When I was in graduate school I read an article describing the innovation methods of a successful entrepreneur. He keeps a hate list. It’s a list of everything he and his friends hate with all the violence of a bang-your-knuckles-when-your-wrench-slips …

Two days ago I sat down for lunch with a new friend. He recently gave up a secure job for a chance to do something new and more challenging.

He’s has a lot more experience than me in almost every …

Found on Bnoopy: a discussion of the Scotsdale Paradox.

Scotsdale was a high ranking US officer captured and imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

He said the first to die in the prison were the optimists. They died of …

In the comments Evelyn Rodriguez writes of her decision “to write more stories and read more stories and put most biz books on the back-burner.” She’s been writing about this theme often lately, see here, here, and here…

Poor writing is traditionally the plague of academia. So glory is due Gal Zauberman (University of North Carolina) and John Lynch Jr. (Duke University) for a great problem statement: When “Yes” is eventually followed by “Damn!”

Zauberman and Lynch are …

Cluetrain Manifesto, David Weinburger:

“We don’t need more information. We don’t need better information. We don’t need automatically filtered and summarized information. We need understanding. We desperately want to understand what’s going on in our business, in our

I watched this video clip a few minutes ago and immediately decided it is important. It just isn’t clear why.

Here’s where I’m at so far:

This guy, James Jones, has made a triple play on valuable of information.

Nailing …

Great find by Johnnie Moore, John Kay’s article on Obliquity is excellent. Kay writes that goals are often best achieved when pursued indirectly – this is the idea of obliquity.

Like Johnnie it reminds me of a sports metaphor.…

Mistakes teach more than success.

Counterintuitive? Experimentation means being willing to make mistakes. When I am willing to be wrong, I am free to explore unlikely alternatives. Alternatives are key to solving difficult problems.

Imagine a scientist afraid to make …

Andrew Phelps has a great idea. B-Side games. The idea is to package experimental games in the same boxes as the already popular. It’s an effort to drive innovation and fringe seeking. While I like that idea, I’m really interested …

A man of science doesn’t discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
– Alfred North Whitehead

I spend a large part of each day getting information for other people. The requests come in a …

So, this sells.

It sells not just because TED is cool but getting to see that guy and see TED and see the people raving is way more persuasive than reading about it. How expensive could it be to …

I’ve worked with several entrepreneurs. It surprised me to realize how few of them write well.

Writing well would come in handy on a blog – of course. But writing emails, presentations, proposals, and business plans each require a steady …

I followed the crowd of slavering Hugh fans to Creating Passionate Users cause, you know, I want to be cool too.

Blind enthusiasm is being replaced by a healthy criticism of Hugh’s, and now Kathy’s, arguments. Headlines like “The …

There are at least two ways to effect change.

One is to complain liberally and bitterly until the rest of us can’t stand it and the move is made. Many bloggers live here.

Another is to criticize by creating (Michelangelo).…

Excellent post by Dave Pollard answering parts of my question to Hugh.

Dave writes that business will embrace blogs when they 1) get buy-in from the top and 2) have no choice. Buy-in will happen when a) blogs are …

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. One of this year’s winners:

Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid

An interesting comment by Jon about architecture. He was writing about how to use blogs in a corporation and after explaining how he’d introduce them he said, “I’d then consider using blogs in an intelligently architected way …”

Intelligently architected. …

Hugh has a good post on the “ignorance premium.” He’s arguing that the fat bank of ignorance marketing is shrinking as other economies come online. I’d say he’s bang-on. This ticket is losing value – but I doubt …

Christopher Alexander just finished publishing a galloping 2,000 plus page treatise on design and living structures. There’s a small interview with him here.

Take away message: Uniqueness balances repetition.

Alexander talks about a tree full of leaves that is …

Today’s National Post reports that half of Canada’s 2.5 million entrepreneurs are hoping to retire in the next 15 years. A whopping 500,000 plan to retire in the next five years.

That’s nearly half of Canada’s small business owners and …