Jordan Salvit

I am a firm believer in the power of innovation and have been waiting for something to wow us out this economic recession.  Unfortunately, I came to a pretty sad realization today and am afraid that we are stuck in a viscous cycle that may not end anytime soon.  Now that you are either scared or think I am a lunatic, here is why.

Small businesses no longer have the capital to innovate and are too busy figuring out how to survive.  They are cutting expenses daily and trying to operate with less in the bank.  Although banks are “turning profits”(I put that in quotes because I don’t believe them), there aren’t many new loans being given.  Honestly, small businesses aren’t even looking for the money because who knows when they’ll be able to pay it back.  

Large corporate businesses aren’t innovating either.  They are looking at this economy as a time to squash the competition and gain a larger portion of the market share.  From a business point of view, if I were the CEO, that is exactly what I would do.  It makes sense to spend money to beat the competition while they are hurting, this way when things turn around revenue will increase exponentially.  

From a consumer’s point of view and the idealist in me, I want large corporations to spend money on research and development.  If one new sensational product came out this year from a proven corporation, spirits could be lifted and new cash would be infused into the economy.  This would start a chain reaction and help lift the global economy.  

Am I asking too much?

As I continue to work with new people and personalities, I realize how insightful Carl Jung’s theory is and how useful the MBTI tool can be.  MBTI is based on the premise that everyone has 4 basic personality preferences.  The first preference shows where you get your energy from (my E vs I post). The second and third deal with how you take in information and how you rationalize your decisions.  The 4th preference deals with how you approach the task at hand.  I find that how you decide to approach a task causes the most issues between people and is directly related to the last preference, Judging vs Perceiving.  

People who prefer judging are planners by nature.  They likely have a schedule of tasks and meetings set in advance and probably think through each meeting agenda ahead of time.  J’s rarely like to change plans unless they have allotted time and room for change.  This may sound rigid, but is more about closure.  J’s like to come to closure in a timely way, and usually that involves setting a plan and finishing on time or even in advance.

On the other hand, people who prefer perceiving are the exact opposite.  They don’t like plans and are constrained by rigid schedules.  Their tendency is to go with the flow and enjoy changing things.  When working on a project, P’s are likely to want to leave the research phase open ended.  P’s accomplish tasks when under pressure and will likely do the bulk of work towards the end of the project timeline.  

Imagine, if you are a J with a preference to plan and working for a P, it might feel like you aren’t accomplishing anything because of the ongoing research phase.  As the deadline approaches , you might feel resentment for the last minute requests.  In the opposite situation, if you are a P with a preference for flexibility and working for a J, you might feel constrained.  You might feel resentment for having to work on tasks that aren’t needed for weeks or months.   

People who are aware of their preferences try to facilitate situations that make them comfortable.  I have a preference for Judging and set schedules and plans.  Every time I have worked for someone with a preference for Perceiving, I either enforce a schedule for the whole project or make my own mini schedules and plans.  This helps me focus and accomplish at my best.  Every time I have had P’s working for me, I have noticed their ability to avoid plans and facilitate change.  For myself, I plan a longer research phase to help satisfy their need.  I also try to keep changing things for them, or allow them to change things, but I always set clear and hard deadlines.  Once the deadlines are set, I leave them be and trust they will deliver on time.  P’s can have a perception that a J’s need for status updates comes from micro managing, when often it is just a way to make sure the plan is being followed.

Since I am a J, my tips are slightly biased towards J’s working with P’s.  How do you react in similar situations?  Are you a P and worked with J’s like me?  What helped you?

In 2006, I started my master’s thesis under the advisory of Elizabeth Sklar, PhD. At the time I was very excited about new web technologies and everyone’s use of web services. I had the idea of creating a simulation visualization platform using web services.  In multi-agent research, a subset of artificial intelligence, you create simulations to understand how each AI agent, or program, would react in a certain situation.  Very often those simulations are not monitored in real-time, instead they are reported on afterwards.  My idea was  to create a real-time view into those simulations.  Fortunately, I took a job in corporate america.  Unfortunately, I didn’t finish.  

In the last 3 years technology and my interests have changed.  Web services is still as popular as it was, but it isn’t new anymore.  The visualization problem is still an issue, so I have changed focus.  Since a lot of my interests now lie in social media, and there is constantly new data out there to process, I have decided to start researching twitter visualizations.  Thanks to a few twitter followers, I found a handful of great resources and have already started compiling a list.

My goal is to take the list of what is out there and figure out how to bring them all together using artificial intelligence.  Some of the visualizations are word based, like twitscoop.com, some are time based like TwitterStreamGraphs and some are geo based, like TwitterVision.  They all have great uses, but are very different and are used very differently.  Now imagine a tool that learns what you are looking for and presents the best visualization to help you find what you need.  That might be a hybrid of a couple different views, but the AI agents would figure it out.  

As I continue to research and find out new things, I will post more.  As always, if you have any ideas that you think are helpful, I am all ears!