The Innovator's Dilemma... "intrinsically inimical to change..."

"One of the dilemmas of management is that, by their very nature, processes are established so that employees perform recurrent tasks in a consistent way, time after time. To ensure consistency, they are meant not to change- or if they must change, to change through tightly controlled procedures. This means that the very mechanisms through which organizations create value are intrinsically inimical to change[!]"

The Innovator's Dilemma... The "Organization"...

"Unfortunately, some managers don't think as rigorously about whether their organizations have the capability to successfully execute jobs that may be given them. Frequently, they assume that if people working on a project individually have the requisite capabilities to get the job done well, then the organization in which they work will also have the same capability to succeed. This often is not the case. One could take two sets of identically capable people and put them to work in two different organizations, and what they accomplish would likely be significantly different. This is because organizations themselves, independent of the people and other resources in them, have capabilities. To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well."

"China’s yuan [is] one of the most undervalued currencies in the Big Mac index..." ☛ @TheEconomist

A WEAK currency, despite its appeal to exporters and politicians, is no free lunch. But it can provide a cheap one. In China, for example, a McDonald’s Big Mac costs just 14.5 yuan on average in Beijing and Shenzhen, the equivalent of $2.18 at market exchange rates. In America, in contrast, the same burger averages $3.71.

That makes China’s yuan one of the most undervalued currencies in the Big Mac index,

"A discipline like Extreme Programming requires a radical upgrade in both technical and social skills..." ☛ Kent Beck

A discipline like Extreme Programming requires a radical upgrade in both technical and social skills, especially for programmers. It requires become transparent, accountable, and responsible. Mostly I see people trying to get different results with basically the same techniques they always used, just rearranged slightly.