Survival Guide to the Age of Information, Part II

This is a continuation from a previous post. The aim is to explain how the information game is played and to explain the rules of survival to my fellow information workers.

Axiom 4: Information Wants To Be Free

Give away everything you know and more will come back to you. Ideas are open source. They are to be developed and improved.

Don't be afraid to share your ideas. The problem with hoarding your ideas is that you are running on reserves, ideas that have already been developed. Eventually you will run out of ideas and you will be stale. You will isolate yourself and insulate your ideas from criticism, your theories will be full of holes that you didn't see; a rough draft that is good, but never great.

Strange, bizarre and ultimately useless ideas were developed by brilliant people working in a vacuum. I know, because people come to me for inspiration. I am full of bizarre and (to me)useless ideas. These are perfect for others in developing for their needs and I give them away for free because someday they will return the favor.

If you share everything you have, you will be forced to replenish your supply of ideas, to be creative, interactive and dynamic. This is the only way to survive in the age of ideas.


This boy is not cheating, he is un-limiting himself
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Axiom 5: Who you know is more important than what you know

In the age of information, we are all experts. Being an expert means that you know a great deal about very little; you have made all the mistakes possible in a very narrow field. The field that I chose to study is commercial real estate, with a specialization in industrial warehouse space in the Inland Empire. There is a lot to know about commercial real estate but probably the most important thing you could ever know is who you need to talk to.

If you know who to talk to and you have the right connections, you know everything we know and our knowledge adds to your strength. When you use a broker, you are renting his market knowledge as well as the broker's personal connections to people like myself who can help to fill in the blanks.

What you know may be valuable and important but who you know will multiply that strength, leverage it and apply it to great use.

Who's Who > What's What

I wish they taught me this in school.