CHANGES are CHANCES to CREATE

This was my new year greeting SMS to all my friends for Jan 1, 2008. I'm glad that many people liked it.

And it is true, as change is the only constant thing on earth, I believe there's a lot we can learn from it.

I started following this manifesto since 2008, and 2009 Bruce Mau did some changes on his Incomplete Manifesto For Growth (or Change).

It is good to read some inspirational articles when you face uncertainty in life. I especially enjoy reading these intelligent stuff. Like this Imcomplete manifesto, some strike me and triggered some ideas, some that I'm strong disagree with.

But that's the thing, intelligence is always about disagreement, agree? Enjoy.

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study.
Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ——————————.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

What makes a brand

is not what you say it is, but what the consumers say it is.



This was the header of JASONGAN.COM for December 2008.

2.0.0.9.

We had fun in 2008, and seriously it was a great year in my life.

March 2008, I attended my convocation, am officially graduated.
August 2008, I completed my first commercial project, am really proud of it.
September 2008, I quit my job. Thanks for the learning opportunities.
December 2008, I got my 1st consulting contract for marketing and branding.

2008 was like a roller coaster, and I seriously love the excitement it brought me. 2009 will be a blast, am sure it is.

Happy 2009, let's make it the best year of our life!

WHY that matters

I always like to ask why.

A friend approached me to ask for my opinion about his new business idea. After his 30minutes of explanation, I asked why.

A friend said he wanted to get married, I asked why.

A friend asked me which blogging platform is the best one, I asked why she wanted to start a blog now, not earlier?

It is simple to ask why, but how to ask it at the right time and at the right point, it takes a little bit of experience.

For example, many people started blogging because their friends told them to, because people made money from it. But why you wanted to start a blog?

It maybe a new business idea, it maybe a thought to try a new marketing strategy, or maybe a rebranding plan, or to venture into new media marketing.

You see people did it so you want to follow, I dare to say that you will eventually stop somewhere halfway.

A strong WHY is needed, like a vision. It has to be clear and strong enough so that obstacles won't block your sight.

Walking away with pride

No matter how bad the situation could be, you know that you’ve done what is necessary.

Being bold and unpredictable is not mere about being crazy enough to break some rules but the ability to see through any situation with your own set of values and judgment.

Others may think you’re crazy because you’re doing something they don’t agree upon, or simply something they do not dare to do. When Tony Fernandes started AirAsia, buying a bunch of old machines that was “destined” to be a total failure was crazy; bringing up the idea of creating the only aviation line that serves domestic flights with low price, too. Something that not being seen by others, but you know you have what it takes to make this happen, and leave the world with tonnes of surprises.

For young people like us, being bold and unpredictable maybe a little simpler. You do not really follow the flow of going into employment and try to climb the corporate ladder like others. You may have known your dream better, your life direction or whatsover.

Do what it takes to achieve what you truly want, and guess what, Gen Y is much better than Gen X and Boomers because we simply know ourselves better, and strongly believe in it.

Just beware of all those distractions, you can too, walk with pride.

(Guest post for a Youthsays.com Group Blogging Project, read more here.)

In a branded country

What do you expect to see most?

I see opportunities.

More than a week ago I spent about 5 days in the City of Lion. It was bot bad. I saw brands, and a well designed country.

Design is the word here. This is a branded country, so if you want to thrive here, you need to be more appealing than usual to attract those Singapore Dollars.

Visual is a key here for any new business venture. You can see when you walk down the shopping malls, weird names, funny symbols, thou most of them are just tweaking a little bit of the conventional, or simply just package it nicer.

I think so. When you're in a country that is so obsess about rules, people are too comfortable, and they need good designs to evoke their buying emotion.

Or simply put: you focus on WANTs.

All marketers are copy cats

Because there's simply too few geniuses in this world.

AirAsia was using the success model of SouthWest; same goes to OldTown (and the those spoof OldTowns).

I strongly believe that we should copy shamelessly, as long as you're not fringing any copyrights.

It's a business world, some say war zone. Do you think so much when you fire a bullet? (or its like: oh I should invent my own way of shooting?) Bullshit.

Good copycats are creative in their own ways. Applying a strategy that was successfully implemented by other organization, other field, other industry or even other country is simply one of the best practice because they are proven as a model.

What you need to do is tweak it according to your need and your industry, let it run and watching it grow, tweak again if anything goes wrong until it starts to make money for you.

That's what I call innovation. If you want to be named the "innovative creator", then stop banging your head, start open your eyes and look around - look and learn.

Do you agree that profit is the most important indicator for the success of your business?

Now what's wrong with copying good strategies?