A CD these days is not all that convenient, and it doesn't bring enough fidelity to make you put up with that inconvenience. So, nobody buys CDs anymore.
Kevin ManeyIn the long run magazines can't be a convenience play - the Web has stolen that. So magazines have to be high fidelity - a fantastic experience - to thrive. Magazines will survive the Internet age, but only the ones that give people an experience they just can't get anywhere else. A magazine will have to be truly loved to make it.
Kevin ManeyNow companies tend to mine gigantic databases for insights into what might happen six months from now. That might always be valuable, but there's a different kind of value - and a competitive edge - in processing ongoing streams of data through a software model that can quickly and constantly make predictions about, say, whether a certain customer is going to defect, or an aircraft is going to run into trouble.
Kevin ManeyIf you want to stand out, find a way to be either high fidelity or high convenience in whatever you do. If you're halfway in between on both measures, you're not going to make people feel very excited about you.
Kevin ManeyI knew I wanted to be a writer from as far back as I can remember. That was my talent. Lord knows it wasn't math.
Kevin ManeyWhen someone is in a state of flow, that person's brain is not thinking about anything - it's just processing things through chunks at a total instinct level. Athletes in a state of flow describe knowing what will happen just before it does - knowing how a defender will react to a certain move an instant before doing it. Of course, if you know what will happen, you can succeed at doing it, so an athlete in flow has a stand-out game.
Kevin Maney