Next up on my philosophy reading was Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand. This was a non-fiction survey of a number of philosophical, political, and cultural issues from the perspective of Objectivism.

My biggest takeaway is the idea that philosophy affects culture and psychology at a profound level, in a way that we don't think about consciously and take for granted. The many catch phrases and colloquialisms we all use are grounded in the type of philosophy we inherently accept. This raises the importance of paying attention to one's language and listening carefully to what others say. It also makes philosophy a subject that's vitally important to everyone's understanding and living a good life -- not just a purely intellectual subject that's all about abstractions (the more common view of philosophy).

The book spent a lot of time explaining why the philosophy of Kant is evil. I haven't personally read Kant, but I want to read it in the future to better understand this author's point of view. Overall, the book spent a lot of time in a negative tone, using strong negative words (the author apparently loves the words "bromide," "dribble," "louse," and "tripe" -- I think those words are funny too). I thought there was a bit too much time spent critiquing others' work and philosophies and not enough actually teaching/explaining her own. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot about how she thinks and what her philosophy represents (especially from the earlier chapters).


Intro

• Salesman of philosophy
  
• Primarily advocate of reason and its supremacy
  
• Reason requires capitalism and objectivism
  
• Man needs philosophy and for practical purpose
  
• Wants to know which ideas are right
  

1 Philosophy: who needs it

• Most men live life evading 3 questions: where am I, how do I know it, what should I do
  
• Usual answer to last is whatever everyone does
  
• Philosophy answers these 3 questions
  
• Branches of science are for topics; philosophy the soil of the tree
  
• Metaphysics study of existence; where am I 
  
• Epistemology: study of knowledge, how do I know it, means of cognition
  
• Ethics is technology, morality to define code of existence
  
• Politics: principles of proper social system
  
• Aesthetics: study of art, refueling of man's consciousness
  
• In order to deal with real life problems, need philosophy
  
• Platitudes of convos/colloquialisms come from old philosophers
  
• Integrate experiences into conceptual integrations
  
• All ppl use abstract ideas to deal with life better than infant
  
• Integrations through philosophic system
  
• Need to know root of system to know how I integrate
  
• Either u define philosophy u use carefully or u use one that's grabbag of notions
  
• Ur conscious mind programs ur computer or ur subconscious will do it by chance
  
• Emotions are hourly printouts from computer of how reality meets values
  
• Garbage in to computer, garbage out
  
• Emotions not tools of cognition
  
• Under Kant, trend towards abandoning reason
  
• Approach philosophy as detective story
  
• Why and how: ask about each philosophy u study
  
• Want to be Proud, disciplined, and in control of body and mind
  
• Army of free country to defend free rights
  

2 Philosophical detection

• Bad catch phrases
  
• Examine and break down until get to irreducible primary 
  
• "it may be true for you but not for me": breaks law of identity
  
• Analyze catch phrases literally
  
• Emotions are not irreducible primary; must look deeper for cause
  
• Introspection: what do I feel, why do I feel it
  
• Rationalization makes reality meet emotions, cheats you
  
• Active mind not open mind
  
• Stolen concept fallacy
  
• Essentials:
  
• Metaphysics: law of identity
  
• Epistemology: supremacy of reason
  
• Ethics: rational egoism
  
• Politics: individual rights, capitalism
  
• Aesthetics: metaphysical values

3 metaphysical and man made

• Power of choice and volition means there are things man can change
  
• Premises of existence and consciousness
  
• Premise of existence
  
• Existence exists, universe exists independent of consciousness
  
• Package dealing messes up philosophy
  
• Creation is rearrangement of natural elements of reality
  
• Accepted in regards to physical sciences but not in humanities and how man deals with man
  
• Metaphysically given not questioned; man made should be
  
• Must differentiate from one to the other; metaphysically given not right or wrong but just standards
  
• Premise of consciousness believes that all determined by consciousness not natural reality

4 the missing link

• Stories of ppl giving views without reasons and logic
  
• Anti conceptual mentality
  
• Passivity in regard to process of conceptualizaton
  
• Brain feels it has enough and stops caring further
  
• Absence of concern with why and what for kills of past with causality and future with purpose
  
• Results without worrying about causes
  
• Substitution of men for ideas and man made for metaphysical they can't understand
  
• Tribalism
  
• Caste systems
  
• Racism
  
• Ancestor worship
  
• Gangs
  
• Motion not acting
  
• Feeling not thinking
  
• Focusing on now not tomorrow
  
• Collectivist
  
• Men should associate with others based on ideas they share not accident of birth or force
  
• Missing link between animals and man: anticonceptual mentality
  

5 selfishness without the self

• Man needs personal values
  
• Needs to judge self against objective standards
  
• I'm good because...
  
• Love is a response to values
  
• Must be loved for something instead of just being loved for self
  
• Take ideas seriously
  
• Ideas of personal importance to each
  
• Dread responsibilities and thinking
  

6 an open letter to Boris

• Letter to chess master
  
• Requires big intellectual capacity and planning ahead
  
• Metaphysical absolutism of game and exact rules
  
• Players devise long range strategy
  
• Leads to game where players can play for real
  
• Real world rules in soviet union unbearable if had to be chess game
  
• Chess as escape from reality for one who thinks but doesn't get men
  

7 faith and force: the destroyers of the modern world

• Mysticism, collectivism, altruism
  
• Mysticism killed in renaissance
  
• Collectivism killed in WW2
  
• Altruism is what must be killed
  
• Need of others is not ur first purpose
  
• Man can exist just for self
  
• Only mysticism called upon to justify altruism
  
• reason vs mysticism
  
• Progress vs stagnation
  
• Mysticism is acceptance without proof
  
• Mysticism ruled dark ages
  
• Kant most responsible
  
• Kant wanted to save altruism through mysticism
  
• Constructed wrong definition of reason
  
• Straw man argument
  
• Soviet Russia, nazi Germany, social England examples of socialism destruction and collectivism
  
• Soviet Russia best example of altruism
  
• Men can deal with each other with reason or with guns/force
  
• Animal cannot act to destroy itself
  
• Man has constant choice to make between living and dying
  
• Has power to act as own destroyer
  
• Must learn his own knowledge
  
• Must discover values and live them by choice
  
• Man's life as standard of morality
  

8 from the horse's mouth

• Modern philosophy professors who advocate kant have it wrong
  
• Philosophy is not bridge between religion and reason
  

9 Kant vs Sullivan

• Idea that perceptions not needed for science is wrong
  
• Knowledge cannot enter brain without senses or through ghost
  
• Helen Keller play miracle worker Annie Sullivan 
  
• Words critical to knowledge, contain the world
  

10 causality vs duty

• Duty is anticoncept
  
• Kills legitimate concept
  
• Different than obligation
  
• Duty cannot be for self interest or virtue; driven by parents and church and government
  
• Duty from Kant
  
• No absolute obligations except life or death
  
• Everything else choice for man
  
• Causality not duty in rational man
  
• Weighs task against cost and chooses if does it
  
• Kant duty creates guilt and fear in deciding to give up work rationally
  
• Only obligation that matters is personal promise
  

11 an untitled letter

• Biggest enemy is man of ability
  
• Shooting down strong members to help incompetent due to envy
  

12 egalitarianism and inflation

• Looseness of definitions kills writing
  
• Inflation hard to understand and biggest crime
  
• Hunting
  
• Then agriculture
  
• Time, savings, production key concepts
  
• Everything requires savings by time
  
• Money is tool of exchange and saving to get delayed consumption and saving
  
• Must save stock seed
  
• Gold coins
  
• Payments in promissory notes on future production breaks down
  
• Only govt can mortgage ur future without ur consent on ur production in future via tax receipts
  
• Creates inflation
  
• Keynes wrecking
  
• Only producers not consumers matter because producers are the consumers and demand and supply must be of the same people in the market
  
• Investment capital is lending of stock seed and unconsumed earned goods to someone else
  
• Only finances means of production
  
• Credit does not create production but consumption
  
• Juggling debts
  
• Financing for welfare
  
• Subsidies to foreign consumers
  
• Govt consuming this country's stock seed
  
• Stagflation
  
• Inflating stops working
  
• Stops production
  

13 stimulus and response

• BF Skinner book very influential in psychology
  
• Attack on autonomous man
  
• Mystics of spirit and of muscle
  
• Of spirit want consciousness without existence
  
• Of muscle: existence without consciousness
  
• Both destroy muscle
  
• Skinner is mystic of muscle
  
• Doesn't prove anything and doesn't give definitions, just metaphors and small talk
  

14 establishing an establishment

• Govt funding grants for ideas creates orthodoxy an establishment
  
• Should have no role in ideas
  

15 censorship

• Statism
  
• Supreme court rulings criteria for obscenity
  
• Average person using community standards
  
• More power for govt to judge value of artistic work
  
• First amendment
  
• Conservatives reject reason for faith
  
• Liberals reject reason for emotions
  
• Mind body dichotomy kills mind and reason
  

 16 fairness doctrine for education

• Cannot be applied fairly
  
• Fairness of airwaves that public owns and fairness of teaching all ideologies in public institutionsdescribed her ideal curriculum as “Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in literature”
  

17 what can one do

• Teach men the right philosophy first
  
• Changes come from minority intellectual movements
  
• Develop own convictions
  
• Speak on any scale u can
  
• Express views on issues
  
• Write letters to media and congressman
  

18 don't let it go

• 3 areas to judge individual:
  
• Present course of action
  
• Convictions
  
• Sense of life
  
• Can judge country same way 
  
• Nation has sense of life
  
• Lifestyle taken for granted
  
• Culture sum of intellectual achievements of men others accept
  
• Dominance of ideas determined by many factors or by default
  
• Product of minority
  
• In europe much more statism and less individualism
  
• Fight for reason and man as rational being
  
• Fight for American sense of life 

Back in college I took a marketing class that recommend The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber as additional/optional reading material. I hadn't heard of it much besides that, but I kept it on my list for a while anyways. After seven years, I decided to finally give it a try.

I found the book interesting and quite different from the entrepreneurship texts that have been become "popular" recently. It takes a much more "back to basics" approach and actually talks about how owners can make their businesses more predictable and better operationally by picking up some lessons from McDonald's.

At first I was skeptical, but then I got the point. The "business development process" and the "business model franchise/prototype" approach actually seems like a good idea after reading the entire book about it. In a nutshell, it's about doing intense experimentation and optimization of every component of a business model in order to find what works and removes the owner and his or her whims from the picture as much as possible. I found a lot of parallels between this book and lots of what Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder write about the business model canvas.

Most of the book's examples were about retail establishments selling products. I'm curious how the book's lessons apply to service businesses, especially ones where talent and thinking are most of the product. The author said businesses should try to set themselves up so that systems run the show and you can hire the lowest skilled people possible; I'm wondering how whether that's valid across all types of businesses.

I also found the book to be much more about life and figuring out what you want (and following your spirit and your own personal values) just as much as it is about business techniques (some of the scripts and hiring practices in the book were nice and tangible techniques that are directly applicable). I also liked how the author spoke (essentially) of gamification of the enterprise (that word wasn't around when he wrote this, but his observations are exactly its essence). I did find that at times the book was a bit too sales-y (in terms of promoting the author's consulting business), but it wasn't blatant.

I recommend this book to anyone who's been heavily into all the lean startup stuff and wants a different perspective on things, and I'm curious what others think as well.

Intro

• Idea 1: entrepreneur myth (companies started by entrepreneurs who risk capital); not true; many start business not for entrepreneurship
  
• Idea 2: turnkey revolution in america
  
• Idea 3: biz Dev process 
  
• Idea 4: biz Dev process can be applied step by step
  
• E-myth Worldwide
  

Part 1 e-myth and small business in America

Ch 1 entrepreneur myth

• Entrepreneur only exists for a moment then gone
  
• Most don't go into business for dream
  
• Most small biz not started by entrepreneur
  
• Most initially doing tech work for someone else
  
• Entrepreneurial seizure moment
  
• Fatal assumption: if u understand the tech work of a biz, u still don't know how to run such a biz
  
• Biz not just about the work u love to do
  
• Million other tasks u don't know
  

Ch 2 the entrepreneur, the manager, the technician

• 3 people in one
  
• Tension between entrepreneurs vision and managers pragmatism
  
• Technician wants to work and only one at a time
  

Ch 3 infancy: technician's phase

• Overloaded technician who does all
  
• Can't just do tech work
  
• Kill the biz if all u want is tech work
  

Ch 4 adolescence: getting some help

• joy of getting someone to do work u don't want
  
• Management by abdication instead of delegation
  
• Trusting employee blindly and not giving enough direction and supervision
  

Ch 5 beyond the comfort zone

• Adolescent biz pushes beyond owner's comfort zone
  
• Exceeds ability to control it
  
• 3 reactions
  
• Back to infancy where you do it yourself; u don't own a biz but a job u can't leave
  
• Going for broke
  
• Adolescent survival
  

Ch 6 maturity

• Build biz to work without u
  
• Focus on customer and business not work
  

Part 2 turnkey revolution

Ch 7

• Business format franchise after McDonald's
  
• Provides entire system of doing biz
  
• True product of biz is how it sells it
  
• Systems not people dependent business
  
• Work on biz not in it
  
• The business as a product
  
• Franchise prototype with interchangeable parts
  
• Integrity about doing what u say u will do
  
• McDonald's always delivers what it promises
  
• Model to emulate
  

Ch 8 franchise prototype

• Vast majority of business format franchises succeed
  
• Unlike trade name franchise
  
• HamburgerU training program on how to run system
  
• Discipline and standards
  

Ch 9 working on your business, not in it

• Your business is not your life
  
• Primary purpose of biz is to serve ur life, not vice versa
  
• Pretend ur biz will serve as prototype clone for 5000 others exactly
  
• Requirements
  
• Model must provide consistent value to customers and employees beyond what expect
  
• Operated by ppl of lowest possible skill necessary; systems dependent not people dependent
  
• Model is example of impeccable order
  
• All work documented in operations manuals
  
• Provide uniformly predictable service to customer
  
• Utilize uniform color, dress, and facilities code
  
• Impact of colors, fonts on sales
  
• Work on biz not in it as prototype for mass market biz
  
• E myth mastery program
  
• Think of biz as the product
  

Part 3 building a business that works

Ch 10 biz Dev process

• Building prototype of biz iterative
  
• 3 steps
  
• Innovation; Creativity thinks; innovation does; how biz interacts more important than what sells; blue suits outsell brown suits on salespeople; touch softly on arm when ask someone; establishes individuality of ur biz based on customer needs; always asking what is the best way of doing this
  
• Quantification; Numbers related to impact of innovations; Establish all baselines and controls of experiment; key metrics
  
• Orchestration; elimination of discretion/choice in implementing innovations; standardization once know results of experiments; order and logic behind human craving for reason; once know best suit to wear and best welcome greeting say it every single time
  


• Search for mastery by perfecting each step carefully
  
• Metaphor for going to work on your life
  

Ch 11 your bd program

• Imagine having to walk buyer of ur biz through each part to show that works perfectly without you
  
• 7 steps
  
• Your primary aim
  
• Strategic objective
  
• Org strategy
  
• Management strategy
  
• People strategy
  
• Marketing strategy
  
• Systems strategy
  

Ch 12 primary aim

• You (not biz) first order of agenda
  
• What value most
  
• What kind of life want to live
  
• What want to say about life after done
  
• Don't fear losing biz, fear losing life
  

Ch 13 ur strategic objective

• Business strategy and plan
  
• Set of standards that helps communicate
  
• Money: how big will be when done; can't know but need some standard; What standard will serve my primary aim; goal is to sell predictable business at end
  
• Opportunity worth pursuing standard; if reasonable to assume can meet aim; does business alleviate a frustration enough ppl have; people buy feelings and values; you sell the feeling not the commodity
  
• Who is my customer; demographic, psychographic
  
• When prototype completed
  
• Where in biz
  
• How in biz/retail
  
• What standards of clothing, etc
  

Ch 14 organizational strategy

• Org development shown in org chart
  
• Most organize around personalities and people instead of functions
  
• Without org chart all hinges on personalities and goodwill
  
• Need accountability for parts
  
• Share personal dreams and primary aim with partners
  
• See selves as shareholders from outside biz
  
• Inside biz see self as employee
  
• Create strategic objective for biz, do demographic research, create questionnaire, personal calls for needs analysis to 150 customers: what product mean to them, how have changed lives, if could have any product at all what would be like, what would good one feel like to use, what would it do for them
  
• Create financials pro forma for first year cash flow and income for bank
  
• Create operating plan
  
• Info on competition and consumer and pricing
  
• Create org chart based on strategic objective
  
• Create lots of boxes and then put names, even if overlap
  
• Description of all the work to be done, no matter who is in company 
  
• Write position contract for each position: results to achieve, work accountable for, objective standards, who will do it; contract creates accountability
  
• Name ppl to put in the boxes
  
• Pick one president/coo: only one can be in charge
  


• After organization designed, start working on the prototype
  
• Start from bottom of org chart whether started originally working in the business
  
• Must find others to do tactical work by prototyping each position as a mini business
  
• Use mini biz Dev process on each position: innovation, quantification, orchestration 
  
• While working in the position work on the position
  
• Test out clothing, call scripts, document what works best in manual
  
• Only when manual complete do u run ad for position
  
• But not for someone with that experience/master but for a novice/apprentice
  
• As soon as hires tactician at that moment promoted to managing the system
  
• Now strategic work instead of tactical
  

Ch 15 management strategy

• Not about finding competent managers
  
• Need management system
  
• System is the solution
  
• Every single part of operation in manual is a checklist
  
• Multiple checks of everything
  
• As much automation and timers as possible
  

Ch 16 your people strategy

• Cant get ppl to do what you want
  
• Must make environment where they want to shine
  
• Explain the idea behind the work that's more important than work itself
  
• How u do work reflection on how you are inside and how feel about self
  
• Business is extension of owner's values and must communicate idea behind those to new ppl
  
• Place you go to practice being best you can be
  
• Look for players in your dojo game where fight against themselves
  
• Explain this philosophy about work on first day
  
• Work about achieving self
  
• Very best business is well conceived game
  


• Rules of the game
  
• Never start with what want ppl to do and then make game out of it; start with game and values ideas
  
• Never create game for ppl unwilling to play self
  
• Make sure there are ways of winning the game without ending it
  
• Change the game from time to time: tactics, not strategy; strategy is game's ethic; results tell u when game over and needs to be changed
  
• Never expect game to be self sustaining; need to remind about it weekly; make exception to it daily to remind
  
• Game has to make sense and be verifiable
  
• Game needs to be fun from time to time; plan in fun as defined by ppl; once in 6 mo
  
• If u can't think of a good game, steal one but learn it by heart
  


• Logic of the game
  
• People missing values and standards and good game
  
• Provide organization and values ppl want
  



• Playing the game
  
• Boss communicated his ideas through documentation and orderly communication
  


• Hiring process key medium
  
• Hiring process
  
• Scripted presentation by boss to all candidates in group meeting explaining his idea and plan and game, business history implementing the idea, and attributes of successful candidate
  
• Meeting with each applicant individually to discuss reactions to and feelings about the idea, background, exp, why he feels capable implementing the boss's idea
  
• Notification of successful candidate by phone, scripted presentation
  
• Notification of unsuccessful thanking for interest, standard letter signed by interviewer
  
• First day of training for boss and employee including reviewing the boss's idea, summarize the systems that implement it, facility tour to show interdependence between systems and people, answering clearly and fully all employee questions, issuing uniform and operations manual, reviewing manual including strategic objective, org strategy, and position contract, completing the employment paperwork
  
• This is just first step requiring strategy and system
  


• How we do it here
  
• How we recruit, hire and train ppl to do it here
  
• How we manage it here
  
• How we change it here
  
• It is main biz idea
  
• Sum total of all systems Documented in manual and taught in school
  

Ch 17 your marketing strategy

• Irrational decision making customer
  
• Forget about you and focus on customer
  
• Customer absorbs all stimuli from environment
  
• Unconscious mind is where second step of buying process happens
  
• First is awareness
  
• Customer expectations unknown to him and u but matter
  
• Sale is made in first 3 min
  
• headline is all that matters in print ad
  
• Demographics and psychographics
  
• Construct prototype scientifically to appeal to perceived market reality
  
• IBM blue color of logo highly significant to results
  
• Navy dress suit most professional
  
• Find a perceived need and fill it
  
• Controlled experimentation
  
• Ask each and every customer for free goods questionnaire 
  
• who they are
  
• Where live: draw them on map, put line around them, that's your trading zone
  
• What car drive
  
• What perfume buy
  
• What read
  
• What colors shapes words they prefer
  
• Clothes jewelry food
  
• Match those brands to the colors and commercials and publications that sell them
  
• Become like the products they already like
  
• Buy a list of demographically correct ppl living in your zone
  

Ch 18 your systems strategy

• Hard systems physical
  
• Soft systems: selling system
  
• Scripts memorized
  
• Physical materials
  
• Delivery in identical fashion
  
• How u dress
  
• structure and substance
  
• Power point selling system
  
• Power point selling process is series of scripts
  
• Appt presentation just to make appt, get emotional commitment, hook
  
• Needs analysis presentation repeats appt presentation hook, establish credibility (company expertise positioning statement, personal willingness to do what can to help customer), ask if these things frustrate them, describe product system and why it works well/impact from customer perspective, not how it works, do questionnaire 
  
• Solution presentation: selling is opening, not closing; review custom prepared report; ask which of these options sounds best for you
  
• Use same words and steps every single time
  


• Information system
  
• Calls made
  
• Prospects reached
  
• Appts scheduled
  
• Appts confirmed
  
• Appts held
  
• Needs analyses presentations scheduled
  
• Needs analysis presentations confirmed
  
• Needs analysis presentations held
  
• Solutions presentations scheduled
  
• Confirmed
  
• Held
  
• Solutions sold
  
• Average value of sale
  


• This benchmark analysis tells u conversion rate and which steps most important to improve
  


• Things 
  
• Actions
  
• Ideas
  
• Hard soft and info systems
  
• All interdependent
  


• All words with any outsider of biz is a system
  
• Powerful when integrated carefully and planned and experimented
  

Ch 19 a letter

• search for meaning
  
• Meaning is product of caring
  
• Things we care about less significant than before
  
• Not serious ppl anymore
  
• Get In touch with your spirit that cares
  
• Stay out of comfort zone
  

Epilogue

• Chaos is only inside us
  
• Change our lives
  
• Learn about who we are in the dojo
  
• Learn attention and discipline
  
• Demands specifics not generalizations
  
• Business like dojo
  
• Intentionally and systematically
  

Afterward

• Step back from biz and see gap between where u are and need to be
  
• Gap always due to lack of systems
  

At the dschool, I heard about the book Wired to Care by Dev Patnaik, CEO of Jump Associates and professor at Stanford. The book focused on the subject of empathy, which is the first (and perhaps most difficult and critical) of the five steps of the design thinking process.

I found the book enjoyable and easy to read, and I liked its many examples and stories of individuals at companies finding empathy with others. I found myself wanting more specific advice from the book on techniques for more effective empathy interviewing and observation, as well as how to turn those observations into ideas, how to best document them, and how to best communicate them with others. The book stayed too high level for me, even though it was interesting and well written.

My biggest takeaway is that empathy and a deep connection with customers can make even "uninteresting" products strike a chord, and it can motivate people to work their hardest because they have a deeper goal in mind. I also think the lesson of "the map is not the territory" is very powerful and a great reminder of the importance of seeing things first-hand and doing your own thinking rather than just relying on second-hand information.

Part 1 the case for empathy

Ch 1 intro

• Simulate what it's like to be old to empathize with them to design better fridge
  
• Put on costume and earplugs
  
• Disabilities caused by products, not age
  
• Caring instinct in brain lost when in org
  


• Reflect what you see
  
• Harley parking lot devoted to customer motorcycles
  
• Hire your customers
  
• To understand someone, be like them
  
• Understanding of riders
  

Ch 2 the map is not the territory

• London subway map simplification
  
• Models only good for purpose they're designed for; not equal to reality
  
• Model of behavior different from real behavior
  
• Maps and plans companies make not substitute for direct contact
  
• Coffee industry lost touch with customers
  
• IBM regained touch with customers
  
• Empathy gives gut sense for what in customer minds
  
• See the real territory, not the map
  
• Making abstractions tangible
  
• Disney imagineers
  
• Animal Kingdom
  
• Make concept tangible when selling to team
  
• Make facts tangible by visiting ppl in real world and living life as customer does
  

Ch 3 the way things used to be

• Class at Stanford: need finding
  
• Empathy not a new thing
  
• Rapid prototyping
  
• Lots of convos ongoing with customer yield better solutions
  
• Intimacy with client was way product design was done before
  
• Industrial revolution created rift between producers and consumers
  
• Harder to make products for people unlike you and far away
  
• Zildjian creates drums and cymbals by hanging out with musicians for 300 years
  
• Farmers markets in London
  

Part 2 creating widespread empathy

Ch 4 creating affinity

• Hire your customers
  
• President candidates connecting with public
  
• As companies grow larger, they become less like their customers
  

Ch 5 walking in someone else's shoes

• Moccasins project at class to spend time as someone else
  
• Mirror neurons lights up in our premotor cortex when we see others move body or just tell u about it
  
• Learn by watching
  

Ch 6 empathy that lasts

• Limbic system wired is to care
  
• Steelcase furniture
  
• Understand customers and make them feel like heroes and architects
  
• Always ask, "what are customers telling us"
  

Ch 7 open all the windows

• Open book management of financials
  
• Open empathy organizations
  


• Make it easy
  
• Insert empathy events daily not a irregular events
  
• Nike
  
• Intel ethnography group
  
• Posting end user personae in bathroom stalls
  


• Make it experiential
  
• Nike employees playing sports at work
  
• Smith and Hawken employees doing gardening at work
  
• Create immersive simulation rooms of persona's lives
  

Part 3 the results of empathy

Ch 8 reframe

• Empathy replaces second hand info
  
• 3 kinds of reframed
  
• See world as other sees it
  
• See world as no one else does
  
• Reframe how u see a problem into a different context
  
• Empathy precedes reframe
  
• Nike Presto
  

Ch 9 we are them

• OXO Good Grips
  
• Line blurs between producers and consumers, internal and external
  

Ch 10 golden rule

• Cisco way of ethics by John chambers CEO
  
• Golden rule requires envisioning real people affected by actions
  

Ch 11 hidden payoff

• Calling energizes ppl