fail fast

At first blush, the software Netflix open sourced on Monday seems like part of an elaborate joke. » Read more

The merits of failing faster are integrated with taking risks. Successful innovations only come after many failed attempts. Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, explores the intersection of open source and innovation in a Technology Academy Finland (TAF) post "What is Innovation?"

Mickos says:

"An innovation creates a new dimension of performance. It's not enough to improve performance. It’s not enough to create a new thought. A new thing is not an innovation unless it finds a new direction for performance." » Read more

Promoting a culture that supports failure is a foreign concept to most people, but not for the panelists speaking about open government and business at CityCamp Raleigh. According to the panelists, who range from vice presidents of corporations to chief information officers of Raleigh government, there is a general consensus that failing faster provides a quicker path to innovation. » Read more

If you look at the evolution of the IT landscape over the past 30 years, you see two distinct trends: the continued growth of the IT dinosaurs (mainframe computing and mainframe wannabes like Sun) and the emergence of highly modular, adaptable systems, which, by their very process of evolution, not only best suit the current needs, but plant the seeds for the next computer revolution. In the 1980s, modular UNIX systems sowed the seeds for Linux, which in the 1990s sowed the seeds for the rapid spread and adoption of the World Wide Web, which in the 2000s, sowed the seeds for companies like Amazon.com, Google, Facebook, and Twitter to aggregate and disseminate content as never before. » Read more

This is the third in a series exploring the things I have learned from the open source way during my journey with Red Hat.

One of the key tenets of the open source way is “release early, release often.” This means rather than keeping an idea or project "secret" until it is perfect, you go ahead and share it or make it available to others. You get it out there, let people play around with it, test it, expose its weaknesses, you allow peer review. » Read more