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Happy New Year!

Filed under: life — December 31, 2008

Hope you’re having a great holiday!


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Links from December 11th through December 29th

Filed under: links — December 29, 2008

Links from December 11th through December 29th:


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Links from December 1st through December 10th

Filed under: links — December 10, 2008

Links from December 1st through December 10th:


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Book: “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”

Filed under: books, business — December 8, 2008

What a great book — and difficult to review in a “cut to the chase” manner. “Innovation and Entrepreneurship“, by Peter F. Drucker, outlines a systematic approach for identifying innovation opportunities, and growing a culture of innovation within an organization. He provides a view of innovation as a style of working — a way of paying attention to, researching, and responding to key market changes.

The chapter on “Principles of Innovation” offers a nice list of Do’s and Dont’s, but this is just scratching the surface of the wisdom in this book:

Do’s:

  1. “Purposeful, systematic innovation begins with the analysis of the opportunities.”
  2. “Go out and look at the customers, the users, to see what their expectations, their values, their needs are.”
  3. “An innovation has to be simple, and it has to be focused. It should do only one things, otherwise, it confuses.”
  4. “Effective innovations start small.”
  5. “Successful innovation aims at leadership.”

Dont’s:

  1. “[Do] not try to be clever.”
  2. “Don’t diversify… don’t try to do too many things at once.”
  3. “Don’t try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!”

Here are some of the quotes I highlighted while reading:

  • “The test of an innovation… lies in its success in the marketplace.”
  • “Most of Silicon Valley are still inventors rather than innovators, still speculators rather than entrepreneurs.”
  • “Entrepreneurship… is a behavior rather than [a] personality trait.”
  • “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
  • “Entrepreneurship is ‘risky’ mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.”
  • “Anything truly new that looks big is indeed to be distrusted. The odds are heavily against its succeeding.”
  • “The organization must be… willing to perceive change as an opportunity rather than a threat.”
  • Only when people with proven performance capacity have been assigned to a project, supplied with the tools, the money, and the information they need to do the work, and given clear and unambiguous deadlines — only then do we have a plan.
  • “To render an existing business entrepreneurial, management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so.”
  • “The people responsible for an existing business will… always be tempted to postpone action on anything new, entrepreneurial, or innovative until it is too late.”
  • “A business needs only a very small share of a small market to be successful.”
  • “Failure to achieve objectives should be considered an indication that the objective is wrong, or at least defined wrongly.”
  • “The probability of success… diminishes with each successive try.” (In reference to pursuing the same idea multiple times.)
  • “One cannot do market research for something that is not yet on the market.”
  • “The new venture needs to build in systematic practices to remind itself that a ‘product’ or a ’service’ is defined by the customer, not by the producer.”
  • Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.
  • “The founder has to learn to become the leader of a team rather then a ’star’ with ‘helpers.’”
  • “A product is not ‘quality’ because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money… Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes ‘quality.’”
  • “A ‘premium’ price is always an invitation to the competitor.”
  • “Trying to satisfy everybody… always ends up satisfying nobody.”
  • “Charge for what represents ‘value’ to the customer rather then what represents ‘cost’ to the supplier.”

If you’re interested in learning how to develop a professional practice of innovation and entrepreneurial management, this is a great book to read. Sure, it’s a little dated (as Drucker’s work is going to be), but it doesn’t get in the way or dilute the message — and offers insightful business history and lessons that are still relevant today.


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Links from November 12th through December 1st

Filed under: links — December 1, 2008

Links from November 12th through December 1st:


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Links from October 17th through November 12th

Filed under: links — November 12, 2008

Links from October 17th through November 12th:


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Defining Design Thinking

Filed under: business, design, quote — October 13, 2008

“Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.”

(Via Design Thinking.)


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Links from September 19th through October 10th

Filed under: links — October 10, 2008

Links from September 19th through October 10th:


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