She Sells Sea Shells at the Shoreline at Mountain View
Carlos and I decided to take advantage of our time off work to allocate some serious time for pure brainstorm. Product Management gurus do agree that you cannot force innovation simply by allocating time for it but when juices are already flowing, taking a break to bounce ideas outside of a traditional office — or cubicle! — can help nevertheless. Et Voila! Our “Thinking Outside the Cube” series is born!
The main idea behind this series of posts is to share the many places we are about to discover or simply re-visit. It might give you some ideas of nice places for a long walk or a hike in the Bay area.
This week, we visited Shoreline Park in Mountain View, a 750-acre wildlife refuge. The hike was not at all challenging, except for the mud on the path around the lake and the marshes. It is a nice place to watch the wildlife, mostly birds. Very accessible for walking or biking. Very conducive to productive talks — I will not say more about what we talked about though ;-)
Carlos recommends the cafe and the boating club for a little pedalo or pedal boat ride in the summer.
That was definitely a nice and lazy way to start our 2010 hiking resolution!
Sunset at Shoreline Park
We would be glad to inspire more people to take some time to get out of the code or the daily routine and think more strategically about your business or your life. Living in California, we have the amazing opportunity to find beauty around the corner year-round of course but we also assume the duty to spread more green behavior (not that we have any monopoly on that of course).
Having a Clear Strategy
The reality is that most projects and businesses fail due to lack of a clear strategy. This is why our brainstorming hikes have been invaluable to us. Eventually, they led us to launch Sparkling Logic, a decision management technology company that helps businesses automate and optimize daily operational decisions. Our decision management platform SMARTS™ enables businesses to easily and effectively manage decisions throughout their lifecycle. Even if your decision strategy isn’t clear from the get-go, we provide the tools for you to explore your data and test different strategies. As a result, organizations can improve the quality of decisions and rapidly adjust decisions as needed. We cover more in our Decision Management 101 blog series.
Thinking Outside the Cube
Sometimes you just have to go outside and smell the roses. Carlos, our fearless CTO, and I took some time off work to hike and bounce ideas off each other. “Thinking Outside the Cube” are my reflections from our trips. We hope that this series will encourage you to take time out of your daily routine to enjoy nature and think strategically about your business. In addition, you’ll get ideas of nice places to hike in the Bay area.