bottom up innovation always trumps top down innovation in consumer markets

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bottom up innovation always wins in consumer markets

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Notable strategy in onchain opsec. We operate under the assumption that signing the first multisig transaction is almost irrelevant, because multisigs require a quorum of valid signatures to be reached. So since the very first signature cannot do any harm, it is safe to execute it without being 100% certain whether the used web frontend is compromised or not. In any event, the first signature registered onchain is picked up by Pingy, causing the network to send an independent verification to your device.

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I spoke today at the Institute of Public Administration on why borrowing private sector strategic thinking and values undermines public strategy — and a practical tool that uses tradeoffs to develop more robust public strategy. Read about the talk (and have a look at the slides) here: https://vaughntan.org/publicvalue

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gm when confronting uncertainty (not risk) and reliability is required, the only viable approach is slack. the more reliability is required, the more slack is required. (i'm not yet late for a strategy workshop I'm running in Tunis, despite two separate traffic accidents involving ambulance interventions — having left at what i thought was an unnecessarily early hour but actually wasn't)

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dungeons & dragons and other games where a gamesmaster introduces player uncertainty (including some games made for corps) keep coming up when i talk about games of uncertainty. https://vaughntan.org/uncertaintygames my issue with these is that the uncertainty is usually just information asymmetry. the game master or designer has knowledge, but withholds it from the game player. this creates uncertainty for the player but not at the game level itself. (greg costikyan's operationalisation of the term "uncertainty" seems to have this issue.) so i designed FOUNDATION, a game that operationalises true uncertainty (at game-, designer-, and player-level). it went live at MOD. in adelaide. we're now exploring whether it could be installed somewhere else as an interactive exhibit for people to learn strategy in true uncertainty. i wrote it up here: https://vaughntan.org/foundation do you know someone who'd like to commission it to be installed at their location, for their employees or the public? pls let me know.

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a third insight: even among specialist practitioners of foresight (which is the practice of unpacking the implications of uncertainty about the future) there isn't a good and clear understanding of the distinction between unquantifiable unknowns (true uncertainties) and quantifiable unknowns (formal risks). the idea that all unknowns should be quantified runs deep, and has deep and damaging ramifications. (why damaging? https://vaughntan.org/the-consequences-of-mindset-mismatch)

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another insight is that the framing of "hope" is increasingly implausible and feels like a form of cruel optimism — but an alternative framing that is not "despair" is not yet articulated. there doesn't seem to be a credible, realist, pragmatist stance that is also overtly well-intentioned (both synchronically and diachronically)

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just spent two days in singapore unpacking the present and near-future with a group of literally internationally renowned futures and futures-adjacent people. so grim. top takeaways for me: 1. the self-delusion of the desirability of legible homogeneity is no longer tenable 2. it is now undeniable that we have to play multiple games at once where game rules are unclear and unstable, and where some games are mutually exclusive. i also ran the f&b and forced all these people to drink /naturalwine and eat by the side of the road while doing it 😂

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tacit but explicatable knowledge is invariably outcompeted when it is explicated in a low-cost-of-access system. tacit and inexplicatable knowledge preserves its competitive advantage because it is not explicatable. examples of such permanently tacit knowledge include a sense of unique style, or the ability to create surprise and delight. innovation work, being entirely about not-knowing, is often an arena where it's vital to have permanently tacit knowledge: https://vaughntan.org/innovation-and-not-knowing

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Good categorisation wins over pure empiricism; Singapore's 60th birthday; a low-intervention wine experiment; the concept of enlightenment in Zen/Chan, aliveness in things and humans, drone delivery. https://uncertaintymindset.substack.com/p/gbw332025 (with random photo for the algorithm)

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Most unknowns we face aren’t just “risk.” They’re messier, richer, and more generative — deeper types of not-knowing about what we could do, what could happen, how our actions link to outcomes, and what outcomes we truly value. I wrote about how to see, name, and use these types of not-knowing better: https://vaughntan.org/nksynthesis

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been writing about not-knowing and /uncertainty for several years (in fact, since 2008). haven't made a synthesis yet, so here it is as an easily-digested diagram — because apparently that's what's necessary now. full essay coming up. meanwhile, all the essays from the last 3 years are available here: https://vaughntan.org/notknowing

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i was at a very strange workshop this week

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i'm at a fellows strategy retreat for the singapore govt's centre for strategic futures. struck by how much even this august group (the distinguished fellows include some very fancy people) is largely oblivious to the problems of using output indistinguishability as a way of evaluating AI systems. i wrote about that in the context of education a few weeks ago: https://vaughntan.org/meaningedu

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