Recipe

• Propensity for action. Start. Retrospections on the pain and pleasure will correct.
• Happiness is a leading indicator of the capacity to accomplish.
• Every task, every component, every requirement, every transaction, everything must be assigned a responsible person, next action, and date of action/sunset.
• Requirements must fight for their lives.
• Constrain Scopes of Work to what is achievable in one-week sprints by 3-7 person teams.

Must Read List

Reading List.  Creating a common frame of reference is essential. A self-motivated, self-disciplined culture is the most important thing we will build. Solar-powering urban mobility is just a byproduct of our culture. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

1. Sinek’s TEDx: “Start with Why”, 15 minutes.
2. The Why of JPods and the 3 Circles of the JPods Hedgehog Concept
3. Morgantown’s PRT delivered 150 million passenger-miles since it opened in 1972. JPods US Patent improves on the Morgantown PRT in two important ways (6,810,817):
   • Grade-separated networks of self-driving cars: “A method of controlling a transportation System for moving people, freight, and any combination whereof using a distributed network of intelligent devices without requiring the aid of a human driver”
   • Solar-powered mobility networks: “The method… providing… Solar and wind power generators integrated into the physical Structure of Said transportation System….”
4. How Innovation Works by Matt Ridly, (1 hour video). Despite what people say, barriers to innovation are entrenched. New York Times, March 25, 1878, “Something ought to bo done to Mr. EDISON, and there is a growing conviction that it had better be done with a hemp rope.Mr. Edison has invented too many things, and almost without exception they are things of tho most deleterious character.”
   • Adoption of zero required centuries from the 3rd century BCE as as space in Babylonia, to a zero character in from Brahmagupta’s work in 7th century India, to spreading by Al-Khwarizmi in 9th century Persia, to Fibonacci’s introduction into Europe in 1202.
   • Washing hands required half a century from Semmelweis 1847 documenting that clean hand radically reduced infant mortality at birth, to 1860-70 work by Pasteur and Koch to microorganisms, to hand washing by doctors becoming common practice by 1900.
   • The Internet from:
     • Tesla in 1926, “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, …. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television…. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.“
     • 1968: Mother of All Demos documents most aspects of the Internet and modern computing. Start at minute 30 for 4 minutes to watch the “mouse”, video conferencing, clicking on URLs, etc….
     • 1999: Bill James talked with Steve Jobs about JPods building the Physical Internet®, combining digital and physical delivery. Jobs liked the concept of the Physical Internet but thought Segway could more easily break the regulatory barriers. Eighteen months later, Apple announced “iPods”.
     • 2007: Apple introduced the iPhone. This was the first digital phone on digital networks. SmartPhones amplified the Internet by 10X.
5. Great by Choice by Jim Collins, excellence is a process of relentlessly improving, 20-mile marching (YouTube, article), fire bullets then cannonballs (short Jim Collins videos). (Excellent collection of Jim Collins clips).
   • Flywheel (Jim Collins) and JPods’ ROI Engine.
   • Stockdale Paradox: Unwavering faith we will prevail while facing the most brutal facts of our current reality
6. Positively Outrageous Service by T. Scott Gross, on why companies that listen to their customers succeed (link).
   • Steve Jobs on the need to design for the customer, 5 minute video
   • Link to Strong Towns videos and 101 course.
7. The Scrum Fieldbook, A Master Class on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results, and Defining the Future, J.J. Sutherland. Happiness is a forecaster of performance, not an outcome.  The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff and J.J. Sutherland. Scrum is a “how to” on excellence in execution. TEDx
8. Why Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek the biochemistry of culture.
9. Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose (4min summary video). This is a case study in how to radically retool infrastructure in a decade. It is about how the Transcontinental Railroads were financed and built (notes):
   1. Define a regulatory and legal framework based on metrics:
      • 1864 Railroad Act then. 1862 was a start, but funding did not start until defects were corrected in 1864.
      • Solar Mobility Act today
   2. Private construction capital (risk on the innovators). Construction companies operate with 52 accounting cycles per year, each Thursday at 6 PM networks certified that week are sold to Local Mobility Companies to own and operate.
   3. There can be overlapping shareholders, but the management of the construction (Master Mobility Companies) and operating (Local Mobility Companies) are separated and focused on the specific wants of their customers. JPods EcoSystem of companies.
10. PB-244854, Page 41, the barriers we must overcome. This is the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment study that is a blueprint of oil independent cities, 1974. Case studies on the successes and failures to build infrastructure networks.
11. Culture of contribution, and idea meritocracy, the Bridgewater example. www.Principles.com.  Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People. Deep understanding, metrics, and tools for working with people. Essential for those responsible for defining JPods culture. We need to use some combination of these two books to structure our people systems.
12. Excellent 3-minute video. Netflix, accomplishment versus effort. Netflix slide deck. Netflix is a pro team, not a family, Freedom and Responsibility. Good NPR summary of performance-based.
13. Milgram Problem: We are dealing with people working inside institutions. Personal and institutional behaviors radically differ. To get access to Rights of Way requires a change in institutional behaviors. Ending Federal support for slavery , Jim Crow, and Climate Change are nearly identical examples of this issue.:
    • Milgram Problem (2 minutes)
    • Rules for Rulers (18 minutes)
14. Changing World Order (43 minutes) by Ray Dalio.

Good to read:

1. Pitch Anything, Orin Klaff
2. Good to Great, Jim Collins, how to change an organization from being good to great. The Stockdale paradox of unwavering faith we will prevail while facing the most brutal facts of the current reality. The flywheel principle of incremental, yet relentless improvement.
3. Start with Why by Simon Sinek the bio-chemistry of culture.
4. How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins, how to make great things go wrong.
5. Why Nations Fail, the Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty.  Why liberty and freedom, inclusive institutions generate wealth and power, as extractive institutions enrich the elites at the expense of the many.
6. The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, how to make decisions without being the turkey, dealing with uncertainty. The turkey wakes everyday to kind feeding by humans. Everyday its experience reinforces that life is stable and good; just like oil. “Empty suits” the experts who aren’t.
7. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, how change happens.
8. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, who makes the changes and the decade of preparation required. JPods has our decade of preparation.
9. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, Why free markets and democracies work. The transportation section underscores why customers are better than experts at designing what customers are willing to pay for (video summary).
10. Principles: Life and Work. Deep understanding, metrics, and tools for working with people. Essential for those responsible for defining JPods culture.
11. Principles of War. The recipe for winning. Inclusive Institutions and Sustainability must be added.
12. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.  The power of inclusive institutions.
13. The Crash Course. Start with Energy Economics to understand why cheap oil is ending. The banking collapse of 2008 is an indicator of the scale of the risks.
14. Innovate Like Edison by Michael Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, little contrived but great quotes and background on tinkering process of Edison and his team.
15. Einstein and His Universe, institutional resistance to changes from the current “know-how” to a different “know-what”. Despite a massive mail campaign seeking a teaching job, took 4+ years after publishing the Special Theory of Relativity and Proof of Quantum Mechanics and proof the atoms and molecules for Einstein to get a teaching job; it is easier to change physics than to change minds.​
16. Desktop Hosting by Bill James on supply chain automation.
17. Tim Harford: How Can Chaos Lead To Creative Breakthroughs?
18. True cost of car ownership: Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze. Cars average 11.3 mph if all time is counted, cars cost ~ 58% of family income, costs exceed DOT budgets.
19. Slime mold building networks by firing bullets, then cannonballs.

Recipe, a list of does and don’ts for deployment:

• Be profitable.
  • Measure performance in profit per customer/freight trip.
  • Pull preemptive maintenance to preempt in-service failures. In-service failures are 100% lost profits.
  • Build systems around the concepts of Economic Work, energy consumed per unit of economic value moved (goods and people).
• Focus: Do not solve the world’s problem, solve someone’s problem if it can be solve profiably.
  • Do not build any network with a payback of over 5 years in the first 5 years.
  • Profit the difference between the value customers are delighted to pay us minus the cost to compete. The more we care for the value to customers, the more cohesively our culture is focused on the customer’s needs and wants, and the more disciplined we are about costs, profits will follow.
• Care first about the customer. Steve Jobs excellent answer to caring first about the customer.
• Build a culture of self-discipline
  • Empower people, do not control them.
  • Never let perfect be the of better, or good be the enemy of great.
    • Never delay action waiting for perfect.
    • Relentlessly improve.
  • Love what we do, not what we did.
  • Practice “yes and”, see training for improv comedy. video
  • “Small Stings” as a P&L line. Customers can fine us part of their fare. We should pay them to tell us what we can do better and/or are doing wrong.
  • Pay a bonus to employees passing the Physical Fitness test. Fitness, happiness, and ability to serve others overlap.
  •  To work for JPods, people must read and pass a test on:
    • Good to Great
    • Great by Choice
    • Positively Outrageous Service
• Start small, iterate relentessly.
  • It is an impossible task to control building 500,000 miles of JPods networks in the next 15 years. We must empower others to accomplish this mission.
  • Our insights into what is required are clever. Anyone can be clever. To be good requires repetition. Limit scopes of work to what can be accomplished with excellence.
  • Every LMC needs a Kitty Hawk Network to establish a consistent training platform.
  • Enforce standards to simplify the number of variables which need to be addressed, Kanban, Just-in-Time, Six Sigma.
  • Economic communities with large numbers of shuttle vans.
• Principles of War are a recipe for winning competitions: Add
  • Inclusive Institutions. Merit based openness to those who can contribute. Changing economic economic lifeblood from oil to ingenuity cannot be controlled but it can be empowered. Empower people to grow their abilities and expand their sphere of operation. Remove people who do not fit the culture.
  • Sustainability. We are in this for the long haul.
  • Retrospection. I changed this from Introspection because we forsight is untested and wisdom has been tested. The differience between knowleged, introspection, and wisdom is scars. So instead of looking for answers, gain experinece, document it, and adapt. The lack of retrospection is the hurbis born of success, see How the Mighty Fall
• Execute by creating single-purpose companies:
  • JPods creates and enforces technology. Have a technology enforcement fee of 3% of gross revenues to fund upgrades and minority shareholding force out management that fails to maintain standards. If it thinks, senses, or actuates, JPods will control the specs.
  • Master Mobiltiy Companies (MMCs) build networks in specific legal jurisdictions.
    • Rails certified each week will be sold each Thursday at 4 PM in the time zone of the installation.
    • There will be 52 construction accounting cycles each year. Structure into our P&L behaviors so nothing waits.
    • Sell networks at a fixed price of $12 million (review this $) per standard configuration to simplify capitalizing agreements between MMCs and LMCs. Specialty locations (very large spans) may require alternate pricing.
  • Local Mobility Companies (LMCs) operate networks
  • Capitalize using 3 types of capital:
    • Walk-around-money to organize MMCs and LMCs
    • Construction Capital to fund construction with a high rate of return
    • Asset Capital to fund LMC purchasing certified networks at a lower rate of return recognizing there is a siezable asset if the bonds are not properly serviced.
  • Outside Civil Engineer companies will be use to the extent practical
  • Energy Companies are a question to be resolved.
  • JPods retains the rights to buy-back networks at 140% of price from LMCs that fail to enforce the safety and engineering requirements.
• Preempt monopolies
  • Uniformity and Excellence are mutually exclusive. If you are uniform, you are at best average.
  • JPods is restoring liberty to people to choose cleaner, faster, safer, and more affordable mobility. This is both a great obligation and honor. LIberty is society’s tolerance for disruptive minorities offering choices and the Wisdom of the Many sorting those choices in the Darwinian curcible of creative destruction.
  • All monopolies eventually become stupid, or arrogant, or both.
  • Divide markets into multiple LMCs so there are no monopolies.
  • Create peer reviews and pressure between LMCs so they discipline each other.
  • Limit LMCs to about 100,000 of population (in US, may differ elsewhere) so there are multiple LMCs in cities.
  • The policeman does not put himself in jail for bad behavior. When governments control commerce, that commerce becomes exempt from law enforcement. Highway deaths, oil addiction, and that no one went to prison for the $6-14 trillion fraud in the 2008 bailout illustrate the lawlessness of government control of the means of production.
• Only build networks where the 5X5 Standard is made law by contract or legislation.
• Big Data: Document everything and sort it to essentials. Implement computer systems so the easies way to act on a problme intrinsically documents and accumulates the history, action, insights of those envolved, etc….
• We earn our money by moving people and cargo. We do not advertise or sell advertising in vehicles. JPods will facilitate a means for customers and advertiser to interact so customers can have the travel accounts credited as agreed to between customers and advertizers. The most we will charge for this is a small administrative fee that will at most cover costs of the exchange system.
• Luck. We will purposefully expose ourselves to getting lucky, limiting bad luck, and obtaining a great return on luck
  • Vehicle bodies will be open source to expose networks to ideas beyond our own.
  • A semi-independent Board of Innovations will assess payments to internal and external innovators whose ideas benefit the networks.
  • Emails and phone numbers will be easy for anyone to find and contact. A Query Center will be established.
  • All executive will spend 30 minutes a day answering their own phones to mitigate the “gatekeeper” defect.
  • To the extent practical, microtize and distribute manufacturing systems to localize supply durability. Oil supply shocks are coming. Network construction must not stop because of shipping problems.