Tag Archives: philosophy

Perspective is Everything

For some time now I’ve started thinking more about ‘Perspectives’, particularly about my Perspectives.

Everybody has a way of viewing things and mostly your views about various things would be different than mine. Perspective to me is a deep and thought out opinion about something. The more you think about something, chances are the better you understand them and the more you understand things, the more you like and enjoy them.

I believe most people tend to have perspectives on only a handful things, particularly things that impact them. For ex: Not everyone will have a strong opinion on the design of things or  internet freedom or climate control or the way cities should be planned etc. I strongly feel that it is very important to have a perspective on a few things if not a lot. Having a perspective on certain things opens up your mind about them, it helps you deconstruct the current state of things, particularly what’s wrong and also on how they can *possibly* be fixed.

You need to deliberate deeply about something and be emotional about it to be able to have a perspective on it and to me having a perspective on something is why/how most innovations and disruptions happen. You feel passionately about healthcare for the poor, you feel motivated enough to change things around, you figure out a way to get things moving and bang your idea becomes a reality and ends up changing someone’s life for better.

Think about it, if an entrepreneur doesn’t have a strong perspective about their new startup idea/product what are the odds that their product will be different(and maybe an improvement) from others, will add some value and end up becoming a sustainable business?

Unless you really want to change things around and have some idea on what the change should be, you can’t be good at it. Not only this, my perspective is that we as entrepreneurs need to have perspectives on not just one but a lot of things. Say as a start-up entrepreneur I should have perspectives on disruption/innovation that I want to bring to my industry, building a profitable and sustainable business, hiring, customer service etc etc. The number of these aspects I feel strongly about would determine to a large extent to how I fair in this journey.

Also, I feel that the person who has perspectives on more and possibly varied things the better positioned they are to change things and have an impact. I have certain perspective on usability, product design, health care, education, independent artists, social media, publishing/media among a few other things. I have spent fair amount of time analyzing some of this things and have some idea of how I can add value in these domains. Hopefully soon enough I’d get a chance to move things around in them.

Till then, what do you think about this? Do you Agree/Disagree with what I just said?

 

Getting Real: A smaller, faster, better way to build software.

Here’s a goodie for all software developers(especially web). The mavericks at 37signals have compiled their thoughts on software development in form of a book aptly titled “Getting Real“.

What is getting real ?

  • Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
  • Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).
  • Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
  • Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_What_is_Getting_Real.php

Another amazing thing about this book is that its FREE in web version(HTML) and if you want it in pdf or paperback you can buy it too . I recommend you to check the book out. Click here to get started