I finally received word that I had been accepted into the beta testing program for Xobni, a tool that leverages machine learning and statistical modelling to improve the overall email experience.
Like many of you, I practically live in Outlook. Approximately 95% of my interaction with clients and colleagues (and many friends located outside Sydney) […]
My 5th Tenet of Entrepreneurship is: Ideas are WORTHLESS. I’ve had a number of debates over the years about the value of ideas. As I wrote in my original Tenets article:
Ideas are worthless. Knowing what to do with those ideas – how to implement ideas, how to monetise them, how to drive them from an […]
Here is one school of thought you’re unlikely to have heard of, but it is one that you should definitely acquaint yourself with.
TRIZ (pronounced TREEZ) is the Russian acronym for ‘Theory of Inventive Problem Solving’. It is an algorithmic (that is, process-based) approach to problem solving and innovation that eschews the notion of […]
Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurship is not grounded in random acts of inspiration.
Entrepreneurship is process-based. Certainly, there is often a “light bulb” moment of blinding insight that kick-starts an individual’s journey into entrepreneurship, but the path always follows the same, 6-step process:
Step 1. Identify an opportunity
As highlighted by Tenet […]
The first Tenet of Entrepreneurship posits that ANYONE can become an entrepreneur; that is, entrepreneurial skills, traits and tendencies are not innate, but rather are learned.
Entrepreneurial tendencies etc. are influenced by a number of factors, including:
Personal values/characteristics
It is impossible to provide a universal characterisation of the “entrepreneurial type”. Entrepreneurial […]
William Gibson, a science fiction author best known for his book Cyberpunk (in which he first coined the now familiar term “cyberspace”) wrote: “The street will find its own use for things”.
I have always taken that to mean that consumers, not manufacturers, are the final arbiters of how a technology or product will […]
Years ago I read an anecdote in a Jay Abraham book that had a formative effect on how I view innovation and opportunism. I managed to track it down:
Two men were mugged. Neither one was harmed.
Mugger No.1 took the man’s wallet and all his cash – $85. Mugger No.2 took the […]
Many years ago (2002 to be precise), I was moderator of an email discussion group called I-Entrepreneur (published by Adventive, now sadly no longer with us).
Given entrepreneurship is a subject close to my heart, I thought I’d trawl the archives for some ‘nuggets’ to re-post here, which I will do over the coming weeks.
I […]
History tells us that it is rare indeed that a single individual will come up with a totally new idea that leads to innovation (even Newton is purported to have needed a bit of help in the form of an apple). Innovation is more likely to arise from the recombination of existing ideas in novel ways […]
In 2006, for the first time in 108 years of head-to-head competition, PepsiCo was worth more (in market cap terms) than The Coca-Cola Company, even though Coke still outsells Pepsi almost 2-to-1.
In 1998, Coca-Cola’s market cap was $US220 billion and the company’s stock price was trading in the high-$80s. Fast forward to 2006, and […]