Shared Canvas: Figma as a model of future computing
Figma is a collaborative design tool. Think Google Docs but for visual design. You are presented with a canvas and multiple people can use the design tools at once (each on their own machine) to collaborate on design. See the GIF below.
Figma is an excellent collaborative design tool — but what I really want to highlight and unpack is that they have created a shared, real time canvas. I can drag and drop screenshots, text, other designs onto the canvas and anyone else viewing the canvas will immediately see it and immediately be able to interact and transform it.
How does this relate to the future of computing?
Think about a shared canvas where you can:
Drop a video or audio file - and all others on the canvas can watch/hear the video/audio play as well as control playback
Add a webpage URL - and have the page render on a shared canvas
Drop in a running application - and have others be able to “pick it up” i.e. gain focus and control it. I think this would be enormously helpful in developing software collaboratively —> think code editor OR an actual local instance.
Right now, this idea of a shared canvas is just that — an idea — but I do think we will soon get to the place where we can have a shared compute environment. One in which we aren’t fighting for control of the mouse or keyboard — rather it is like having a shared desk and when one person puts something down, the other can pick it up and use it. The shared canvas / shared desk will allow for better, faster and easier collaboration with less friction and fewer opportunities for miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Fund People, not Projects - It’s done in science, why not in business?
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller model for funding scientific research is to fund people, not specific projects. This article does a great job of explaining the model and the results (superior results) seen with this approach: https://nintil.com/hhmi-and-nih
Where is this approach in established companies? I’d think much can be accomplished by funding people inside large companies to establish large new efforts. Sure we can look at Google’s Area 120 or FaceBook’s NPE group and see both companies empowering employees to create new products — and either the takeaway is — funding people isn’t working, or maybe this is just funding exploration — my specific take is these efforts are an exercise in funding exploration / retaining talent. My sense with HHMI is that while they are funding people — the people have a known highly valuable scientific problem they are trying to solve — but they aren’t required to define a specific approach to get the funding —- where as Google’s Area 120 and FaceBook’s NPE are people in search of a highly valuable problem.
After further reflection on the Working Backwards book about Amazon, which I highlighted in: https://wferrell.substack.com/p/learnings-for-12132020 — maybe it is selecting a leader to run a new significant initiative that is the equivalent of funding people — because here again there is no specific proposal for the how or what specific experiment needs to be run — but rather that a highly valuable problem/opportunity has been identified and now the company need a person that can lead the charge and find the product offerings.
As in science, I think further study of this fund people model is needed in established companies so as to develop superior models for making significant progress.
Sriram Krishnan interviews Tobi Lütke (Shopify CEO)
On Trust Battery
I want to discuss the “trust battery.” How does it work with new people, and how does it tie into people's work with each other? What does it mean to Shopify and to you?
We talk about the trust battery as a metaphor quite casually. I know from people who are coming into the company that it may seem really strange. But it's something you just observe over time. Personally, I have found it really, really useful to be able to reason about a relationship without getting egos involved too much. I can have a conversation with someone saying, “Hey, you made a commitment to ship this thing, and you did. That's awesome. That's a super big charge on the trust battery, but you’re actually late for every meeting. Even though that's relatively minor—like it decreases 0.1% on your battery—you should fix that.”
It plays a role like that. That said, it's not useful to talk about trust as a binary thing. People are quick to say, “You don't trust me!” And it's actually more, “Well, no, I trust you to a certain level, but you would like more trust; you want trust at a completely different level.”
For instance, if your cell phone is 80% charged, you're not worried about finding a charger. But when your phone in your pocket goes into low battery mode, you're thinking about your phone a lot. What people want to do in a company is get to the 80% or 100% level in the area that they run. You gain full autonomy this way. It’s a process that cannot be given to people by title or something like that.
The world we're designing at Shopify doesn't look like this. Titles are largely backwards-facing, documenting things about people who have already accomplished a certain thing rather than obtaining a new responsibility. And so, it helps in this way.
Source: https://www.theobservereffect.org/tobi.html
Notes:
Great interview. Excellent concept. Developing the language and practice of sharing when a “trust battery” is charged, being drained or filling up - in a manor that escapes emotion seems like a significant accomplishment. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is as easy as thrusting the concept of a trust battery on your organization — first trust needs to be established to introduce the concept and then, maybe, it can be used to see if it takes.
Dan Wang’s 2020 Annual Letter with a focus on China
https://danwang.co/2020-letter/
Key quotes from Dan’s letter:
My one-sentence definition of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is: “To achieve the two centenary goals—under the leadership of the party—by accomplishing tasks that include but are not limited to eliminating poverty, advancing the socialist rule of law, improving party discipline, etc.”
At its best, defining major goals is the essence of political leadership, and nowhere is this principle better illustrated than Apollo. John F. Kennedy announced the target in 1961: land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the decade was out. By fixing this clear goal, as well as committing the necessary spending, he accelerated the creation, development, and deployment of technologies that made the lunar landings possible.
Xi grasps this idea of leadership
Companies and lawyers tell me that a decade-long effort by the State Council to ease doing business has yielded real results. Obtaining business licenses no longer requires a relentless pace of wining and dining, and has instead become close to a matter of routine
One manufacturer expressed astonishment to me at how slowly western counterparts moved. US companies had to ask whether making masks aligned with the company’s core competence. Chinese companies simply decided that making money is their core competence, and therefore they should be making masks.
Major slogan of the past two years has been: “Remember where we started from, pursue our destiny, the struggle is forever.”
“promoting economic growth must be our core goal, if we succeed in that, then the rest of our tasks become easy.”
“The US responded to the rise of the USSR and Japan by focusing on innovation; it’s early days, but so far the US is responding to the technological rise of China by kneecapping its leading firms. So instead of realizing its own Sputnik moment, it is triggering one in China.”
By withholding components that Chinese companies have relied upon, the US government has turned American firms into unreliable suppliers
Chinese companies have responded by de-Americanizing their supply chains because they have no choice.
The [US] government does not appear to have had a vigorous debate about the tradeoffs. Instead, the strategy seems to be a result of bureaucratic kludges, pushed forward by whichever faction has the upper hand.
Thus the US looks committed to a strategy to destroy the scientific and industrial establishment in order to save it.
After steady calls from Xi throughout the year to master technology, the Central Economic Work Conference announced in December that science and technology work will be the top priority in 2021; the conference has never broken science and technology out as an independent item, never mind give it top spot.
Instead of coddling the internet companies, Xi has declared that China must never deindustrialize or lose its manufacturing capabilities.
FUN: The Impact of a Boy Band
BTS is a seven-member South Korean boy band
BTS was responsible for 7.6% of 10.4M foreign tourists in 2017. Source
The ten-year economic impact of BTS is estimated to reach close to 50 billion USD, surpassing that of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Source
Read more here: https://judyknows.com/bts-fan-economy/