1 day agoThere’s no such thing as artificial intelligenceAfter two AI winters, artificial intelligence is now as hot as any topic can become. Over the last decade, entire research groups have been bought up by the large tech companies and the investment in all things AI has been phenomenal. The alignment of three major forces, ie the availability…Digitalization5 min readDigitalization5 min read
Sep 17There’s no such thing as “the data”One of the typical patterns I experience a lot when working with companies on digitalization is the claim that they have all the data in the world. They can just pick what they want from the candy store to get the data-driven insights they’re looking for. When inspecting the data…Digitalization5 min readDigitalization5 min read
Sep 10There’s no such thing as “the team”There’s a powerful story in the narrative of Western civilization around the team. It comes up in the context of the military, especially special operations, in the startup community, especially in the early phases of a company, in sports as well as in the leadership literature. The idea is that…Digitalization4 min readDigitalization4 min read
Sep 3There’s no such thing as “the process”Although the Agile aficionados tried really hard to kill the notion of process in their efforts to remove the heritage of the capability maturity model, the fact is that every team, company and business ecosystem uses processes. These can be formally defined, to the point of individuals or companies being…Digitalization4 min readDigitalization4 min read
Aug 27There’s no such thing as “the architecture”It’s highly controversial to claim that there’s no such thing as “the architecture” of a system. On the one hand, folks in R&D use the term to indicate that the technical debt in the system has reached a point where more resources need to be dedicated to architecture refactoring. On…Software Architecture4 min readSoftware Architecture4 min read
Jun 25Protagonist rule #15: Memento moriWhen I was young (or younger), time had little meaning for me. It felt like you’re going to live forever and because you have all this time, there’s no need to prioritize and make things happen now. There’s always tomorrow to do the things you’d like to get done. When…Protagonist5 min readProtagonist5 min read
Jun 18Protagonist rule #14: Don’t take yourself too seriouslyThere’s an interesting pattern at universities where a full professor typically is the only one who’s an expert in a particular field. Because of this, over time, professors tend to become quite confident in their expertise. The consequence is that they start to view their research field and themselves as…Protagonist4 min readProtagonist4 min read
Jun 12Protagonist rule #13: Be proud of who you see in the mirrorThere’s a story from World War II where perfectly normal German men were sent to the eastern front to act as police officers. In three or four years, these sons, brothers, husbands and parents went from ordinary people to absolutely atrocious monsters murdering innocent men, women and children and committing…Protagonist4 min readProtagonist4 min read
Jun 4Protagonist rule #12: Always keep exploringWhenever I talk to people that are (even) older than me and ask them about how they spend their time, there often is a reflection along the lines of “The days go slow, but the years go fast.” Especially in retirement, it seems that the number of things people spend…Protagonist6 min readProtagonist6 min read
May 28Protagonist rule #11: Give backIn science, there’s an interesting pattern few people talk about. It turns out that inventions often occur at the same time or almost the same time in multiple research groups. These inventions aren’t struck-by-lightning insights by a single scientist; they tend to be ideas that evolved and emerged in a…Protagonist4 min readProtagonist4 min read
