Innovation is the systematic practice of developing and marketing new products, services, processes, and business models for customers. Successful innovation increases value and drives growth. However, getting innovation right can be challenging.  Over 80 percent of executives surveyed say that innovation is one of their top three priorities, yet less than 10 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance.

Innovation in a business context

Companies that use the essentials of innovation see a substantial performance edge. Mastering innovation can generate economic profit 2.4 times higher than other players.

The importance of innovation in business

Research shows eight critical elements organisations should master for superior innovation performance. <ol><li>Aspire: Viewing innovation-led growth as critical.</li><li>Choose: Investing in a coherent, time- and risk-balanced portfolio of initiatives.</li><li>Discover: Creating actionable business, market, and technology R&D efforts.</li><li>Evolve: Developing business models that deliver defensible and scalable profit sources.</li><li>Accelerate: Developing and launching innovations quickly.</li><li>Scale: Launching innovations at the right scale in the relevant markets.</li><li>Extend: Creating and capitalizing on external networks.</li><li>Mobilize</li></ol>

Becoming better innovators

<ul><li>Mercedes-Benz Group invested extensively in digitizing its product development system, shortening its innovation cycles, improving its ability to personalise cars and increasing assembly efficiency by 25 percent.</li><li>The information services organization RELX Group ran ten to 15 experiments in each customer segment in its pipeline yearly, then selected one or two of the best ideas.</li><li>International insurance company Discovery Group mobilised the organisation around innovation by creating incentives using semiannual divisional scorecards.</li></ul>

Examples of successful innovators

Steps to help aspiring innovators get started:<ul><li>Hold collision sessions. Teams consider unmet customer needs, technology trends, and business models and bring creativity and specificity to idea generation. Then a panel evaluates the ideas and prioritises what to do.</li><li>Challenge orthodoxies. Participants describe common beliefs that prevent the organisation from innovating.</li><li>Make analogies to other industries. A team creates a list of companies with unique value propositions and then systematically applies these propositions.</li><li>Apply constraints, such as serving only one type of customer.</li></ul>

Improving the volume and quality of new ideas

The way to get to good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.

An innovation portfolio is a thoughtfully curated collection of potential initiatives, with clear aspirations and resources defined for each. The portfolio will help to find new opportunities and determine the appropriate number of initiatives, including:<ul><li>Confirming the total value of the portfolio needed.</li><li>Evaluating existing innovation projects.</li><li>Getting comfortable saying “no” to stop projects that are dilutive.</li><li>Reallocating resources to new initiatives.</li><li>Identifying portfolio gaps and defining new initiatives.</li></ul>

Innovation portfolio

<ul><li>Look at innovation-driven net new growth, called the "green box." The green box looks at growth from innovation alone. It defines the value that a company creates from innovation, on a defined timeline, with quantifiable metrics. Once defined, the growth aspiration can be cascaded into a set of objectives and metrics.</li><li>R&D-to-product conversion: This metric is calculated from the ratio of R&D spending to sales from new products.</li><li>New-products-to-margin conversion: This metric view the ratio of gross margin percentage to sales from new products.</li></ul>

How to measure innovation

Innovation is a team sport and consists of ten traits that fall into four main categories:<ol><li>Vision - the ability to spot opportunities and inspire others to go after them.</li><li>Collaboration focuses on fostering effective teamwork and change management.</li><li>Learning or absorbing new ideas.</li><li>Execution, with traits that enable quick decision-making even during uncertainty.</li></ol>

How to create a high-performing innovation team

A recent poll showed that 85 percent of executives say fear is holding their organisation back from innovative efforts.<ul><li>Create a culture that accounts for the human side of innovation. For example, people who worry about failure, criticism, or career impact of a wrong move can prevent people from embracing innovation.</li><li>Create a safe environment for innovation.</li><li>The majority of important breakthroughs failed many times before they succeeded.</li><li>If someone knowledgeable thinks you have a bad idea, ensure to put them on your board and make them an advisor to prevent blind spots.</li></ul>

Broad innovation advice for business leaders

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

business

Business

creativity

Creativity

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Leadership & Management

What is innovation?

<ul><li>Fearless means courage in the face of fear.</li><li>It means the ability to be with your fear - face it, focus on it, stay with it, and become intimate with it.</li><li>Our lives change when we have this kind of fearlessness.</li></ul>

The Meaning of Fearlessness

<ul><li>Mastery is the process of mastering something.</li><li>It's having a Beginner’s Mind, and being willing to stay in the process. It's a deepening into, not a final state.</li><li>Mastery is where the deepest growth takes place, where we become our most authentic selves.</li></ul>

The Process of Mastery

<ul><li>Fearless Mastery: A process of deepening into the training of fearlessness, getting intimate with fear, and creating a new relationship with uncertainty</li><li>In this process, we are willing to let go of ego and humble ourselves</li><li>We're willing to make mistakes, fall on our faces, and admit we don't know</li><li>It's a beautiful process of taking full responsibility for what we want to create in our lives.</li></ul>

The Possibility of Fearless Mastery

The Meaning of Fearless Mastery

Our minds have more ideas stored in them than can be found in the collective catalogues of any library. We have a significant number of memories of moving and beautiful scenes than the world's greatest museums can put together.

Our minds are a treasure trove of ideas

We fail to notice what we have seen. We are so convinced that worthy insights lie beyond us that we fail to consult the treasury of thoughts and vision we generate every hour by our brilliant but unexplored minds.  The thoughts of geniuses are not very different from our own. They simply had the confidence to take their ideas more seriously and study them properly.

Taking your thoughts serious

The key to originality doesn't lie in seeking out new ideas and experiences, but rather in examining our own neglected thoughts. Sign up to our new newsletter and get 10% off your first online order of a book, product or class: https://bit.ly/3HpVdSa For books and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://bit.ly/3xGbb8z Our website has classes, articles and products to help you lead a more fulfilled life: https://bit.ly/38TeVcm Join this channel to get access to exclusive members perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog/join FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: https://bit.ly/388NgDO “The problem with libraries is that they can be so large, impressive, and filled with knowledge that they unwittingly embed in us an idea that everything worth registering, everything valuable and true, must lie ‘out there’, must already have been classed on a shelf with an index number to await our discovery the moment we cease to be so preoccupied with ourselves…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Aaron Sampson https://www.aaronsampson.co.uk @SampsonInMotion Title animation produced in collaboration with Vale Productions https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/

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The key to originality doesn't lie in seeking out new ideas and experiences, but rather in examining our own neglected thoughts.
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FURTHER READING

You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: https://bit.ly/388NgDO

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You Still Have a Chance to Be Very Original

You don’t talk about these ideas, because you’ve never put them into words. They’re just gut feelings.
Turning gut feelings into tools means understanding their origin, limits, and how they interact with other ideas. Which requires turning them into words.

We're full of ideas we’re not aware of

And it does that in ways thinking on its own will never accomplish.It’s difficult to focus on a topic in our heads for more than a few seconds without getting distracted by another thought, and distractions erase whatever we attempted to think about. But words on paper stick. They aren’t washed away by the agitator in our heads.

Writing crystallizes ideas

Sometimes writing is encouraging. You realize you understand a topic better than you thought. The process flushes out all kinds of other ideas you never knew you had hiding upstairs. Now you can apply those insights elsewhere.Other times it’s painful. Forcing the logic of your thoughts into words can uncover the flaws and biases of your ideas. Seeing the words on paper looks ridiculous. Things the mind tends to gloss over the pen tends to highlight.

Putting ideas on paper

Some of the things I think I think, I find don’t make any sense when I start trying to write them down. You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more.

Writers don’t know exactly what they’ll write about until they start writing, because the process crystallizes the fuzzy ideas we all have floating around. This is probably why writing is intimidating for some people. They don’t think they can write because, in their head, they don’t know what they’d write about. But hardly anyone does.

Where do your ideas come from?

Everyone should write. You know why? Because everyone is full of ideas they’re not aware of. You don’t talk about these ideas, even in your own head, because you’ve never put them into words. They’re gut feelings. Intuitions. You use them a dozen times a day. But you’d shrug your shoulders if someone asked why. How you react to career risk. Why you invest the way you do. Why you like some people and question others. We’re all brimming with opinions on these topics that we may never discuss, even with ourselves. Like phantom intelligence. Intuition is strong enough to put these ideas into practice. But intuition isn’t a tool; it’s a safety net at best, and is more often the fuel of biased decisions. Turning gut feelings into tools means understanding their origin, limits, and how they interact with other ideas. Which requires turning them into words. And writing is the best way to do that. Writing crystallizes ideas in ways thinking on its own will never accomplish. The reason is simple: It’s hard to focus on a topic in your head for more than a few seconds without getting distracted by another thought, and distractions erase whatever you attempted to think about. But words on paper stick. They aren’t washed away by the agitator in your head who won’t shut up about the tone of an email someone just sent you. You might be able to hold focus just briefly in your head, but a sentence on paper has all the patience in the world, waiting for you to return whenever you’re ready. It’s hard to overemphasize how important this is. Putting ideas on paper is the best way to organize them in one place, and getting everything in one place is essential to understanding ideas as more than the gut reactions they often hide as. Take four questions: What is your edge over competitors? How do you react to unforeseen risk? What have you changed your mind about recently? What part of your job are you not good at? These are vital questions that most of us, if asked on the spot, couldn’t answer well. Not because we haven’t thought about them; we certainly have. But the thoughts are probably vague, unsubstantiated, or pure emotions. Many people’s response to the first question would be an uncomfortable pause, a ponder, and a lump in the throat. Which says a lot, just not in words. It’s not until you put thoughts on paper that everything from ignorance to denial to unfulfilled potential is viewed in the raw, ready to be analyzed. Sometimes writing is encouraging. You realize you understand a topic better than you thought. The process flushes out all kinds of other ideas you never knew you had hiding upstairs. Now you can apply those insights elsewhere. Other times it’s painful. Forcing the logic of your thoughts into words can uncover the madness of your ideas. The holes. The flaws. The biases. Thinking “I want this job because it pays a lot of money” is bearable. Seeing the words on paper looks ridiculous. Things the mind tends to gloss over the pen tends to highlight. Warren Buffett once said: Some of the things I think I think, I find don’t make any sense when I start trying to write them down. You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. A common question people ask professional writers is, “Where do you get your ideas?” A common answer is, “From writing.” Writers don’t know exactly what they’ll write about until they start writing, because the process crystallizes the fuzzy ideas we all have floating around. This chicken-and-egg problem is probably why writing is intimidating for some people. They don’t think they can write because – in their head, as this moment – they don’t know what they’d write about. But hardly anyone does. So, write. A journal. A business manifesto. An investment plan. You don’t have to publish it. It’s the process that matters. You’ll uncover so much you never knew.

writing

Reading & Writing

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

Why Everyone Should Write

Ask more often: “What am I missing?” This is the doorstop to keep open possibilities from slamming into harmful assumptions.We’re missing a lot. To keep our minds open when so much pushes them closed we’re going to have to talk with actual different people. This is the work. It feels good to confirm our impressions, sharpen our wit, tighten our bonds. But it feels even better, to find but not be confined to our groups, to invite a truer world in—fear, discomfort, and dopamine lollipops be damned. And bonus: it really can be easier and even more fun than you think.

Curiosity

How you see the world determines how you want to talk about it. When people say we lack a shared reality, the fact that we can live in the same world, marked by the same set of events, and have such different views of what it all means is astounding, frustrating, and just real life. This drives home a critical point: What happens in the world matters, but our interpretation of what happens in the world matters more.That doesn’t mean we should pay any less attention to facts. It means we should pay more attention to perspectives.

Perspective

Scottish sailors first talked about their “ken”: how far they could see to the horizon out on the water. Then writers began to use it to refer to the range of our vision, of our knowledge or understanding. To what our mind can see, and not just our eyes. It’s weird to do anything drastic when you can barely make out the thing that’s scaring you. So you’ll manufacture certainty. You’ll convince yourself that the shape you see beyond your ken fits the description of that sea monster everyone in your silo’s been buzzing about. And you’ll fight, flee, or rage accordingly.You can’t see everything, <warningtag>so you’ll tell yourself you’ve seen enough.</warningtag>

Beyond Your Ken

Journalist Mónica Guzmán's new book "I Never Thought of It That Way" explores how people can have more meaningful conversations.

philosophy

Philosophy

How to have fearless conversations in dangerously divided times

Voice search is starting to dominate the way people search for information online. Instead of typing your query in the search engines, you simply speak into your device and ask for the information. 45 million people use voice assistants every day. They not only use it to find information but also to discover brands and buy products online. Reports state that voice shopping is set to jump from $2 billion today to $40 billion in 2022. You could lose money by not optimising your business for voice search and voice shopping.

Voice search is dominating the search landscape

When people use voice search, they use a conversational tone and a long text string instead of a few random keywords. It is better to optimise your website for longer queries using long-tail keywords. These keywords are specific and targeted.

Use long-tail keywords

Voice search queries often include the phrase 'near me' because most users do a local search intending to visit the store. To help you optimise your business for local search, consider adding your location, timings, contact information, parking availability, and other relevant information on your website's homepage. Consider creating local content for your blogs.

Optimise your business for local search

List your business in Google My Business. Getting your business listed in a local search can help you maximise your online presence and improve your SEO.

Get listed

When people make a Google search, they often don't intent to buy. However, Google shows that people who use voice search are 30 times more likely to act on the query. Understanding your user's search intent will make it easier to create content for your site that clarifies those queries.

Consider the search intent of your users

When you create content, ensure to keep a conversational style of writing. This will increase the chance of your business appearing in the voice search results.

Use conversational tone in content

Easy ways to optimize your content for voice search.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

5 Important Ways to Optimize your Business for Voice Search

Every business owner and entrepreneur have more setbacks than they want to admit. Some can overcome all challenges and rise to the top, while others get discouraged and don't recover, leading to business failure. Success has everything to do with your mindset and the habits you build for dealing with challenges.

Success requires the right mindset

Don't become the victim with no control. Accept that change is normal and possibly the reason you saw an opportunity to start your business. Look for new opportunities. For example, many restaurants closed during the pandemic but some quickly refocused on home delivery and found a way to weather the storm.

Avoid a victim mentality

As you search for alternatives, don't let your emotions overrule your logical decision process. Instead, use your initial process for evaluating markets, customer needs, and financial implications. Then, allow the challenge to broaden your thinking.

Stay calm and manage objective facts

Don't try to carry the weight on your shoulders only. Team members are often closer to the customer and have some valuable insights.   Ask advice from peers, your advisory board, outside experts and mentors. Keep an active mentor relationship with a few peers to discuss your business challenges and strategy.

Seek input for the team and mentors

Don't allow a setback to sidetrack you from your vision. There is seldom one path to a goal, so take the time to re-focus on your vision and find alternate routes to reach it, perhaps using a much better idea than the first. Ensure to learn from your progress and challenges. A business challenge can remind you that your interests have changed or that you did not use the best path.

Revisit your goals and business purpose

Do not play to your weaknesses when analysing the situation. See every challenge as an opportunity to learn and provide leadership to your team. They need to view you as a role model for their success.

Capitalise on your strengths

One of the leading causes of business failure is giving up too soon. Building a business is a journey, not a sprint. You can overcome almost any disappointment if you are fully determined, motivated, and committed.

Refuse to give in to defeat

Problems and change are the only constants in business, so learn how to meet them positively.

strategy

Strategy

startup

Startups

How to Overcome Business Setbacks by Developing a Positive Mindset

A festival is an event that is commemorated for the characteristics or aspects it shares with various religions or cultures.Moreover, a festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization -- modified imported cultural practices or ideas that conform with the local norms. Festivals were often done to fulfill specific communal purposes, but there are others also celebrate oneness among others.

Festival

<ul><li>The Carnival of Venice, Italy. It is an internationally acclaimed festival. It is celebrated 40 days before Easter</li><li>Oktoberfest in Munich Germany - This festival is one of the biggest festivals in Europe and it starts during late September up until the first weekend in October</li><li>The ultimate food fight festival, otherwise known as La Tomatina, is held every August in Bunol, Spain to let out frustrations in the friendliest way possible</li><li>St. Patrick's Day is incredibly celebrated by Ireland and many other places every March 17th</li><li>Krampus Run in Austria is celebrated from late November until Christmas.</li></ul>

Europe-Based Festivals

<ul><li>The Holi Festival in India and Nepal is one of the biggest religious festivals around the world. (February-March)</li><li>The Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea is celebrated every July for its nutrient-rich mud</li><li>The Songkran Water Festival in Thailand is highly anticipated to celebrate the traditional New Year every April</li><li>The Lantern Festival is held in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It is celebrated on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month to symbolize new beginnings.</li><li>The Harbin Ice and Snow Festival is a beloved festival in China that is celebrated every January until February.</li></ul>

Asia-based Festivals

<ul><li>In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Rio Carnival is widely known and celebrated on a Friday up until a day shy of Ash Wednesday.</li><li>The Albuquerque International Balloon Festival in the United States is celebrated in early October.</li><li>Dia de los Muertos in Mexico is known as the celebration of the dead. It occurs from October 21st to Nov 2nd.</li><li>Another American festival is the Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada which happens every last Sunday of August until the first Monday of September.</li><li>In Antigua, Guatemala, the Semana Satana is celebrated during the Holy Week up to Easter Sunday.</li></ul>

The Americas-based Festivals

history

History

movies

Movies & Shows

travel

Travel

15 of the Best Festivals in the World | Road Affair

It is far from being a gift a lucky few have. It can be trained: By exposing kids to tones and challenging them to match them before age 4, they can develop perfect pitch for the rest of their life. Even adults can learn some of this, though there is some brain plasticity at that young age that makes it easier.So did the young Mozart have a gift for perfect pitch? Yes and no. If Mozart had been raised in some other family without exposure to music—or without enough of the right sort of exposure—he would certainly have never developed that ability at all.

Perfect Pitch

There is no such thing as natural talent or prodigies.The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.

Practice Vs Natural Talent

<ul><li>We all follow pretty much the same pattern with any skill we learn: We start off with a general idea of what we want to do, get some instruction (teacher, a book, or a website), practice until we reach an acceptable level, and then let it become automatic. </li><li>But once you have reached this satisfactory skill level and automated your performance, you have stopped improving.</li><li>Once a person reaches that level of “acceptable” performance and automaticity, the additional years of “practice” don’t lead to improvement.</li></ul>

When Practice Doesn't Lead To Improvement

<ul><li>Naive practice means doing something repeatedly, and expecting that the repetition alone will improve one’s performance. This is how most people “practice” but it’s ineffective.</li><li>Purposeful practice has well-defined, specific goals. Without such a goal, there is no way to judge whether the practice session has been a success.</li></ul>

Naive Practice And Purposeful Practice

<ul><li>Purposeful practice means having a plan - putting a bunch of baby steps together to hit a long term goal, </li><li>Purposeful practice is focused.</li><li>Purposeful practice involves feedback: you have to know whether you are doing something right and if not, what mistakes you’re making.</li><li>Purposeful practice requires getting out of one’s comfort zone, feeling uncomfortable. If you never push beyond your comfort zone you’ll never improve.</li><li>It involves a way to monitor your progress and a system to maintain your motivation.</li></ul>

Components Of Purposeful Practice

The reason that most people don’t possess extraordinary physical capabilities isn’t because they don’t have the capacity for them, but rather because they’re satisfied to live in the comfortable rut of homeostasis and never do the work that is required to get out of it. The traditional approach to learning is not designed to challenge this: It assumes that learning is all about fulfilling your innate, fixed potential and that you can develop a particular skill or ability without getting too far out of your comfort zone.

Living In The World Of "Good Enough"

<ul><li>They are mental structure that corresponds to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or anything else, concrete or abstract, that the brain is thinking about.</li><li>They help with processing large amounts of information quickly, despite the limitations of short-term memory.</li><li>Your skill in anything is based on the number and quality of “mental representations” you have for the skill.</li><li>What sets expert performers apart from everyone else is the quality and quantity of their mental representations.</li></ul>

Mental Representations

It offers the following view: anyone can improve, but it requires the right approach. If you are not improving, it’s not because you lack innate talent; it’s because you’re not practicing the right way. Once you understand this, improvement becomes a matter of figuring out what the “right way” is.

The Deliberate Practice Mindset

<ol><li>The field must be well developed. If there’s no competition to indicate skill, then it’s hard for there to be deliberate practice because the differences of the best are less clear.</li><li>It requires a teacher who can provide practice activities </li><li>Near maximal effort, constantly being taken out of your comfort zone by a teacher or coach. Not “fun”</li><li>Well defined, specific goals, not aimed at “overall improvement.”</li><li>Full attention and conscious action, no autopilot.</li><li>Feedback and constant little improvements, modifying efforts in response to feedback</li><li>Building and modifying mental representations</li></ol>

Principles of Deliberate Practice

Improvement is possible is we learn to let go of these myths:<ol><li>The belief that one’s abilities are limited by one’s genetically prescribed characteristics.</li><li>If you do something for long enough, you’re bound to get better at it.</li><li>All it takes to improve is effort. If you just try hard enough, you’ll get better.</li></ol>

Common Performance Myths

Keep in mind three Fs: Focus. Feedback. Fix it.Break the skill down into components that you can do repeatedly and analyze effectively, determine your weaknesses, and figure out ways to address them.

Effectively Practice A Skill Without 
A Teacher

<ul><li>The best way to move past any plateau is to challenge your brain and body in a new way. Figure out the components of the skill that are holding you back, and find a way to push yourself more on those specific elements. Design a practice technique focused on improving that specific weakness.</li><li>To keep working on something, you need to keep the reasons to continue high, and the reasons to quit low.</li></ul>

Motivation And Maintaining Motivation

“This book is a breakthrough, a lyrical, powerful, science-based narrative that actually shows us how to get better (much better) at the things we care about.”—Seth Godin, author of Linchpin “Anyone who wants to get better at anything should read [Peak]. Rest assured that the book is not mere theory. Ericsson’s research focuses on the real world, and he explains in detail, with examples, how all of us can apply the principles of great performance in our work or in any other part of our lives.”—Fortune Anders Ericsson has made a career studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities. Whether you want to stand out at work, improve your athletic or musical performance, or help your child achieve academic goals, Ericsson’s revolutionary methods will show you how to improve at almost any skill that matters to you. “The science of excellence can be divided into two eras: before Ericsson and after Ericsson. His groundbreaking work, captured in this brilliantly useful book, provides us with a blueprint for achieving the most important and life-changing work possible: to become a little bit better each day.”—Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code “Ericsson’s research has revolutionized how we think about human achievement. If everyone would take the lessons of this book to heart, it could truly change the world.”—Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein

books

Books

“This book is a breakthrough, a lyrical, powerful, science-based narrative that actually shows us how to get better (much better) at the things we care about.”—Seth Godin, author of Linchpin “Anyone who wants to get better at anything should read [Peak]. Rest assured that the book is not mere theory. Ericsson’s research focuses on the real world, and he explains in detail, with examples, how all of us can apply the principles of great performance in our work or in any other part of our lives.”—Fortune Anders Ericsson has made a career studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities. Whether you want to stand out at work, improve your athletic or musical performance, or help your child achieve academic goals, Ericsson’s revolutionary methods will show you how to improve at almost any skill that matters to you.   “The science of excellence can be divided into two eras: before Ericsson and after Ericsson. His groundbreaking work, captured in this brilliantly useful book, provides us with a blueprint for achieving the most important and life-changing work possible: to become a little bit better each day.”—Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code   “Ericsson’s research has revolutionized how we think about human achievement. If everyone would take the lessons of this book to heart, it could truly change the world.”—Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein

Anders Ericsson

Robert Pool

Peak

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

Many people tend to feel embarrassed about not being able to read fast enough or are made fun of when they read slow. But the fact that reading is not a natural human ability needs to be kept in mind. 
Reading is a skill that we acquire through years of development with the coordination of cognitive strategies such as image recognition and linguistic pairing since reading is not a skill that is hardwired into our brains.

Slow Readers

Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist, deconstructed the process of reading and the constraints we face when doing so such as: 
<ol>
<li>Not knowing much about the topic (therefore not fully comprehending what the individual is reading);</li>
<li>Not knowing the words (therefore being unable to construct ideas due to illiteracy);</li>
<li>And not knowing how to pronounce the words or how to sound them out, however, phonetic knowledge is much less of an issue with advanced readers.</li>
</ol>

Constraints to Reading

<ol>
<li>Always have books for pleasure. If you're not interested in what you're reading you ultimately won't read at all.</li>
<li>It's okay not to finish reading your books and switch them. Remember the more books you read, the more fluency you'll have, and the greater the enjoyment of reading leads to being able to read harder books</li>
<li>Build up your foundation first; both on the knowledge of the topic and of the words used. It's okay to take your time reading.</li>
<li>Build up to harder books when you get the hang of it.</li>
</ol>

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