Mike Massimino had plenty of opportunities to give up on becoming an astronaut: he’s afraid of heights, he was rejected by NASA — not once, not twice, but three times, and he had poor vision that medically disqualified him. 

When asked about how he dealt with rejection while remaining patient and...

The pursuits of creating light and flight came with zero guarantees, but we persisted anyways.
Because taking a leap for the chance to cross the chasm is better than staying on one side of the fissure wondering hopelessly what may be on the other side.
If you’re looking for guarantees to justify...

Beginning a new craft in many ways mirrors the experience of learning to walk — there are all kinds of trials between losing balance, stumbling, and falling that occur early on, but eventually you figure out how to get somewhere (literally).
The first time you try walking might be decidedly great...

I'm intrigued by the physics of hammer-ons and pull-offs in the context of stringed instruments - specifically the idea that sound is made only when the attack or retreat from a string is executed with sufficient swiftness and force. 

There's an analogy to be made here - perhaps to business strategy,...

Slack is about empathy and creating a flexible enough design that empowers people to decide what kind of solution they want or need.
What legos, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Newegg, watch strips with more than one hole, height-adjustable chairs, and thermostats with turnable dials all have in common is that none...

This post was inspired by case studies in The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss by Ron Adner (Amazon link).
Sony’s eReader launch in 2006 encountered several unplanned-for road blocks: publishers didn’t have an infrastructure in place to support ebook commerce, there were unprecedented legal concerns around digital...

An argument is what happens when someone cares enough about a subject, a problem, or a mission, that they make a point to express their opposing views.
It’s possible to be in a tension-free, 100%-agreeable workplace where no arguments happen — though that is cause for concern because it’s unlikely that...

Every interaction with someone presents the choice to either maintain footing or to cover some distance to meet the other person where they are at.
Maintaining footing is about defaulting to projection — expecting the other person to think as you think, to see as you see, and to feel as...

In his book A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger posits that solving problems starts with asking beautiful questions as defined here:

“A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something — and that might serve as a catalyst...

When it comes to the work we do, there is what we explicitly call it (text) and its underlying meaning and implications (subtext).
The implication of marketing might be to help people make a change.
The implication of product management might be to make people’s lives more frictionless and enjoyable.
The implication of...