Hi friends,
Greetings from Abuja.
For the last while, the idea of Graceful degradation —and how it could apply to our efforts at productivity and growth— has been simmering in my brain. Graceful degradation is a concept being tested for autonomous vehicle design in the face of hacking – with this concept, a glide path is made in the vehicle to reduce autonomous parts to a minimal level of functionality when hacked. This would allow the driver to take over.
In this situation, the parts affected in a hack will degrade and not be as integrated with the overall functionality of the vehicle. This concept could also apply to what we try to do; we can isolate parts of systems we build when they become a drag on overall productivity.
Usually, when something doesn't work, we either have to cut it off and start afresh or have reduced productivity because of it. But how can we compartmentalize things such that we can just reduce the impact of faulty parts? How can we create a glide path to reduced functionality for those faulty parts? Without this kind of glide path for autonomous vehicles, the whole would be damaged with damage to the autonomous parts. With it, there's something for the driver to salvage.
For an essay, I will be focusing on an example of how Amazon compartmentalizes to innovate, the sunk cost bias that hinders this process, why all this is subjective, and more of my thoughts. Will get it out in next week's email. Let me know what you think.
Coolest things I learned this week
Mobility as a Service
The last decade has seen massive changes to the outlook of mobility - the most valuable automotive company in the world is now electric, and the emergence of ride-hailing and ride-sharing has been as significant as ever. These changes to how we approach mobility give rise to mobility as a service.
Hence, In The New Map, Daniel Yergin writes that the next trillion-dollar market would be based on the master coordination of multiple capabilities:
Manufacturing (the product for mobility - cars, trucks, vans, and so on)
Data and supply chain management
Machine learning, and
Software and systems integration.
All these capabilities will constitute mobility as a service that will be packaged and delivered to customers around the world.
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Auto-Tech
Mobility as a service is one part of the triad that will constitute Auto-Tech. These automotive technologies will not just be limited to diesel, hydraulics, and fluid power mechanics, but also the technologies that will constitute the service.
The new triad of Auto-tech:
The electric car, which uses no oil,
Mobility as a service,
Ride-hailing, ride-sharing; and cars that drive themselves.
h/t The New Map by Daniel Yergin
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How New Ideas Emerge
In 1918, Albert Einstein wrote down his thoughts on how research scientists came up with ideas.
He wrote, "Man seeks to form for himself in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and easy-to-survey image of the world and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way."
In essence, painters, poets, philosophers, scientists, and every other creator creates in the same general way, but it’s a subjective process. At the end of the day, we're all trying to simplify the world enough for it to be understood. Every major invention or creation is an attempt at making things simpler.
In a similar vein, Eric Nelson describes what matters for powerful new thinking as the organizing assumptions through which a person interprets the world. When we organize the assumptions we have about the world, we’re able to interpret in a way that helps simplify complexities and answer questions.
That’s it for this week.
If you have any thoughts or questions, hit reply and we can have a chat. And if you enjoyed it, share it with friends.
Till next week,
Kelvin