While catch­ing up on post­ings from the var­i­ous blogs I read reg­u­larly, I came across an entry by Seth Godin about the cycles through which busi­ness and indus­try move. He used Singer Sewing Machines as an exam­ple remind­ing his read­ers of the suc­cess Singer Co. for­merly enjoyed and the rel­a­tive decline of the company’s sig­nif­i­cance in the national econ­omy. The rise and fall of eco­nomic and cor­po­rate sig­nif­i­cance for the com­pany effec­tively mapped its cycle. He ended his post with the fol­low­ing state­ment: “The best mar­ket­ing strat­egy is to destroy your indus­try before your com­pe­ti­tion does.”

A fas­ci­nat­ing point worth fur­ther reflec­tion. One that reminded me of some­thing one of my col­leagues in grad school said when in a group cri­tique ses­sion. There was often an air of dis­com­fort dur­ing these crit ses­sions as for­ward asser­tions about another’s work appeared to be cul­tur­ally con­tro­ver­sial; stu­dents seemed to feel that we were all emo­tion­ally attached to our work so to cri­tique a colleague’s work was to cri­tique the col­league. The notion of con­struc­tive crit­i­cism to cat­alyze design devel­op­ment seemed beyond my peers so these ses­sions often seemed futile. But one spring after­noon, one of the more out­spo­ken stu­dents said he felt it was impor­tant to learn to “kill your dar­lings.” He con­tin­ued by explain­ing that one must become emo­tion­ally dis­en­gaged from their work, enough to carry it through an ever mov­ing evo­lu­tion­ary process. He con­tin­ued by remind­ing us that it was impor­tant not to become too attached to a sin­gle idea or iter­a­tion and to allow the design process to flow.

Both impor­tant points about a theme — do not get too attached to an idea, prod­uct, iter­a­tion or state of being. Leave room for growth, learn­ing, change and evolution.