Yes, you could have done that after you have seen it done. We get that benefit today watching how people put together solutions by benchmarking what others do first. The Egg of Columbus story where Columbus challenges his mocking critics to make an egg stand on its end highlights the perception of others’ success. If youContinue reading “The Egg of Columbus”
Tag Archives: Entrepreneurship
This is More Productive
“It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – Which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.” ~ Peter Drucker I am a sucker for solving problems. And I have to take heed to the wisdom in this quote. Which one makes more impact? A new opportunity or anContinue reading “This is More Productive”
Technology Darwinism
Automattic, the makers of this blogging platform, WordPress, bought Tumblr for less than 2% of it’s previous acquisition price of $1.1B. The hype has died with another platform. And technology darwinism, survival of the fittest, the tried and true, is brutally pervasive. Social can make you feel like something is happening. But, it’s hard toContinue reading “Technology Darwinism”
Be a Lateral Thinker
When we are buried in the details of our work, it’s hard to look around and see connections to worlds outside ourselves. We can be talking to the same people within our crowd, read the same blogs, and look at the world through a myopic lens. Some of the big ideas of today such asContinue reading “Be a Lateral Thinker”
Don’t Do Grand Openings
I don’t do grand openings. If you have an idea, skills and the hard work to persist, simply get your first customers and start serving them. This idea that we are anything special out in the marketplace of hundreds of thousands of options is absurd. You have to earn that over time from learning, iteratingContinue reading “Don’t Do Grand Openings”
Don’t Be Original
The romantic idea of creating something innovative and new can get us sidetracked quickly in entrepreneurship. There are 28 million small businesses in the United States as of this writing. You are competing with all those businesses, minds and offerings. The likelihood of being original is difficult against such staggering numbers! Think about how youContinue reading “Don’t Be Original”
Pick Two Types of Service
The temptation for businesses, especially after they have success, is to overreach. You have the choice of price, quality and service as your focal points in the marketplace. But you can only have two. We are tempted to be all three. But we live in a world of natural trade-offs. Part of being in businessContinue reading “Pick Two Types of Service”
The Purpose of an Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs are heroes in our society. They fail for the rest of us. ~ Nassim Taleb Yes, entrepreneurs are indeed heroes. Ultimately, entrepreneurs are about initiative and responsibility for risk. However, at a fundamental level, entrepreneurs are problem solvers. They own the difficult problems others are reluctant to carry. There are a sea of ambiguousContinue reading “The Purpose of an Entrepreneur”
Trust, But Verify
If you want to grow your business, you have to have good people to delegate functional work to. Otherwise, you become the bottleneck and risk making customers unhappy. Many years ago, I remember learning the lesson of delegation early while working an engineering project. I had a designer working on new revisions for drawings ofContinue reading “Trust, But Verify”
Eliminate Meaningless Work
We can laugh at the paper shuffling reference as a bygone era, however, you would not be hard-pressed to see manual processes still being run today. Regardless of the efficiencies, cost-savings and better customer experience of digitization, old habits can die hard, especially in businesses. Never mind if your livelihood depends on such inefficiencies. InnovatingContinue reading “Eliminate Meaningless Work”