Nooks and crannies are important to both English muffins and innovation.
I haven’t been able to get a picture of a lightly toasted Thomas’ English muffin with butter and strawberry preserves oozing into those marvelous nooks and crannies out of my head. Maybe it’s because I’m resisting the temptation while on one of my frequent short-lived diet and exercise delusions. More likely it’s because of a story that caught my eye last week about an executive who left the company (Bimbo Bakeries, I’m not kidding) that makes Thomas’ English Muffins to join the arch enemy, Hostess Brands. It seems that Bimbo is suing to prevent the executive from joining Hostess because they suspect he has absconded with and will divulge the secret of how to make English muffins with perfect nooks and crannies.
You heard right. The row is about protecting the trade secret for creating nooks and crannies in an English muffin. Bimbo claims there are only seven people who possess the trade secret and of course the executive leaving to make Twinkies is one of them. I find it hard to believe that only seven people have the know-how necessary to create great nooks and crannies. It sounds more like a marketing ploy. But what do I know. I thought it was just using a fork to split the muffin! Think about it. Samuel Bath Thomas left England headed for America in 1874 with a recipe for his muffin baked on hot griddles. Surely in over 135 years more than seven people have accumulated the know-how for nooks and crannies. And how are we to know if Samuel Thomas didn’t borrow the formula before heading for fame and fortune in America. Not to accuse Samuel Thomas of pilfering the recipe and starting an English muffin revolution but it does sound eerily similar to Samuel Slater escaping England with the trade secrets for the textile mill, which of course started the U.S. Industrial Revolution!
No surprise that nooks and crannies are the secret to a great English muffin. Those air pockets allow for both perfect toasting and a natural repository for the aforementioned butter and jam. So Bimbo Bakery goes to incredible lengths to protect its know-how. Instead of recipes they use codebooks. Employees are on a need to know basis and only have access to the pages of the codebook necessary to complete their specific task. They are shielded from the information and people in departments working on other tasks. It doesn’t sound like a formula for innovation but then maybe Bimbo isn’t interested in innovation. Perhaps they are just obsessed with protecting the status quo for the nooks and crannies of English muffin making.
Nooks and crannies are also the secret to great innovation. Innovators thrive in nooks and crannies and refuse to stay in any silo barred from communicating across them. They know freely exploring nooks and crannies is the only way to get better faster. Nooks and crannies increase the surface area an innovator can expose to the best knowledge flows and new ideas. With more surface area comes greater exposure to and absorption of a broader range of ideas, experiences, and capabilities. A thoughtfully comprised network of unusual suspects increases an innovator’s surface area. Social media platforms are just nooks and crannies on steroids to an innovator.
Innovators also know that most important innovations emerge from the nooks and crannies between silos, disciplines, and industry sectors. It is by combining and recombining ideas and capabilities from across silos that innovators create new ways to deliver value. System solutions for the big social challenges of our time including education, health care, and energy, will only be found if we get more comfortable in the nooks and crannies between us. Pass the strawberry preserves.
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Aug 16, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
An excerpt from The RP’s latest column in The Daily Beast:
The right is right: President Obama is waging a War on Coal. But his fierce, regulatory-based offensive was an inevitable consequence of the GOP’s unrelenting war on the President and his climate policy. Unless the two sides sign a truce — and put meaningful energy into breakthrough cleaner coal technologies — not only will rural Appalachia be devastated in the crossfire, but our planet’s long term health will suffer.
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Nestled into the Appalachian hills, hollers, and hamlets of my old Kentucky home, you’ll find a largely poor but proud people, mostly united by a passion for God, Wildcat basketball and a simple black mineral that serves as the bedrock of the region’s sense of self. Thanks to more than a century’s worth of deep family connections to the mining vocation, as well as a brilliant decade-long public relations campaign waged by the industry, most Eastern Kentuckians share a profound emotional tie to the black rock, and a jaundiced resentment toward those outsider elites who want to deprive them of their geological birthright.
So, as the coal business suffers markedly — just last week, a study revealed that Kentucky coal jobs are at their lowest level since the state started counting in 1927 — most locals follow the lead of their political leadership and level their fury against President Obama’s “War on Coal.” And while the resurgence of cheap natural gas is the primary factor in Appalachian coal’s declining competitiveness, there’s no question that a significant threat to the economic viability of the region has been posed by the Obama EPA’s increased regulation of coal powered plants and mining projects (only one permit has been issued in the past three years for new or expanded surface mining in Eastern Kentucky).
The good news is that a middle ground can be reached that helps boost the region’s economy, while promoting energy independence and a healthier global environment: development of affordable, cutting-edge technologies that enable coal combustion with dramatically reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge is that any broadbased employment of cleaner coal solutions will require both sides of the debate to reach for common ground. And that’s a daunting prospect given our hyper-partisan, polarized system.
My cousin who works in A&R in the music industry sent me the above picture of his stylish self in the audience of the American Idol finale a few nights ago (it’s a family quirk, taking pictures of the tv). He’s rocking a sharp-looking Michael Andrews Bespoke vest, an old off-the-rack shirt that he had tailored to fit, and Persol shades as neckwear. The vest is made of lightweight wool and cost about $300. Check out how perfectly it fits him and the spirited lining in the images below.
Bespoke refers to clothing made to a person’s exact specifications and involves the creation of a unique pattern for each customer, which why is the fit is so dead-on.
Read the rest of… Julie Rath: Hot Summer, Cool Vests
But to be fair about it, there is also a version of a white working class pitch that does looks pretty much exactly like thinly disguised backlash politics. It plays out when the argument against immigration reform transitions to warnings about alien cultures convoluting our national identity; when the GOP’s most conspicuous discretionary spending cuts would be food stamps; when virtually every complaint of racial discrimination is dismissed as professional activism or “divisiveness”; and when the outrage over government assistance seems most strident when the recipients are perceived (often wrongly) to be black or brown.
Therein, another dilemma for Republicans during this period of reevaluation: any serious strategy requires Republicans to go well beyond drop-bys on black radio stations or college campuses, or ratcheting up the ad budget for black publications, to the heavier lift of separating conservatism from its excesses. Outreach that moves voting numbers must consist of a conservative vision more interested in closing gaps and inequality than in widening those divisions.
In practical terms, that does not mean that Republicans abandon skepticism over programs that maximize their enrollment without making any dent in poverty or need. Certainly, it does not mean that Republicans ought to accept a stacked deck in which opposition to liberal priorities is conceded as turning back the clock of progress. But it should not be implausible for the conservative movement to get more comfortable denouncing its outliers, like Georgia’s anti-immigration provocateur, DA King, who is doing a pitch perfect imitation of a Latino baiting xenophobe even if he somehow isn’t one (because of his wealth and propensity for lavishing money attacking opponents, a riskier, therefore, more meaningful move than the distancing that happens every so many months from a character like Iowa’s immigrant bashing Rep. Steve King).
Nor should it be so difficult for Republicans to start pairing controversial, but defensible stances with sensitivity toward certain minority fears. For example, enthusiasm for voter ID needs to be balanced with support for restoring rights for at least some released felons, namely non-violent ones who are reconnecting with their communities and showing a commitment to function as law abiding citizens. Rather than denigrating food stamps across the board, congressional Republicans ought to shift their aim toward entirely legitimate reform—like restructuring the earned income tax credit into a monthly draw that might, for low wage workers, replace food stamps—and the occasional misuse of nutrition assistance shouldn’t sound more morally offensive to conservatives than the payment of over a billion dollars in farm subsidies to landowners who have not planted a crop since the turn of the century.
And this is a point worth dwelling on for Republicans: it is not that the conservative agenda per se alienates minority voters, but that the impetus behind that agenda can seem so devoid of compassion and so distrustful of the vulnerable. And in the same vein, an electoral appeal intended to shore up Republicans with working class voters need not contribute to racial polarization, not unless it appears that the only low wage Americans who move the right are the ones who are white.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Aug 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I have been an avid coffee drinker for three decades and when traveling I like to try different coffee shops and coffee brands.
What is my standard for determining if a new kind of coffee I haven’t tried before truly measures up?
Easy. …One simple test.
After the first deep gulp (or second sip) do I start to hear this song play in my head?
If the answer is “Yes,” the coffee brand has made the cut and gets placed alongside Cafe Buestelo, Heine Bros, Cafe Du Monde (which I relied on while studying for the bar exam) and other great coffees I favor.
If “no,” it gets filed alongside Sanka, Nescafe, Maxwell House and a few dozen others coffee brands that have tried but come up short for me personally.
I’ve often wondered about certain strategies gym goers employ. The one strategy that has vexed my mind is a ritual of sorts and a lot of people do it every day. You know if you do something every day and expect a different result, that makes you crazy rightJ. It is at like the Holy Grail, the very reason people come to the gym and try to eat right, it’s the difference between a good day and a bad day, it is the end all be all. It is stepping on the scale! Don’t try to pretend you don’t do it because we all are guilty, especially in a place where there are scales and we are trying to lose weight, gain weight or stay the same. But the very fact people are control by this instrument, this measurement of body mass can be alarming and skewed. The end all be all may not be “all” its cracked up to be.
Let’s back track for a second. What are we trying to do? Most people? Answer is losing weight. Statistics show the most common goal for any gym goers is losing weight. But that should really be the goal? The answer is yes and no. If you are 50 lbs overweight and you need to lose 50 pounds then I would say losing weight would be a great goal for you. However, if you are trying to lose 10-20 pounds, does it really matter what the scale says as long as your body fat changes? Of course not! I use to tell clients all the time; if I could have you weigh the same weight you are today and look 100% different, would it matter what the scale said? 9 times out of 10, the number didn’t matter.
But the number does matter to some people and it matters a lot. The measurement of success is housed on an electronically scale that measure your body mass. Forget about how you feel or how your jeans fit, its all about that number! If this applies to you (its ok!) here’s what I’d like you to remember, the most important part of the fitness process is the feeling of pride, confidence and of well being. These we will refer to as the immeasurable, meaning you can’t stick a number to it. Stepping on a scale just gives you a number and tells you whether you are below, above or at where you want to be. Definitely a cliff hanger that sometimes can hit you between the eyes and make you want to quit. My suggestion? Don’t weigh yourself, especially if you feel you begin stressing over it. The emotional impact and feeling of defeat is not worth it. If you want to know how you are doing in your fitness program ask yourself these questions:
Do I have more energy?
Do I wake up and go to bed easier?
Do my clothes feel looser?
Am I stressed less?
Answer yes to any or all of those and you are on the road to success. A road that is not dependent on the little number on a little scale. It is not the end all be all.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Aug 14, 2013 at 2:30 PM ET
MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” talks with Piper Kerman, the real-life inspiration behind the series, “Orange is the New Black”, and Jeff Smith, a former Missouri state
senator who read Kerman’s memoir while in prison on campaign finance violations, about the prison system in the U.S. and AG Holder’s recent remarks about mandatory prison minimums.
(Click here to read Jeff Smith’s body of work about his time behind bars.)
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Aug 14, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The flip side of addiction is an unraveling of many things: hurt, loss, fear, shame, loneliness, emptiness and aridness. Coupled with an intensity of feelings, passions, dreams, and idealism —all surrounded by an overwhelming craving for love and affirmation to fill in the gaping pieces missing from an un-whole life.
And then there is the undisciplined promise and lingering sense of pending defeat made endurable only from the well of undeveloped latent –and misguided– talent.
The addict is in many ways the ultimate tightrope walker. If his demons prevail and he falls to one side, he dies. But if he taps into some sort of divinity in the universe or in himself, he falls to the other side. And soars.
No public person I can think of embodies this beautifully treacherous balancing act more harrowingly (and inspiringly) than Robert Downey Jr.
He has ridden the roller coaster of addiction–and its flip side– publicly and dramatically into our hearts and minds–and souls.
Robert Downey Jr wrote and performed this piano ballad, Snakes (first video)
And more recently in a duet with Sting performed the aptly named Driven to Tears (second video).
In each video he shows us a glimpse of the depth of the brilliant and painful artistry tamped down so deeply inside this man-boy who can and has fallen far and hard. And soared so high and fantastically that only he can describe it. And he has touched us as we enjoy the honor and pleasure of witnessing his talent escape the bonds of his addictions and soar before us as we smile and applaud.
Here’s hoping he keeps falling to the beautiful side of his dichotomous daily walk— and soaring for yet another day.
And here’s hoping the very same glorious reprieve for all other addicts.
No surprise that nooks and crannies are the secret to a great English muffin. Those air pockets allow for both perfect toasting and a natural repository for the aforementioned butter and jam. So Bimbo Bakery goes to incredible lengths to protect its know-how. Instead of recipes they use codebooks. Employees are on a need to know basis and only have access to the pages of the codebook necessary to complete their specific task. They are shielded from the information and people in departments working on other tasks. It doesn’t sound like a formula for innovation but then maybe Bimbo isn’t interested in innovation. Perhaps they are just obsessed with protecting the status quo for the nooks and crannies of English muffin making.
