LIGHTSQUARED

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LightSquared and the USA’s GPS system – is the alarm warranted?

7:21 PM Sat 11 Feb 2012

 

 

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Spectrum policy – necessary for all nations’    .

 

On January 31 Sail World reported that ‘alarm and anger were growing in the marine industry as LightSquared threatened the USA’s GPS system’ (See Sail-World story). In a previous story Garmin was quoted as saying ‘If GPS were compromised it would affect every GPS-dependent piece of equipment.’ 

 

Now keen sailor, eminent Doctor of Engineering and Spectrum policy expert, Michael J. Marcus, has weighed into the discussion with some salient facts:

 

As a long time sail boat owner (Jeanneau 32 Attalia based near Annapolis) and a radio spectrum policy wonk (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth began from rules I initiated at FCC in the early 1980s), I have been troubled by statement such as these made in Sail-World’s article on the subject.

 

However, these pale compared to statements made by Garmin at the beginning of the article or by BoatUS, the major boating membership association in the US to which I belong.

 

First, what is the origin of this controversy? Cellphones and broadband are becoming key parts of our societies and economies. Today’s systems are rapidly running out of capacity. While the cellular industry exaggerates additional spectrum as the only possible cure for this capacity problem, it certainly is a key tool. FCC and its counterparts in other countries are all trying to find more radio spectrum for such services.

 

About 20 years ago it appeared that ‘mobile satellite service’ or MSS, e.g. Inmarsat and Iridium, would be a key telecom service everywhere the world and that global spectrum had to be reserved for it. Advances in both terrestrial and satellite communications have proved this to be wrong in a key aspect: MSS spectrum is now very lightly used in populated areas and new technology allows the same spectrum to be used for MSS in rural areas and over oceans while used for cellular-like services in populated areas – effective ‘recycling’ otherwise unused spectrum in areas where it is sorely needed!

 

One of the MSS bands involved is just below the GPS L1 band used by commercial GPS units. In the US, FCC has authorized use of this band for terrestrial cellular services (FCC jargon for this is Auxiliary Terrestrial Component or ATC) since 2003 and the company now called LightSquared has been authorized since 2004.

 

Now there is some dispute about details of the early FCC decisions and how many base stations were allowed under them, but it is clear that base stations were allowed next to the GPS band since 2003 and that the civil GPS supplier community paid little attention to the fact that GPS would be having a new neighbor with much stronger signals in some places than the original MSS signals.

 

Real receivers of all types do not have infinite ability to reject strong adjacent band signals. Such rejection requires careful design and the amount of rejection possible increases with time as filter technology improves. As long as the MSS band had no cellular base stations in it, little rejection was needed and GPS manufacturers did not have to incorporate the latest filter improvements which incurs both design and retooling costs.

 

Thus it appears that the GPS industry has not pressed the filter manufacturers for the latest technology as the cellular systems in nearby bands have. As a result many GPS receivers have a lingering vulnerability to strong adjacent band signals that results from GPS manufacturers ignoring policy changes made in the US almost a decade ago!

 

 

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Spectrum chart –  .. .

In June 2011 after an initial rounding of GPS receiver testing, LightSquared changed its plans to move farther away from the GPS L1 signal to 1526-1536 MHz which is 23 MHz (almost 4 US TV channels or almost 3 European TV channels) away from the lower edge of the GPS L1 band at 1559 MHz. (See Chart left)

 

Rather than admit any responsibility for this and focus on a reasonable transition scheme, the GPS industry has chosen to make what a friend who is a GPS pioneer has described as a Jonestown-style ‘suicide pact’. (The Garmin quote at the start of this article is an indication of this approach.) The industry has enlisted lawyers and PR firms and a broad variety of ‘fellow travellers’, such as BoatUS, to say the ‘sky is falling’.

 

It has even convinced the Air Force general who is responsible for the GPS satellites to testify that the LightSquared system would impact military GPS systems that were supposed to be jam resistant. Without getting too technical, if such a 100 watts transmitter 23 MHz away from the edge of the GPS band could impact military GPS receivers, imagine what a bad guy could do with a similar or stronger jammer transmitter inside the GPS band? And it is well known that simulated GPS signals are even more effective jammers, watt for watt, than noise or cellular-like signals.

 

Military sources have told me that the general’s testimony on military equipment susceptibility actually dealt with obsolescent equipment from the early days of GPS that is still in inventory in small quantities and vulnerable to any undesired signal.

 

But real boaters know something that lawyers and PR firms apparently don’t: boats float on water.

 

The LightSquared/GPS controversy, especially after June 2011 move farther away from the GPS band, is an issue with GPS receivers that both have inadequate adjacent band rejection and are within a few hundred meters of a possible LightSquared base station – not a typical boating scenario but never mentioned in BoatUS material on the subject.

 

In trying to use the public spectrum resource for the maximum overall public good national regulators like FCC regularly have to repurpose bands as technology and society’s needs change. Such repurposing sometimes impacts both incumbent users of the band, not so in this particular case, or users of neighboring bands.

 

For example, several times in the last few decades TV spectrum in many countries has been repurposed for mobile communications. The usual solution is a transition scheme that balances the costs and benefits of the change and allows affected incumbents users time to adapt to the new change.

 

The GPS industry and its fellow travelers appear to have no interest in such a transition that might make them admit to design errors in the past decade. Such a viewpoint could result in spectrum gridlock that prevents future repurposing of all bands. This issue is further complicated because the issues lies squarely on the fault line between the jurisdiction of FCC and a separate coequal agency, NTIA, that regulates federal government spectrum use.

 

In a reasonable transition scheme the base stations could be designed to prevent high signals in all navigable waters during a period in which GPS receivers improve – but the GPS manufacturers and BoatUS don’t want to discuss transitions and the overall public interest in spectrum use. They have dug themselves into policy hole and demand only total victory!

 

How did BoatUS reach this position and continue to maintain it after the LightSquared proposed to move further away from GPS? Multiple inquiries to BoatUS from this member have received no clear response other than vaguely siding with Coast Guards and industry. Did BoatUS use knowledgeable members in reaching and reviewing its decision? Like the boy who cried wolf, expressing unfounded fears to government regulators harms the credibility of the boating community in other regulatory decisions that could be more important to boaters.

 

Sail World readers outside the US need not be concerned about this issue as it is purely a domestic US issue and individual countries have the discretion to make such decisions within their own territory under the terms of Article 4.4 of the ITU Radio Regulations. 

 

However, all GPS users might want to press GPS manufacturers about whether they are using interference rejection technology comparable to what cell phones in nearby bands use.

 

GPS units are now sold in multimillion unit quantities so they can afford contemporary technology filters that usually cost under $1 in such production quantities. (Note these are marginal costs for new units, retrofitting existing units is usually much more expensive.)

 

But decide for yourself what the issues are in this controversy and how we got to where we are. Here is information from the opposing sides:

 

LightSquared

 

GPS Industry

 

…and for masochists & policy wonks:

All FCC filings received:

 

Early filings (Before 06/28/2011)

 

Later filings (After 06/28/2011)

 

 

About Michael J. Marcus: 

Michael Marcus is both a sailor and a technical spectrum policy specialist. He has a doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT, worked almost 25 years at FCC on spectrum policy issues, and was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his leadership in spectrum policy. For more information about Dr Marcus, including his complete CV, please go to Marcus Spectrum Solutions LLC 

TWO BOATS FOR SALE

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WATERFRONT WATCH VS. SAN FRANCISCO PORT COMMISSION

Another lawsuit for San Francisco brought by the waterfront watch for non compliance with the California Evironmental Quality Act.

It is going to be hard for San Francisco to be ready for an America’s Cup in 2013

These photos are today in Newport, It had been 60 degrees yesterday.

A REAL ESTATE DEAL MASQUERADING AS A BOAT RACE

As final approvals near, real draw of America’s Cup questioned

By: Dan Schreiber | 02/21/12 4:00 AM
SF Examiner Staff Writer
SF EXAMINER FILE PHOTO
Critics say the race’s projected economic impact was inflated.

The business formula of the America’s Cup seems simple: If you race them, they will come.

But as city officials consider a waterfront investment deal finalizing the terms of the yacht regatta, they are left guessing just how many will come.

Along with the complex long-term agreement for race officials to fix crumbling piers in exchange for lucrative development rights on public property, the event’s popular appeal also is raising questions.

The event’s power to infuse cash into its host city is commonly touted as only less than that of the Olympics and World Cup. But low turnout of spectators and racing teams could make The City’s massive preparations a costly albatross.

The eyes of the sailing world will be fixed on San Francisco Bay’s 58 days of yacht racing over the next two years, but members of the Board of Supervisors want to make sure they won’t only be watching through a television screen. They said an influx of hotel guests who eat and shop will be pivotal to the event’s success.

The City is set to spend $52 million preparing for the race, which it hopes to cover with sales and hotel taxes, plus fundraising by a nonprofit arm of the America’s Cup. But slow fundraising progress has raised red flags with city leaders.

Disappointing turnout for a November event in San Diego raised questions among local skeptics. Supervisor John Avalos said last week he doubts the claim that more than 5 million people will attend the 2013 finals, which could mean up to 500,000 people in The City on peak days.

“I’d say we’re not seeing that,” Avalos said.

A report conducted by an independent firm in 2010 says the regatta will create 8,800 jobs and $1.4 billion in economic benefits. But that analysis was conducted well before officials even agreed to hold the event here.

The analysis based its estimates on past America’s Cups in Spain, New Zealand and San Diego. The benefit estimates included a sizable economic impact from the racing teams themselves, which typically spend months building and testing vessels. But to date, only four of nine anticipated teams have signed up for the 2013 finals, casting doubts over such spending.

Critic Aaron Peskin, the local Democratic Party leader, calls the forecast laughable.

“We should be delighted if we get 25 percent of their pie-in-the-sky estimates,” Peskin said. “There’s no history of sailing regattas being a mass spectator sport in San Francisco or the world.”

Peskin called the regatta a “real estate deal masquerading as a boat race.

Chief Operating Officer Stephen Barclay of the America’s Cup Event Authority says that while the benefit projections may be shaky, there is little doubt that plenty of sailing fans will come to enjoy a full schedule of events.

“Who knows if the numbers are underinflated or overinflated,” Barclay said. “It’s going to mean a lot of jobs and a lot of economic benefit — that’s the point.”

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/bay-area/2012/02/final-approvals-near-real-draw-america-s-cup-questioned#ixzz1nGbUqQom

FERRIS WHEELS AND THE AMERICA’S CUP

I remain fascinated by carnivals and amusements of the past. To see more click HERE.

 

The comment below again came from sailing anarchy, I am inclined to agree. The America’s Cup has long moved away from the public. Yet they need the public. Many years ago, when it was a race between challenging yacht clubs, not countries, it was very accessible by the public. There is some irony here.

It will be interesting to hear the reaction after the cup has visited Newport in June.

 

reader ranti don’t get itI am currently in San Francisco working about three weeks per month. So you can imagine how  excited I was to learn that Oracle Racing’s two week practice session coincided with my visit.  Moreover, my son Gavin, an Opti sailor, was going to be in town on the weekend that the two  catamarans would be ripping across the bay in 20 knots of breeze. I was sure that, in the face of  disappointing spectator interest and almost no outside sponsorship , Oracle Racing would be  pulling out the stops with a major PR campaign. Even though it was only a practice session, of  course there would be official spectator boats, tons of local exposure, an experiential village for the  public, rides on the catamarans for VIPs, insane social media execution, and an all-out effort to  build community around the event.Boy was I wrong. Neither the Oracle Racing website nor a Google search could produce any
information at all about the practice session. Not one mention! I only discovered the whereabouts of the Oracle Racing compound because I happened to meet a couple of the crew on the train to
work. Otherwise the boats are completely hidden from public view in a nondescript location well
South of the City. There is absolutely zero buzz or excitement in San Francisco (as far as I can tell)  about the America’s Cup. While my son and I did happen to see the boats sail by near St Francis  Yacht Club one afternoon, we got no information at all from Oracle Racing or the local press. You  get the feeling that the whole event will pass by San Francisco without anyone noticing.

I’m just a sports marketing guy and sailing fan. When I first heard about Larry Ellison bringing the  America’s Cup to San Francisco, I naively believed the event had the potential to bring the sport to  hundreds of thousands of new fans. I now see that the America’s Cup in 2013 will go down as a  huge missed opportunity. Our sport will continue to speak to a small and insular group of people,  and we’ll just write off any hope of building a larger fan base with our marquee event. – Anarchist Peter.

RAMBLER SEQUEL

The america’s cup race course for San Francisco Bay is published.

The following update is from Sailing Anarchy.

the ‘blur story

Our friend Aaron Kuriloff from Bloomberg News sends in his story on the Rambler Fastnet capsize from the Bloomberg Pursuits magazine.

The 100-foot carbon-fiber yacht was doing what it was designed to do, surging down the waves, at moments actually sailing faster than the wind. The boat, Rambler 100, and skipper George David, the former chief executive officer of United Technologies Corp., were leading the fleet in
the U.K.’s famous Fastnet ocean race.  It was Aug. 15, 2011, and the giant sloop was beginning to act like the champion that hedge-fund manager Alex Jackson had in mind when he had it built, Bloomberg Pursuits magazine reports in its premier issue.

In July, Rambler 100 had been first to finish the Transatlantic Race from Newport, Rhode Island, to the Lizard, Great Britain’s southernmost point. In one 24-hour period during that passage, she logged 582 nautical miles, just 14 shy of the record for a monohull (catamarans and trimarans go faster). That’s an average speed of 24.25 nautical miles per hour, or knots, equal to about 28 miles per hour.

At 5:17 p.m. local time, Rambler 100 rounded Fastnet Rock in the Atlantic Ocean, 8 miles (13 kilometers) off the Irish coast, reaching the race’s halfway point on pace to claim a course record. At 5:40 p.m., everything went wrong.

The 29,000-pound (13,000-kilogram) stainless-steel-and-lead keel broke off without warning. The boat spun and stopped and within 15 seconds was on its side, sails flat on the water. Some
among the 21-person crew were thrown clear of the boat; others scrambled out of the cabin as the yacht’s roll continued. In 60 seconds, Rambler 100 was upside down, its mast pointing to the
seafloor.

Adrift

Crew members who made it onto the overturned hull helped pull others from the water, while five people, including 69- year-old David, were swept by wind and current away from the boat. Winds were gusting to 30 knots, visibility was poor and the water was 57 degrees Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius). A person without protective gear might expect to lose consciousness in an hour or two and die from hypothermia in six. George David’s love of the water goes back to when he was a teenager sailing small boats. He moved up to 40-footers in the 1970s when he was manager of Otis Elevator’s Latin American operations, stationed in Florida. As he climbed the corporate ranks and grew wealthier (he was worth at least $250 million by the time he retired in 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg), his sailing grew more ambitious. In 1999, his state- of-the-art, 50-foot sloop Idler represented the U.S. in the Admiral’s Cup, a prestigious international regatta. In 2006, David acquired a 90-foot (27.5-meter) yacht secondhand, named it
Rambler and went on to set records in several ocean races.

Takeover

Then David worked out an arrangement to take over Jackson’s vessel. The retired executive would run the racing campaign in 2011, serve as skipper, rename the boat Rambler 100 — and pay the bills. The costs at this level of competition, for crew, insurance, repairs, upgrades, travel and so on, can reach $6 million a year. For his money, David had his hands on a boat with an
ultralight hull, giant sails and a radical ballast system that involved water tanks and a keel that pivots — and the potential to finish first in almost any race.

Alex Jackson, 46, co-founder of Polygon Investment Partners LLP, a London hedge-fund firm that today has about $7 billion in assets, had less experience than David with the biggest boats.
He earned All-American honors sailing dinghies for Tufts University’s team and then grew to favor windsurfing. For much of the period from 1986 to 2008, the simple surfboard-with-a- sail was the fastest wind-powered watercraft, pushing the record for average speed on a straight 500-meter course to almost 50 knots. (Today, the title is held by a kiteboard.)

Volvo Boats

Jackson coveted windsurfing’s raw speed. Still, advances in large offshore yachts in the mid-2000s eventually got his attention. He took note, in particular, of the boats Juan Kouyoumdjian, a designer based in Valencia, Spain, was creating for the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race. These powerful and innovative yachts were pushing the speed record for 24 hours of ocean sailing ever higher.     “It was obvious that sailing had taken this huge jump,” Jackson says. “Juan K. had turned sailboats into windsurfers.” Jackson hired Kouyoumdjian with the brief of creating the fastest monohull in the world. He picked a name for his yacht: Speedboat.

Kouyoumdjian’s Design

The project pushed the boundaries of what had been done before, Kouyoumdjian says. He incorporated all of the innovations that made his 70-foot Volvo racers fast — the most radical of these being the canting keel. From the days of rocks piled in the bottom of wooden hulls, keel design has constantly evolved. A typical shape for a modern racing sailboat is a deep fin, like an airplane wing, with a bulb of lead at the bottom that carries most of the weight. The deeper this ballast, the more power it has to counter the force of the wind heeling the boat. Now imagine a system that swings the keel fin as much as 45 degrees to one side of the boat or the other. The leverage jumps dramatically. That’s a canting keel.

For Jackson, Kouyoumdjian wanted minimum weight and maximum sail area to make the boat fast, balanced against the need to build the yacht strong enough for the pounding of waves and
wind. “On the one side, you’re looking for performance; on the other side, safety,” Kouyoumdjian says. The hull was constructed by Cookson Boats in Auckland, which built New Zealand’s 2007 America’s Cup entrant. In April 2008, just three days after it was launched, Speedboat hit 28
knots in Auckland harbor — in just 18 knots of wind.

Laws of Physics

That doesn’t violate the laws of physics. A boat can’t exceed the wind speed when running dead downwind. With the wind from the side, however, many boats top the true wind speed. The
velocity of the wind and velocity of the boat combine to create an “apparent wind” across the sails that exceeds either component. Some catamarans sail twice as fast as the wind. In Kouyoumdjian’s design, adding 30 feet of length to a Volvo racer meant the sail area almost doubled. The carbon-fiber mast was 145 feet.

“Juan K. took the smaller boats’ tech and applied it to the Maxi realm, and in doing so created a boat that was much more powerful than a typical 100-footer,” says Peter Isler, a navigator on two winning America’s Cup boats. “It was pushing the limits.” Isler has been part of the boat’s brain trust since it was launched and was aboard when it capsized. Jackson gave up his hedge-fund duties in June 2008, when his boat arrived in Newport, and turned to racing. That month, in the Newport Bermuda Race, Speedboat was first to finish, ahead of about 200 competitors.

Transatlantic Attempts

At the end of that month, Jackson and his team set out to try for a transatlantic record. They quit after a day, having broken a key piece of equipment. Jackson tried again in October,
this time with Richard Branson among the crew and his Virgin Money as a sponsor. That attempt ended two days out of New York after a gale damaged sails.

Sailing fans were beginning to speculate on blogs that the boat was unseaworthy. “There were a lot of people talking smack,” Jackson says. “The people whose opinion I respect knew what was good, what was bad and what needed to be done.” Still, Jackson returned to managing money, and Speedboat spent most of 2009 at the dock. “I saw the boat basically sitting there, with Alex working 27 hours a day,” says David. They reached an agreement for David to sail the boat as a part owner in 2011. Speedboat became Rambler 100. David, in many ways, began to get it up to its potential — until the Fastnet.

Capsize

It sounded like a cannon being fired when the keel failed, David says. Three people scrambled over the lifelines and up onto the bottom of the boat as it rolled — without even getting wet. Most of the crew ended up in the water but near enough that they could make it onto the overturned hull. David and four others were thrown farther from the boat. That group, including David’s girlfriend, Wendy Touton, 46 at the time, realized they were drifting away from the stricken yacht.
“There was absolute calm,” David says. “No panic. No anxiety. No flailing around. You’re fatalistic in that situation.” While they all had on flotation vests and foul weather gear, the main hazard they faced was hypothermia. As the hours ticked by, they got colder. The sun was dropping. The crew on the hull tried and failed to signal several sailboats that raced by. They didn’t have flares or a hand-held radio. Those items and other emergency gear, including life
rafts, turned out to be inaccessible once the boat was upside down.

Rescue

What saved them were two emergency locator beacons they activated. These sent a satellite signal, and a lifeboat based in Baltimore, Ireland, in County Cork, was dispatched. It arrived on the scene at 7:45 p.m., and only then did the search begin for the group drifting out to sea.
Luck was with David and his crew. Around 8:30 p.m., the crew of the Wave Chieftain, a dive boat that had been on the water that day to photograph the racers rounding Fastnet Rock,
spotted a red blob in the ocean swells. The five sailors were found. Touton, suffering more than the others from the cold, was taken by helicopter to a hospital to be treated for hypothermia.
The rest of the crew were reunited in the town of Baltimore, where local residents provided dry clothes, warm food and beer.     The hull of Rambler 100 survived. It was towed to a bay on
the Irish coast, righted and pumped dry. The stub of the keel fin that remained after the break is being examined by a team of metallurgists and engineers.

Indestructible

Things break all the time on racing yachts, but the keel is supposed to be indestructible. As David puts it: “It’s not the sort of thing you pay attention to, because it’s designed from
day one to be permanent, solid, secure and good.”  As befits the former head of an aerospace company, David is confident the scientists will figure out what went wrong. Until they do, he and Jackson won’t know whether it makes sense to restore Rambler 100 and sail her again.

David holds no grudge against the boat that almost got him killed. In an interview four months after the accident, he says he had “a lot of fun” racing Rambler 100 in 2011. He was back on
the water, racing his 90-footer from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Key West in January. The older boat is fast and agile, he says. “But it feels small.”     What’s the attraction of big-boat racing? The retired executive doesn’t invoke the beauty or power of the sea or even the thrill of a fast yacht.  I’ve often said racing is like a year of business compressed into a short time,” David explains. “There are all the same elements: design and technology, program management,
organization, staffing, teamwork, rules, tactics and luck.”     He still covets ocean racing records, even if in the cold Atlantic last August, his luck seemed to be running thin.

UNCONVENTIONAL LEADERSHIP

Unconventional Leadership Lessons from Jeremy Lin

JEREMY LIN, MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP, CAREER ADVICE, EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS
CNBC.com
| 17 Feb 2012 | 12:31 PM ET

 

How can several multi-million dollar basketball teams overlook Jeremy Lin, a dormant star player who was on their own teams?

Well, he didn’t have any experience as a star. He didn’t graduate from a university with a history of producing basketball stars.

Additionally, the fact that there aren’t many Asian stars in American professional basketball probably played a role too.

In other words, according to “conventional basketball wisdom”, Jeremy Lin shouldn’t be a basketball star!

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom and thinking routinely prevent managers from finding, hiring and/or utilizing star players at companies around the world. Experience and education are overused as selection criteria, which hurts innovation and competitiveness.

Experience is a poor indicator of what has been learned in the past and what can be done in the future. Driving is a good example of how experience often fails to produce learning and expertise. Many people who have been driving for years, and therefore have ample experience, are still poor drivers.

The weak relationship between experience and expertise is evident in many organizations as well. Anything that one does admirably today, one did not know how to do in the past, so experience was not a valid predictor of future success. Therefore, for the same reason, it is unreasonable to use experience indiscriminately as a selection criterion.

Organizations depend on new ideas and innovation for survival. Since innovation is by nature something new, prior experience in often irrelevant. Some of the most creative and successful entrepreneurs had no experience at all in their fields when they started their firms.

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream was started by two friends who knew nothing about the ice cream business. Ted Turner didn’t have a journalism education or any experience in the news business when he launched CNN . Richard Branson has created numerous unrelated ventures, which have made him one of the richest men in the world, despite the fact that he didn’t possess any experience in most of his businesses.

Unconventional leaders are similar to entrepreneurs in that they are willing to try new ideas and take risks in their quest to beat the competition. Unconventional leaders think outside the box, so they find stars with unexpected backgrounds, something their competition would never consider.

What are good selection criteria for finding unconventional thinkers who can work in a dynamic environment?Seeking people who are open to new ideas, have a vision similar to the company’s, and are comfortable with ambiguity is likely to yield better results than focusing on how much work experience applicants have or whether they have a university education.

The ability to learn quickly and adapt are both particularly important as well. Each organization should devise its own selection criteria and process that is matched to its culture and strategy. Keep in mind that the process created is not static, it should be adjusted over time.

When using an innovative selection process, it might take much more time to find and select personnel. That is the price to pay for doing things differently. For example, Google interviews are a day long affair, or more. Google is also one of the most unconventional companies in the world.

Don’t make the mistake of the New York Knicks, who discovered Jeremy Lin by chance. Break with conventional wisdom and do something different when looking for talent. A customized and innovative selection process will help you find and select unconventional thinkers who can help your company beat the competition.

 

Isn’t this the story of Steve Jobs? How many of us have had the experience in a job interview where only the number of degrees have been the measure of our ability? It seems that this topic of unconventional is more common but the truth of the matter is that things not only have not changed, but become more difficult. People are less willing to take a chance or be guided by their intuition.