Matthew Schutte

I’ve written a new post on balancing exploration and execution for the Lively Work blog… and had the audacity to name a ratio after myself.  Check it out here:

http://www.livelywork.com/s-ratio/

and for archival purposes, here is the text:

—-

The S Ratio: Finding the Optimal Balance of Exploration vs Execution.

For the last decade or so, I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about optimal structures for institutions, organizations and societies.

My thinking in these areas has largely been skewed toward an emphasis on the factors that lead to a competitive advantage. My reason for focusing on that particular question is quite simple: structures that do not lead to a competitive advantage tend Continue reading

This clip is from about 3 years ago.  I had gotten frustrated with the crowd and had decided to lineup outside and deep.  When a big set came, I let the first wave go by (that’s the smart / safe thing to do — though it took a number of years before I gained that patience).  As the second wave began to stand up, I thought to myself, “I have this.”  I turned, paddled and then realized that the wave was filling in from the west.  With the angle of the wave, it was going to close out across the bowl.  I pulled back only to turn around and find that I had paddled myself into the absolute worst position possible — in the impact zone of the bowl — just as the largest wave of the day was rearing up.  I paddled as fast as I could at the wave, then dove off my board and swam deep once I saw the wave starting to break.

Continue reading

Today, Mavericks was the biggest it has been in quite some time.  Most of the best big wave surfers on the planet were out, alongside dozens of ordinary citizens like myself.

Between the crowd and the trickiness of the waves, most people had very low wave counts.  I ended up only catching one decent wave.  I was sitting closer to the channel when one of the bigger waves of the day came.

Continue reading

Tonight, Michael Deem asked me some interesting questions about law school, design and the work that I’ve been doing related to the Collaborative Internet.  The full conversation is below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPqbQPpUpYU&w=560&h=315]

My first post on Lively Work is up:

Surfing, Flow and Good Work

For archival purposes, here is the the text.

An interesting video popped up on the internet a week or two ago.  Surf cinematographer Chris Bryan released a 6 minute edit featuring some of his best 1000 frame per second Phantom camera shots of surfers and waves.

It’s funny how making something super clear and super slow somehow makes it so much more compelling to look at.

Continue reading

Experience teaches us what works and what does not work. This is true for individuals and it is true for institutions. However, these “lessons learned” guide us well only so long as conditions do not change. Of course, conditions do change. And therein lies the rub.

The lessons learned – the processes honed – may help us manufacture the best portable cassette players on the planet, but those lessons don’t do us much good when people are streaming music through Spotify on their phone. Even the best manufacturers aren’t selling many walkman’s today.

So how do we strike the appropriate balance? How do we learn from our experiences, without being blinded by them? How do we distinguish the writing on the wall from the noise?

Continue reading

On June 17th, I gave a speech at an event in Austin Texas called Voice and Exit.  The talk was about striking a balance between privacy and transparency in a digitally connected world.

After my talk, I had a chance to chat with one of last year’s speakers — John Papola from Emergent Order — and we ended up jumping on a google hangout to continue the conversation a couple of weeks later.

The conversation ranged broadly, but largely focused on the concepts of liberty and emergence.

Enjoy!