It’s hip2b2

There is a lot to be learned about Silicon Valley culture. It is interesting to note that a lot of the cool practices we see there are actually old hat. In the book - Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, Silicon Valley culture in the early 1970s is clearly described. The idea of the use bright colors, low cubicles and bean bags as furniture was actually introduced early on and was already being practiced in the fabled Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. One of the most interesting practices they have is something called “Beat the Dealer“.

Bob Taylor’s “Beat the Dealer” where his people would spend an hour or so explaining their research and then were let loose to the erudite audience “like a rank steak to a pack of hungry wolves.”

The reason for its introduction was to serve as a vetting ground for ideas inside Xerox PARC. An interesting side effect of this is that people will release their rabid energies during these sessions instead of releasing their energies during real work hours or during the course of an important project. In an academically-oriented research and development environment, competion for ideas and mind share can be really fierce. I feel that this venue is actually helpful and it could possibly work. It is a venue to show off and blow off.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Musings and Speculations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.