Article · 10 to 15 min per post

One Useful Thing

Ethan Mollick · oneusefulthing.org Free Beginner

This is the ongoing, free version of Mollick's testing: regular posts that run real experiments and show the results, good and bad. It keeps you current without drowning you in hype, because each piece is grounded in something he actually tried. A good habit is to read it before you form a strong opinion about a new capability.

  • Evidence from real tests beats confident predictions
  • The frontier moves fast, so revisit assumptions instead of anchoring once
  • Watch what practitioners demonstrate, not what marketing announces

The question it answers

  1. As a non-technical founder, how do I evaluate a tech-heavy trend like AI without getting fooled by hype?

Read with it

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  3. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  4. This is the canonical piece that put jobs to be done on the map, written by the people who coined it. It uses the famous... Harvard Business Review Article · ~20 min read Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done Clayton Christensen et al.
  5. Video · ~50 min How to Evaluate Startup Ideas Kevin Hale, Y Combinator
  6. Perez shows that real technological revolutions run on 50 year cycles with a predictable frenzy, a crash, and then a long... Goodreads Book · 224 pages Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Carlota Perez
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