“Ice cream does not make people kill each other!”

A researcher found a correlation between ice cream sales and homicides, which in simple terms would mean that as soon as people start eating ice cream they’ll go on a killing spree, or that after a killer struck, s/he goes on a ice cream binge.

Luckily, this not true. It is a classic example of partial correlation. What you need to find is the third variable that is missing from the equation. In the example fom above – weather. When do people eat ice cream? And when do people spend a lot of their time outside? Summertime. A does not cause B, or the opposite, you need to find variable C.

I will nurture this little lesson dearly.

We seem to share the same views – It is hard for a company to adopt one thing when they lack solid base prior to it. However, Tapscott & Williams present four suggestions that might help your company to get started. After considering them, I believe that they are on to something.

1. Be Open – Great that you have done things the same way for a long time, but would your results have been beter if you would have done it differently?
2. Peer
3. Share – Novartis (Medical Company) shared five years worth of data with the community, free of charge. By doing so they earned a good reputation in the science community, as well as letting others use the data that might solve medical issues faster.
4. Act global - You might find your best friend on the other side of the world, but only if you let them know you exist.

The dinner was nice, but the conversation was an eye opener on many levels.

I asked him about how he managed to score his trainee position at Unilever, and he gave advises that I had never thought of, but also some that confirmed what others have said.

1. Ask them if they want to have lunch with you, everybody has to eat sometime. It is a perfect way to get some insight into a company that you are interested in, and also a good contact that might suggest you if your name ever comes up for an interview.
2. Let your friends interview you. Practice to answer “head crunchers” to get good, and formulated answers.
3. Make up case questions to test and practice your analytical skills

Thank you Peter, it was great to see you. Please send a signed photo of you on that boat, I’m not gonna do anything bad to it – promise!

If you ask a customer what it wants and the customer does not have an answer, that probably mean that:

• The customer did not understand the question.
• It has not idea what it can get.

These are two VERY interesting step stones for you as a company.

1. It gives you a heads up what you are missing in your communication with your customer/clients.
2. You can start showing what you are capable of.

Start communicating!

So I never gotten around to do it.

When I started the Japanese Dreams project I decided to buy a notebook to use only for this project. Whenever I wrote something it it, I would cross over as soon as it was done. By doing his, I would see that being in a project wasn’t as hard as I had believed.

It turned out that I got ideas all the time, and since this book tended to be close to me whenever I had it, I wrote them down, but made sure to separate them from the project.

All the sudden I saw that some of the ideas I had could be integrated into the project – I could call the same person and ask two questions at the same time.

So, the book was upgraded to be my companion in my day-to-day life. If I hear a song, I’ll write the title in the book, next to the date. If I have things to do, I make a to-do list, and put the date next to it. By doing this, I can see what I have left to do, and tat one can actually do a lot of things faster then expected.

I was lousy to remember those smart quotes that I read in books. Now, I just scribble them down, and whenever I need them, they are right there.

Presto, I got my journal.

Lucky for me, I got Mega Man II & Wikipedia!

Did you now that Bob Dylan isn’t his real name? I knew that, but I needed an example of what kind of information you could find!

Metal Man is the coolest boss in Mega Man II!

All I did was to update this script snippet:

a, h2 a:hover, h3 a:hover {
color: #9E0508;
text-decoration: none;
}

a:hover {
color: #CC1100;
text-decoration: underline;
}

Presto