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Monday Mar 03, 2008

The Chaos Control Cycle


I'm a big fan of control, but I realize chaos is a key ingredient to some of the most successful creations.   BJ Fogg, Ph.D in Psychology, and author of Persuasive Technology books has recently proposed the Chaos Control cycle as a key success factor in his recent Facebook Class at Stanford which ran from Sep-Dec 2007.  Based on the uber-popular Facebook Developer Platform, this class proved that you never know what's going to be interesting and fun until you get started.

He expected 30-40 apps - he announced the class through FB - 120 signed up, 80 stayed (the 40 regretted it)
He expected to code 3 apps - 50+ amazing apps, 10 million installs, and 1 million daily users.  In 10 weeks, 6 new apps got in the top 100 FB apps out of 6,000.

His partners, Dan Ackerman-Greenberg and Robert Fan shared what they learned from running the crazy experimental class:

  • It's Never too late to build a good app
  • Speed and flexibility in launch and iterations
  • Community cooperation leads to success
  • Individual opinions about app are worthless
  • Copying success is a cheap/fast way to succeed
  • Metrics do matter, but today's tools are too weak
  • You CAN learn to create a winning app
  • Success comes from chaos-control cycle
  • Mass interpsersonal persuaion is finally here
    • Persuasion, Social network, observable impact, fast cycle, easy to do, automated
Want to be a successful college dropout?  Take this class, you'll improve your odds; but drop out of a Masters program - University diplomas will still be valuable in 20-60 years. If you actually do get recognized for your achievements, by the time you really care about it, you'll wish you had at least one.  Note: all of these guys did.

Posted at 12:03PM Mar 03, 2008 by Stephen Staso in General  |  Comments[0]

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