gives a brand life and help the brand survive in the different environment of the market.

Your brand biology is your customer’s categorization, your brand’s DNA is your audience perception, and your clients market is your future environment.  The target market defines your species and their thoughts shape your organisms.

There is more than one element to the idea of brand biology and customer categorization, in this article I will review two elements, the first is related to customer perception and the second is cognitive behavior.

Customer’s perception is manipulated and persuaded by factors like brand color, name, personal experience and campaigns.

In a paper that was published by California State Polytechnic University, titled the Effect of theForeign Brand on Consumer Perception.  The paper empirically examines the influence of brand names (foreign versus national) on consumer perception.

The results support the hypothesis that the national brand elicits more positive consumer perception than the foreign brands. In this study, consumer perception is operationalized by four constructs: attitude toward the brand, purchase intention, advertisement feeling, and attitude toward the advertisement.

This is important in terms of brand biology; just the awareness of your species as mentioned in this study affects your survival. In future articles we will look at your brand survival tactics, brand environment, brand biotic and abiotic.

The second element that affects the categorization of the brand is cognitive behavior, as humans we tend to create mental short cuts, especially in the age of the digital worlds the choices of any product or service could be overwhelming.

Within social psychology, cognitive miser is an umbrella theory of social cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attribution biases.

 The theory suggests that humans, valuing their mental processing resources, find different ways to save time and effort when negotiating the social world. The term cognitive miser was first introduced by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1984.

 We tend to crate mental short cuts to ease the process of digesting, transforming and exploring data of any kind. The brain activity of categorizing data lies at the heart of cognitive economy. We treat things as being of a kind so we don’t waste neural processing cycles in details that are irrelevant to the core o the process itself.

When we go to the beach we don’t remember every grain of sand, when we look at the forest we don’t name every tree that we see.

And there is a very good evolutionary reason or this, it’s to prevent our brains from getting overwhelmed with data, making sure we don’t have too many brain tabs open at the same time or too many labeled products on the same shelf because too many choices are paralyzing in most cases.

The process of categorizing data in three main ways

the first one is the Gross or partial appearance which means if they look the same they are the same.
The second form of categorizing is functionality; appearance in this case is not the major concern if it can be used for writing it belongs to the writing tools section and sometimes we might call it a pen.
 Finally the third way of categorizing is conceptual and a perfect example of that is the tool box “If it fixes things it’s in the box”

In order for your brand biology to be compatible in such a harsh environment, in order or your kind to survive, the brand must master the skills necessary to stand out among your species.

First Study the industry before entering the market, understand the audience reactions to the existing, past and future products and services in your industry.  That will provide some needed input and insight into the customer’s perception.

Second define your species if your brand is serving an appearance, a function or a specific concept. Make sure you highlight those features build your campaigns based on how unique and authentic your brand is.

The elements of brand biology are many. Customer’s perception and audience cognitive behavior are two essential components of determining the DNA of your brand biology. 

Familiraity breeds Creativity ( creative thought process ).

Familiarize 

Monsters of the wild and creatures of the sea adapt to the environment they live in as much as they physically can.

If they could not adapt or evolve, they go extinct. If the climate is changing, they change the immigration path, if it is too hot for them they try to move to a cooler place and vise versa.

Only humans had the creativity and aggressiveness not to adapt to the environment but use the environment and make it adapt to their needs.

Humans are able to cut through mountains, fly into the clouds, dive into the deep of the ocean not because they are the strongest or the most skilled, but because of their ability to familiarize themselves with the most abstract and most challenging situations their environment has to offer.

So how does one adapt? This technique is used by magicians, stand-up comedians, painters and different artist of all kinds.

Magicians are the masters of using this technique; it is the only way they function. From weird character concepts to magicians who cut people in half and artists who disappear in less than 30 seconds while they were chained in a pool cage filled with water.

Just to illustrate how early the magician’s circles adapted the concept of familirisim, here is a story from ancient times.

 In ancient Egypt, there was a magician called Dedi and the story goes as follows:

According to the Westcar Papyrus, prince Djedefhor brings up the story of Dedi.

He stands before his father, king Khufu, and says: “There are only tales of miracles which happened a long time ago, something known by past generations. Truth and falsehood cannot be distinguished here.

 But there is someone under thy majesty´s own lifetime who is not known, someone who is able to make a ignoramus become wise".

 Khufu asks: “What's the meaning of this, Djedefhor, my son?” Djedefhor answers: “There's a commoner named Dedi, living in Djed-Sneferu.

 He's a simple citizen, but 110 years old, eats 500 loaves of bread, a shoulder of beef and drinks 100 jars of beer every day. He is capable of resurrecting decapitated beings. He is also said to be able to make wild lions so obedient that the animal would follow him with a cord dragging on the ground. Furthermore, this Dedi has the knowledge of the number of I put in the wenet-sanctuary of Thoth.”

The pharaoh spent a good deal of time seeking for these chambers, planning to build something similar to his horizon. And Khufu orders: “You thyself, Djedefhor, my son, may bring him to me!”

Even in that very early start of humanity the magician was painted in a more of a mythical figure. He does not eat , drink or live in a normal manner and this lifestyle made him able to perform bizarre and abnormal actions. In other words the magician was able to familiarize himself with unfamiliar surroundings.

A great modern example of how we as a species are able to familiarize ourselves with the environment with disregard to how abstract the object in question is, would be the modern technical field of IOT. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

 IOT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) as well as the Internet. The concept may also be referred to as the Internet of Everything.

It is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. The following examples are to elaborate on the implementation of such a concept in real life and how we are again using our creativity to familiarize our environment;

Smart Cities

Smart Parking: Monitoring of parking spaces availability in the city.

Structural health: Monitoring of vibrations and material conditions in buildings, bridges and historical monuments.

Smart Roads: Intelligent Highways with warning messages and diversions according to climate conditions and unexpected events like accidents or traffic jams.

Smart Environment

Forest Fire Detection: Monitoring of combustion gases and preemptive fire conditions to define alert zones.

Snow Level Monitoring: Snow level measurement to know in real time the quality of ski tracks and allow security corps avalanche prevention.

Earthquake Early Detection: Distributed control in specific places of tremors.

Smart Water

Potable water monitoring: Monitor the quality of tap water in cities.

Chemical leakage detection in rivers: Detect leakages and wastes of factories in rivers.

Pollution levels in the sea: Control real time leakages and wastes in the sea.

This concept as shown above can be used in a variety of fields by listing the field , the topic , the story , the character or the industry on one side of the table and create a list of 10 unfamiliar tools, things , approach on the other side of the table. By matching, eliminating or just brainstorming a process with the creative team.

Some Final thoughts

According to Dr. Yuval Harari, there were three major revolutions in the history of mankind; a cognitive revolution, an agriculture revolution and a scientific revolution. It is of no coincidence that the three revolutions are made by the capacity of the human brain to both innovate and create. Creativity is a unique feature of our race.

 For far too long the human mind was lost in the woods of ignorance until the mind have let the light of innovation guide us through this dark forest. Innovation skills and techniques are observed in all the aspects of our lives from business to parenting, from survival to discovery and in both creating and destructing.

This book offers a crack to the code of innovation through experimenting some case studies and examples. Yet creativity in itself is just a tool that should guide to an ultimate goal. Just being different doesn’t mean it is useful, just being innovative doesn’t grantee success. The tools that are offered in this book should be used as youtility built that is making the process of reaching a specific goal easier, faster and overall more efficient.

This small E-book should be my personal guide to create another book under the same title both longer in length and deeper into the code of innovation.

So if you’re reading this and have any ideas, feedback or thoughts on what would you like to read in the next edition of the book feel free to contact me and send your thoughts.

twitter : @fouad_khafaga

Cut to the core ( Creativity and innovation thought process)

Cut to the Core

“I am a perfectionist; I look at things from each and every angel possible”. If I had a million dollars for each time I hear this statement I would have been a billionaire.

The idea that we need a thought to be perfect in order to express it , or wait for a business model to be perfect in order to implement it, or wait for a musical riffs to be perfect in order to put it down into an album. That is, sometimes, a destructive idea.

Because waiting for the perfect time, perfect place, and perfect people to achieve a perfect goal never happens; it’s too perfect to be true.

It is never a perfect time to start a technological revolution; it is never a perfect situation to start your business. In truth, most of the time it is not even a good idea and you will face huge obstacles on your path and those who are strong enough, creative enough and consistent enough are the ones who cut through.

Here are a few examples for people who didn’t wait for the perfect moment:

•        The co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems and Patron Spirits was actually homeless twice in his life. The first time, DeJoria was 22 with a 2-year-old. The second time, he slept in his car for two weeks while starting the now $900 million-a-year haircare business. Today,

•        The investor, founder of Micro-Solutions and Broadcast.com and owner of the Dallas Mavericks is now worth $2.3 billion, but Cuban wasn't always wealthy. In his book How to Win In the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It, Cuban candidly reflects on all he had to do to make his billions. Before he started Micro-solutions, Cuban was fired from a PC company for not telling anyone he was going to lunch to try to close a deal. At the time, he was living with five other guys in a three-bedroom apartment and didn't even have a bed.

•        Before Walt Disney died in 1966, his studio had released 81 films resulted in winning 32 Academy Awards. Today, Walt Disney's company has a market cap of nearly $104 billion and 166,000 employees. But before all of this commercial success, Disney was struggling to survive. He was fired from the Kansas City Star in his early 20s because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas".

 It was never perfect for Lincoln, Tesla, Jobs or Honda for that matter (who would sell Japanese motors to American markets after World War 2?). However, these examples and many others ask one question in the mind of creative individuals; if we don’t wait for perfection in our action, our thoughts our plans what should we do?

The answer to the ultimate perfection question can be found in Silicon Valley. They have cracked the code for answering this question. The answer is a model they developed which is called MVP.

In product development, the minimum viable product (MVP) is the product with the highest return on investment versus risk. The term was coined and defined by Frank Robinson, and popularized by Steve Blank, and http://bit.ly/1JnzRVi . It may also involve carrying out market analysis beforehand.

 A minimum viable product has just those core features that allow the product to be deployed, and no more. The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible

Customers, such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information.

 It is a strategy targeted at avoiding building products that customers do not want, that seeks to maximize the information learned about the customer per dollar spent.

 "The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

The definition's use of the words maximum and minimum means that it is decidedly not formulaic. It requires judgment to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense.

An MVP is not a minimal product; it is a strategy and process directed towards making a product and selling it to customers.

 It is an iterative process of generating an idea, prototyping, presentation, data collection, analysis and learning. One seeks to minimize the total time spent on iteration. The process is iterated until a desirable product/market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed to be non-viable.

Steve Blank typically refers to minimum viable product as minimum feature set.

Purposes

•        Be able to test a product hypothesis with minimal resources

•        Accelerate learning

•        Reduce wasted engineering hours

•        Get the product to early customers as soon as possible

•        Base for other products

Guy Kawasaki the Silicon-Valley based author, speaker and entrepreneur had some improvement of his own to the model. He said to the startup grind interview that his view of the concepts adds two V’s to the mix.

MVVVP:

A- Minimal.

B- Viable: it is foreseeable that you will gain a profit that your revenue will exceed your coast

C-Valuable: that your changing the world, that you’re doing something significant.

D-Validation: it validates your vision in the future.

E- Product.

The concept of MVP or MVVVP is vital in boosting creativity especially to the “cut to the core” technique.

Cutting to the core technique is the act of revealing the core concept of a product or a service to enhance, modify or radically change the fundamental concept. A very clear example of cutting to the core technique is the green products and services.

 Starting from the packaging industry where the green cut to the core of grocery packaging and pushed for using paper instead of plastic.

Another great example for cutting to the core is the transformation of the automobile industry, Tesla motors provides a perfect illustration to the concept this is how they define the models on their website:

Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers in Silicon Valley who wanted to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.

 With instant torque, incredible power, and zero emissions, Tesla’s products would be cars without compromise. Each new generation would be increasingly affordable, helping the company work towards its mission: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport.

Tesla’s engineers first designed a powertrain for a sports car built around an AC induction motor, patented in 1888 by Nikola Tesla, the inventor who inspired the company’s name.

The resulting Tesla Roadster was launched in 2008. Accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and achieving a range of 245 miles per charge of its lithium ion battery, the Roadster set a new standard for electric mobility.

Tesla would sell more than 2,400 Roadsters, now on the road in more than 30 countries.

Notice that in the first line they cut to the core of the industry and provide their own model to revolutionize the industry, and who would cut to the core other than a group of engineers in Silicon Valley.

Feel free to follow me on twitter : @Fouad_khafaga

you can download the full free E-book here : 

http://chaos-101.instapage.com/