🔎 This week I started research for an upcoming MSc dissertation. I’m interested in investigating individuals and teams who can:
1) learn about new techs quickly while they
2) discern the impacts and applications of these techs for their domains, while they also
3) start to experiment and implement.
The focus of the study is that word ‘quickly’ 👟
I’m interested in individuals and teams who do this fast, very fast. My first interviews are with folks in marketing, media, financial services and medical education, who have very quickly developed deep knowledge of, variously, AI, XR and blockchain while working out the applications and implications of these technologies in their domains, and starting to build new things.
I’m interested in understanding how these super learners do it, their approach, skills, techniques, resources, habits and attitudes. How do they learn, select and adapt so quickly and effectively, while others do not? Seems to me this ability is all important for us as individuals, teams, orgs and communities. I want to understand how these super learners do it, so we might all learn to do it better.
Early observations? It won’t surprise anyone, but these individuals are voracious consumers of information in all forms. Voracious like 20+ articles and 5+ podcasts per day, and two or more books and countless conversations with specialists per week.
I’ll be sharing more about this research as it progresses. If you’re reading this and you are (or you know) someone or some team or startup that is learning, adopting and adapting new techs exceptionally fast, I’d love to talk.
🚴🏼♀️ The Tour de France started this week in Bilbao in the Basque Country (Euskal Herria). It’s a joy to follow three weeks of elite cycling, the roadside spectacle, the beauty of the European landscape and the wisdom and sophistication of cycling luminaries such as (in the UK) David Millar and Ned Boulting hosting up to seven hours of live TV each day.
Today I’ve been reflecting on an interview with the legendary sprinter Mark Cavendish who is riding his final tour this year. Asked how the sport has changed during his 20-year career, Cavendish’s immediate response was data: ‘It’s all quantifiable now.’ Young riders now are selected by professional teams on the basis of their data (cadence, power output, perceived exertion, heart rate variability), not their performance in amateur races. The consequence of this, Cavendish says, is that the ‘extremes’ of the peloton, the pure climbing specialists such as ‘il pirata’ Marco Pantani, and charismatic sprinters such ‘Super’ Mario Cipollini, are being lost. ‘The spectrum is getting narrower, more equal, stronger unquestionably, but less colourful, less interesting.’
It’s hard to disagree. But it would be wrong to blame the young riders (and Cavendish doesn’t). Some of them and their teams have learned quickly how to harness data, and digital, mechanical and nutritional technologies, in order to ride and win grand tours and monuments consistently, and so challenge the achievements of 20th-century legends such as Sean Kelly and Eddy Merckx while still wearing the white jersey (the white jersey is worn by the fastest rider aged under 26 in the Tour de France).
[Picture shows a colour photo of a silver grey coloured metal device with a mechanical keyboard. This is the Enigma G 110, or ‘counter’ Enigma, a cipher machine used by the German military to encipher messages during the Second World War. This machine is at Bletchley Park in the UK, which was the centre of Allied code breaking operations in the war.]
Matthew Moran 