Peter H. Diamandis is the CEO of the XPRIZE (www.xprize.org), executive Chairman of the Singularity University ( https://su.org/ ) a Silicon Valley educational institution and incubator focused on exponential achievements, which is backed by Google, 3-D Systems and NASA.
In his 2015 Best Seller “Bold” he writes about flow, building a DIY community and lays out his 28 Laws™ which I shorthand reproduced here.
Pete’s Laws™ : The Creed of the Persistent and Passionate Mind
1. If anything can go wrong, fix it! (To hell with Murphy!)
2. When given a choice-take both !
3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
4. Start at the top, then work your way up.
5. Do it by the book…but be the author!
6. When forced to compromise, ask for more.
7. If you can’t win, change the rules.
8. If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them.
Note: The aforementioned 8, 7, and 6 rules are the best of them for me. That’s why I bold-faced them.
9. Perfection is not optional.
10. When faced without a challenge-make one.
11. No simply means begin one level higher.
12. Don’t walk when you can run.
13. When in doubt: THINK !
I respectfully disagree with Diamandis here, I say :ACT !
14. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
15. The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
16. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.
17. The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself !
18. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite.
19. You get what you incentivize.
20. If you think it is impossible, then it is for you.
21. An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how something can’t be done.
22. The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
23. If it was easy, it would have been done already
24. Without a target, you’ll miss it every time.
25. Fail early, fail often, fail forward (that’s the Silicon Valley unofficial motto)
26. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
27. The world most precious resource is the persistent and passionate human mind.
28. Bureaucracy is an obtacle to be conquered with persistence, confidence, and a bulldozer when necessary.
On flow, Diamandis quotes psychiatrist Ned Hallowell. Flow to you and me means “willing to fail, look foolish, and fall flat on our faces should we wish to enter this stage.”
On flow’s social triggers (group flow), a trigger he recommends is borrowed straight from improv comedy: Always say “yes, and…to get interactions that are additive more than argumentative.
On Elon Musk we’re told he doesn’t subscribe to the common definition of insanity- doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Musk: “We don’t think that way. Outcomes are usually not deterministic, they are probabilistic. If you have a probabilistic situation, which most situations are, then if you do the same thing twice, it can be quite reasonable to expect a different result.”
On building your community, Diamandis quotes Richard Millington, “The bigger a community gets, the less people participate. This creates wastage and makes it impossible for the community manager to identify and work with the top members. Better to extract one hour a day from 100 committed members than have 50,000 mostly inactive lurkers.”
“It’s important to remember that people join communities because it reinforces their sense of identity, but they stay for the conversation.”
Blackstone Group’s private equity team has undergone training at Singularity University, said Tony James, COO of BG.