Udemy is a platform that hosts classes, both free and paid, on a wide variety of subjects. I took the leap and took my first class. I downloaded the Udemy iPad app and used my iPad to watch the lectures. Perhaps it is a bit far-fetched to call it a class because it’s only about thirty minutes long. Short though it may be, it was certainly worth the time.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! presented this lecture while she was with Google. The brief description of the class says that “she believes that ideas for new products to develop come from everywhere—every employee, every department, from both necessity and serendipity.”

There are ten lectures in this series and they are all very, very short. I decided to reflect here on Lecture 2.

Lecture 2: Give Ideas Credit, Not Credit for Ideas

Marissa Mayer’s second lecture starts off with “share everything you can.” She says that people can do extraordinary things in an incredible open flat organization culture that allows smart motivated people to have access to a huge amount of information.

Reflecting on this for a few minutes, I began to envision a K12 school where everyone knew what was being taught and lesson plans were being shared. Let your imagination run free for a moment, and imagine that you had access and could bounce ideas around, offer and ask for help, of people outside your department. Imagine if there was a gigantic spreadsheet you could scroll down and that you were actively encouraged to contact any person and say, ‘Hey!, I would like to share some ideas with you that worked for me that you might be able to revise and use on this topic,” “Hey, I saw that you are doing such and such, and I would like to do something similar and although you work in Math and I work in World Languages, I think we could dream up some great things together.” “Hey, I see that you are about to start an exciting project and I just heard about a great Web 2.0 program that might really be awesome for what you plan to do. I’d love to work on it with  you.”

Marissa Mayer also talks about the book Art of Innovation: Lesson in Creativity from IDEO, American’s Leading Design Firm by Tom Kelley and a thought that he put forth that she shares with us is that sometimes people are so territorial and focused on controlling and getting credit for their idea that they stop thinking of new ones because they are consumed by following their idea around making sure everyone knows that they were the first to think of it.

Here is a quote from the book that I found:  “There’s something terribly liberating about applying an abundance mentality to your ideas, thinking, and work. There’s a Zen-like force here at play: The less you strive to control ideas and insist on credit for those that are yours, the more good ideas you’re likely to have—and see implemented.”

While you are watching the lectures, there is a place you can type questions, and other students can respond. There is a short description so you can quickly see the topic of that lecture, and a place for you to jot down notes.

I enjoyed this short set of lectures.