iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

One reason I've started treating Twitter and LinkedIn as broadcast-only mediums is because I've created a replacement. Most developments in business and in life are noise. To figure out signal for your context, get a bunch of competent people in a forum, and have them sensemake together.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

To me, the most interesting question about Switching Costs is this: HOW do you build a Switching Cost moat in the first place?! This is common sense: no customer willingly subjects itself to lock-in. In order to get a switching cost moat, something interesting has to happen.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

One corollary of “how to pick mentors well” is that good people can absolutely tell who the mid (or high intelligence low effectiveness) young people are, and will switch to non-committal very rapidly. One person told me of their “what do YOU think?” response strategy recently.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

When I was a kid, I watched movies on tape. Then LaserDiscs. They were massive! I remember them fondly because of the rainbow colours that would flash on them if you held them out to the light. Then our movie nights switched to VCDs, though you had to swap them out mid-movie.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

At a recent Commoncog meetup in Singapore, a member said: "the value of meeting other good people like this is that we may make a lot of money together." We understand. Of course we do: we are businesspeople serving other businesspeople.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Over the next few months, Commoncog will begin publishing cases of people and businesses who’ve had to deal with disruption. Some folks handled disruption well, others badly. What may we learn from them?

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I’m pleased to announce that we’re hosting a Tactical Decision Game with John Schmitt for Commoncog members. (A TDG is an accelerated expertise training approach developed for the US Marines.) Why this is notable: Schmitt invented TDG when he was a Colonel in the corps!

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

A week or so ago I said that one trick to accelerate expertise is to help novices see like experts. This seems almost like it's cheating, and in a way it is. Now here's one method to do it. (Note that there are others!)

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Commoncog's most recent case on Patagonia seems to have struck a chord. I think mostly because folks want an alternative vision of company building. It's a pretty inspiring case. Dude builds billion dollar company and spends months each year climbing mountains? Yes please!

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short (but incomplete) summary of David Maister's Managing The Professional Services Firm. The book is a masterclass in how to approach, run, evaluate, and grow a services business.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Richemont's Johann Rupert on the luxury business: (Yes, this is a hint that Commoncog will cover a bunch of luxury businesses in the future).

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I absolutely love the title of this paper, and I believe it gestures at something pretty profound. (Alas, this is mostly about teaching, not so much about pursuing wisdom — that's a different body of work!). A short thread.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

So one thing I never understood was how Swatch, a plasticky, cheap, quartz watch brand, managed to save the entire Swiss watch industry. It just never made sense to me. Well, a couple of weeks ago I commissioned a new case about how Swatch saved the Swiss watch industry.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

So it seems that Commoncog has a live events arm, purely by accident! All of this started when I was on paternity leave late last year. Jerry Neumann reached out based on some comments I'd made on an essay of his called AI Will Not Make You Rich.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

A good reminder for the weekend.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I've had 4 conversations in the past year where someone said: "I have young kids / I have an existing life I'm happy with. I don't know if starting a company is compatible with that." And each time I say: "You don't have to start a startup!" Which is a little bizarre.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Two weeks ago I finished what I think will be Commoncog's most significant contribution to the AI discourse, at least for this year. (God forbid!) This was the Sensemaking Series — which is a short, 3-essay series about how to make sense of AI. Some of its ideas are surprising.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Whenever I want a prototypical example of “here's what an effective B2B startup salesperson looks like”, I think of Chris Degnan. Degnan was the first sales hire when Snowflake was a 16-person stealth startup. 7 years later, he was CRO of an $81B company. Pretty good prototype!

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Two weeks ago I wrote an essay titled "How to Make Sense of AI." It struck a chord. Folks shared it with their friends. One friend printed it out to give copies away. That essay laid out a method of making sense of AI developments without losing your head. But it was not enough.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I don’t say this enough, but I find @DellAnnaLuca’s writing incredibly clear, pragmatic, and useful. I recommend everyone who is interested in operational excellence to buy his books.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Surprise, surprise: Steve Jobs understood process control. I didn't realise that he learnt quality from Joseph Juran, a Deming contemporary. This is, incidentally, where “blameless post-mortems” and “fix the system, don’t blame the person” comes from.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

There’s a weird divide in the world of demand frameworks that most people don’t notice. Some frameworks help you understand demand AFTER you have customers. Other frameworks claim to help you FIND demand when you have zero customers. These are very different problems.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

I think more people should build private communities (with their friends, colleagues) to share detailed AI field reports of use. Instead of sharing takes, or predictions, or getting all hyped up (or doomer) about AI. Here's what I mean.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

People saying ‘moats don’t matter in AI’ are partially right. But they’re right for the wrong reasons. It’s not true that AI has changed the fundamental dynamics of competitive advantage. It’s that we’re in a gold rush — and gold rushes have very specific properties.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Legendary investor Howard Marks once had a 1984 BusinessWeek article written about him where he said “Real men don’t buy converts, so chicken like me can buy cheap.” Makes one think.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

It took me 5 years to figure out how to apply Cognitive Transformation Theory — a theory of accelerated expertise. This is what made it finally click. In January this year, we ran Speedrunning the Idea Maze — a live course about searching for product market fit (PMF).

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Most corporate leadership training is worthless. You know this. I know this. Offsite workshops, case study seminars, executive education programs — they produce few actual leaders. And so it’s very surprising when you encounter an exception.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

If you reacted in fear as a result of a viral essay recently, your attention has probably been compromised. You don’t have to be scared of AI. You don’t have to read hype takes, or doomer takes. You just need to sensemake aggressively: commoncog.com/how-to-make-...

commoncog.com

How to Make Sense of AI

Keeping up with a fast changing, revolutionary technology can seem scary. Here are some ruthless guidelines to make sense of it effectively.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Too many correlational studies, not enough causal arguments.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

There is a super power in ignoring things. You should probably ignore that AI doomer take. Unless you consumed every Internet doomer take in the late 90s. In which case, you've learnt nothing, go right ahead.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

This was lovely. And as a fellow writer who still writes the old fashioned way, it hits home.

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Reposted by Cedric Chin

Justin Fagnani @justinfagnani.com · 13/02/2026

Also, this Brian Eno quote has been really stuck in my head for weeks: "The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement. ... the question then is, "Of all the things you can now do, which do you choose to do?""

The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement.

With Cubase or Photoshop, anybody can actually do anything, and you can make stuff that sounds very much like stuff you’d hear on the radio, or looks very much like anything you see in magazines.

So the question becomes not whether you can do it or not, because any drudge can do it if they’re prepared to sit in front of the computer for a few days, the question then is, "Of all the things you can now do, which do you choose to do? "

--Brian Eno

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Was a pleasant surprise when I heard Michael Helbling call out Commoncog as a really great place to build business acumen: "If you're in a role where you're trying to ramp up on your business acumen, Commoncog might be a great resource to leverage."

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

I was asked recently how I find and keep business mentors. I realise that my essay on this topic is now four (!!!) years old. At this point I know more than a handful of senior folks who have shared this repeatedly with junior people. And it's a REALLY simple protocol.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

A week ago I subjected 9000+ subscribers to the most Singlish that I've ever put into a Commoncog essay. 🤪 This piece talks about an under-examined trait: 'being commercial'. You know how some folks are very good at making money? Yeah, that.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

What has Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said about how to read biography? (Or Value Line numbers? Or annual reports?) Yesterday, I published a thing about learning from case studies WITHOUT survivorship bias. I cited Munger and Buffett, natch.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Here are two big contradictions about reading business history: 1. Survivorship bias is a problem when reading history, especially business history. 2. Famous investors and businesspeople tell you to read lots of business history. So ... how do you reconcile this?

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Over the course of 2025 we published a series on Asian Tycoons. At the end of last year, we finally arrived at what is my favourite case of the entire series. This was about Singaporean tycoon Kwek Leng Beng, who bought New York's Plaza Hotel from a distressed Donald Trump.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Pattern that I've noticed for a few years now: if a founder in the Singapore context opines about the Singaporean 'startup ecosystem' (usually on LinkedIn, usually very loudly because it gets attention) it is almost guaranteed said founder will fail. Sad but true.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

How can we test theories of accelerated expertise in business? Last year, we ran an experimental course called Speedrunning the Idea Maze. It was an excuse to test many things, but it was also an excuse to test two remarkable learning theories. Here's what we learnt.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

The “Idea Maze” is a delightfully useless idea. In 2024, I wrote a somewhat controversial essay about it that now ranks in the number 1 or 2 spot on Google for the phrase 'Idea Maze'. Folks like to think that there's a 'method' to finding PMF. They're mostly wrong.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Useful model: when reading an opinion piece / listening to a podcast, ask yourself how the expressed opinion is self-soothing for the person. Folks cannot express opinions that make them uncomfortable. They will follow up with a hedge if so. Gives you a new way to read them.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Jeff Bezos wanted to go to space, which requires money, so he started Amazon.com and ran it for 27 years to get rich. He now runs a rocket company, which he funds with periodic sales of his Amazon stock. He's also been to space. Generalised life advice is tricky.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

The frame that I like the most about open source business models was from the CTO of a major open source startup (one that’s name brand famous) who, in Commoncog’s forums, argued that OSS businesses are exactly backwards. I thought that OSS = better distribution …

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

There are certain things in business you DON'T want to learn by doing. You want to learn them by reading instead. This week’s Commoncog essay is about exactly this odd phenomenon. It was sparked by a conversation that I had on Twitter:

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

This is a bit of a small TAM interview, but I was on @kchongl's podcast a month ago talking about business, Asian tycoons, and entrepreneurship in Singapore. This interview was just released a week or so ago; here are a few thoughts on what we covered.

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Cedric Chin @cedricchin.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

This seems to have spread through word of mouth, so I think I should give this a boost. Over the past 3 years or so, I've seen a number of "what to do about AI posts". Most of them are bad, because they are built around a flawed idea: that you have to predict the future to act.

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