I think United is terminally stupid. You'd thin the < a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo">United Breaks Guitars incident, where their cold-shoulder response to their screw-ups hammered UAL's market valuation for $100+ million would have taught them a lesson.

#38. "Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, funded for $100 million, generatiung $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin. (Barnraisers, 2010)" But IBM's total revenue is $100 billion. The math doesn't work.

Mark, you may want to frame this as a larger issue. How can you investigate questions without also considering answers? John Hagel posted this when he was forming Deloitte's Center for the Edge: "Questions are often as valuable as answers. It’s appropriate to step back occasionally and reflect on what we don’t know, rather than simply sharing what we know. In times of rapid change, asking the right questions is often as important as the answers – at least they help us figure out where we might start looking for answers. There is no shortage of questions – the key is to focus on questions that are not just intellectually interesting, but also where significant economic impact is at stake." Wikipedia reports that some apes can speak, but they don't question: Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the ability to ask questions is the central cognitive element that distinguishes human and animal cognitive abilities.[4] Enculturated apes Kanzi, Washoe, Sarah and a few others who underwent extensive language training programs (with the use of gestures and other visual forms of communications) successfully learned to answer quite complex questions and requests (including question words "who" what", "where"), although so far they failed to learn how to ask questions themselves. For example, David and Anne Premack wrote: "Though she [Sarah] understood the question, she did not herself ask any questions — unlike the child who asks interminable questions, such as What that? Who making noise? When Daddy come home? Me go Granny's house? Where puppy? Sarah never delayed the departure of her trainer after her lessons by asking where the trainer was going, when she was returning, or anything else" It strikes me that asking a question is an admission that one doesn't know something and is willing to expose this vulnerability in return for an answer. It's deference to another. The dynamic is mutually rewarding: I learn something from your answer; you feel good about helping out and perhaps superior for having the knowledge at hand. Questions are "pull." Would that more learning were pull-based, delivering what people want to know as opposed to pushing stuff at them that others think they ought to know. In this light, questions encourage freedom of thought. Your question will have me thinking, Mark. Thanks for asking. I'll admit that I'm not up to speed on Quora. I don't understand why it's always asking me to ask questions of new users and I haven't had the patience to grok what's going on.

Many years ago, back when the entry fee was $200, I volunteered to judge some Brandon Hall Awards. One vendor sent in a demo reel instead of a program. Another sent highlights. Most volunteer judges aren't going to go the extra mile to dig into how a product works. You are right to call these guys on this shit. So tell us, what do you think of the sham certificate programs which require attendance at a conference and hundreds, if not $1000+, in fees? Most of them are no better than diploma mills. The "professional" organizations that sponsor this crap should be ashamed. They tell me their fraud is "a significant source of revenue."

So true. Remember when the only site to start from was Tim's, at CERN? Mark, what do you think it would take to get folks to focus on what's important? Where's the 80/20 rule when we need it? jay

How about a status update? Maybe you need Agile software development instead of locking everyone in a room.

Great post, Irving. You are always prescient. However, I do wonder how you jump ahead in the calendar. This page is dated January 31, but today is January 29.

Ellen, your link to the list is broken. It should be http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/itc/idmodels.html (no "data"). jay