Julie-Laure Coassin | Blog | A Digital World

What Matters Now is the work of more than 60 people with big ideas and something to say. It will inspire you to make some changes in 2010, and to keep doing work that matters.

Passion

“If you think you haven’t found your passion yet, you’re probably expecting it to be overwhelming,” “Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level.” Derek Sivers

Evangelism

“Provide a safe first step,” “Don’t put up any big hurdles in the beginning of the process. The path to adopting a cause needs a slippery slope.” Guy Kawasaki

What Matters Now

Who are you trying to please?

What are you promising?

How much money are you trying to make?

How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?

Which people?

Do we care about you?

(and after each answer, ask ‘why?’)

via Seth Godin

CNN reports:

One of the men behind the study, Insead’s Hal Gregersen, told CNN, “What the innovators have in common is that they can put together ideas and information in unique combinations that nobody else has quite put together before.”

The researchers describe this ability to connect ideas as “associating,” and say it’s key to innovators’ ability to think outside the box. But they add that the secret to how the great innovators think is the way they act.

“The way they act is to observe actively, like an anthropologist, and they talk to incredibly diverse people with different world views, who can challenge their assumptions,”Gregersen told CNN.

“For them, everything is to be experimented upon — for example, if they walk into a bookstore and they’re used to reading history they might try psychology. All these behaviors are powerfully enhanced by a capacity to ask provocative, challenging questions of the world around them.”

Because the ability to think differently comes from acting differently, Gregersen says anyone can become a better innovator, just by acting like one.

via PSFK

if you ever wondered what a Black Friday looks like on eBay (1 million transactions in less than 24 hours or around 12 transactions per second), check this interesting heat map below that captures all the buying-selling activity on eBay across the US on Black Friday.

via Digital Inspiration