I mentioned in “Uncertain Times” that we are in the midst of economic and technology transitions that have vastly increased the turbulence of our environment. I have found two rules of thumb useful guides: “It may looks like a crisis but it’s only the end of an illusion.” Gerald Weinberg in Secrets of Consulting “Innovation […]
Managing Challenges: Are You Preventing, Minimizing, or Reacting Lan Liu opens his “Conversations on Leadership: Wisdom from Global Management Gurus” with an interesting anecdote. The King of Wei asked Bian Que, “You have two brothers who are doctors too. Which one of you three is the best?” Bian Que answered, “My big brother is the
Managing Challenges: Are You Preventing, Minimizing, or Reacting Read More »
To See Ourselves As Others See Us And would some Power the small gift give us To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us, Robert Burns “To a Louse“ It can be very difficult to understand how we appear to others. When I was rehearsing the “2011 New
To See Ourselves As Others See Us Read More »
In my “Maiden Voyage” post on Jul-30-2010 for my Entrepreneurial Engineer blog on EE Times I said that I would focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the broader electronic systems design ecosystem. I hoped to provide insights in the following areas: Perspective on technology innovation. 10 quotes to help you bring order out of chaos
A Recap of My 2010 Entrepreneurial Engineer Posts on EE Times Read More »
Federated entrepreneurship groups in different cities should following their own paths that leverage unique local strengths and advantages.
Federated Entrepreneurship 3: Play Your Own Game Read More »
Jeroen Bakker sent in a great list of suggestions as a follow up to last week’s “Drifting” post.
David L. Akin is the Director, SpaceSystems Laboratory at the University of Maryland. He is also the author of “Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design.” He lists more than 40 laws, here are ten that I thought were directly applicable to software entrepreneurship, but the whole list is very funny and worth reading.
Applying Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design To Startups Read More »
To ensure that conversations and requests for help were productive, Anthony Scampavia kept a question at the top of his whiteboard in his various offices at Cisco for more than a dozen years: What is the problem you are trying to solve? Here are three problems we have identified and capabilities we plan to develop
New Capabilities We Plan To Develop in 2011 Read More »
“Little by little, one travels far” J.R.R. Tolkien Theresa Shafer, one of my partners in SKMurphy, advised me recently that “most powerful insights are simple.” It was by way of encouragement to simplify and focus my blog posts. She continued her critique: “If you can’t get your point across in a hundred or two hundred
Most Powerful Insights are Simple Read More »
“We didn’t know what “the new” was. It’s kind of a hard concept because when most people talk about “the new,” they’re actually talking about it after the fact. They look back and say how brilliant you were at seeing all this, and so forth. Well, it’s all nonsense. When it is new, you don’t
Early Adopters Have Already Let Go of the Past Read More »
“Always trust your client—and cut the cards.” Weinberg’s Sixth Rule of Trust Always be collecting data. Always be collecting multiple perspectives. “Always Be Collecting Data” The rule of ABCD “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data” attributed to W. Edwards Deming Possibly a riff on “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” In
What’s your story? Entrepreneurs get asked variations of this question a lot: the most important answer is the one they tell themselves.
So…What’s Your Story? Read More »
It’s useful to think very deeply about a situation but beyond a certain level of effort or length of time you need to do some drifting and recharge. I think you need a mental circuit breaker for detecting an impasse and triggering activities that can lead to a change in perspective.
It’s rare for a new initiative to work the first time, at least when I try. I have to “walk around the problem” to look at it from different perspectives.
Take Time to Walk Around The Problem Read More »
For my first post of 2011 I commit to traveling hopefully. I was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s observation “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.”
Traveling Hopefully Read More »
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–December 2010 Read More »
I think “virtual team” is rapidly becoming redundant: just as “horseless carriage” became car I think “virtual team” will become just team. Most project teams will have a virtual component (e.g. on-line workspace, chat histories) and geographically remote members, if only to involve suppliers, partners, and customers more seamlessly. More broadly I think that virtual
Virtual and On-Line Are As Superfluous As Horseless and Electric Read More »
One of the things it took me a long time for me to get used to living in Silicon Valley was the lack of snow. Not snow that you could visit in places like Tahoe but snow that visited you. A few years have seen snow in the foothills but nothing like winter mornings in
The Snow Lay Round About, Deep and Crisp and Even Read More »
I have been thinking about different kinds of teams and team work. For example a choir has sheet music (“Let Men Their Songs Employ”) that predefines the content and timing of each person’s contribution. In a different way the script for a play outlines the content and sequence of each actor’s part.
Let Men Their Songs Employ Read More »
