There’s a wealth of stories about what individuals learned from making mistakes, or how they recover from failures. Anyone who does not make mistakes (or admit them), will not be exposed to this expanded dimension of experience. This applies universally, regardless of sector or industry. I once had a boss who would ignore an ideaRead… Read more »
Do people ever offer you advice? How valuable is it when you request it? When unsolicited? Earlier this week I heard from an entrepreneur – he had an idea, started a company, and successfully sold it in four years. He would make a change if he did another start-up: during the planning for the start-up,Read… Read more »
Young children are legendary for asking Why? Why? Why? when seeking to learn. Adults, however, tend to simply do what’s been done before without asking – why do we do this? An experience to consider. When appointed as head of operations years ago, I suspended a dozen reports compiled by the accounting department without announcingRead… Read more »
Facebook has developed apps for business and government to make it easy to use as a channel for individuals and business/government to provide and exchange information. Does it work? Yes – but it’s not magic. Creative design and vibrant content are required. Here’s illustrations of an innovative approach – one by business and one byRead… Read more »
Initially, social media may have been thought of as just a toy for the kids. A way to keep track of what friends are up to, to share snapshots of the grand kids, to write on walls and tweet, or whatever. In the early days was some sense of a potential for business, but plentyRead… Read more »
I just participated in my first Hackathon – it focused on coding for Google Apps and we developed an automated meeting registration system. A hackathon is the gathering of a group of developers and their computers with a goal of creating something during the session. Jan Kleinert led the session and, as usual, the GoogleRead… Read more »
Makers is a future business fantasy by Cory Doctorow with the view of a society where traditional business structure has broken down and the economy is in the tank. Sound familiar – like what you read in today’s newspaper? Instead of relying on organizations to provide jobs, plan what to do and produce, and signRead… Read more »
The way we do business has changed and continues to evolve. The change and evolution, however, is not evenly distributed and is confusing about what the ‘right’ path is. When I learned to drive, the car had a ‘stick shift’ (manual transmission). As I was perfecting the skill of keeping my heel on the brake,Read… Read more »
When I talk with people in transition this is the question they are asking: will I ever work again? We are in a unique but interesting economic time. There’s the recession, of course. Even more important, however, is the confluence of advances in applying technology, coming of age of automation, and the New Normal ofRead… Read more »
When talking with a person in transition he said: While I was working, the world changed! Even before the recession this was too often the case – a shocking discovery for far too many people. Moore’s Law predicts processing speed of chips will double every 18 months, as a result the cost per computation dropsRead… Read more »