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How pressing, playing the odds, and driving results changes the game.

This category covers issues in business and strategy for entrepreneurs, SMEs and large corporations.

For small companies, awkwardness is an oft unappreciated asset.

Which rituals for business would remind us of what matters most?

Seeking innovation in only new places means giving up on the value and principles intrinsic in old technologies.

Innovation gets an awful lot of attention these days. But most of the fanfare is focused on starting new things. What about finishing? Who’s got that job?

Before moving on to a review of John Ruskin’s book, On Art and Life, there’s one more bit to synthesize from the first two (here and here). Trouble is, I’m not sure how to…

After finishing New World, New Mind I was convinced of two things. First, more attention is needed around staging our thinking processes. Second, the authors didn’t had no idea how to do it.

So, while Cuban waves tickled…

Our ability to understand issues is increasing exponentially but our mental hardwiring isn’t being upgraded. We understand more every day but instinctively respond to events like monkeys.

I keep running into amazing people. Each one stuck in a job that uses a tiny part of what they’re great at. Here’s a plan to use a bit more.

Here’s an unsolved riddle: How do we get the minds of widely dispersed, brilliant people to focus on critical problems/opportunities? How do we synchronize greatness?

Dave Pollard brought this up a few days ago. He writes:

“……

I’ve been working, since the canoe trip this summer, to refine a few of the most important pieces I’ve written about on this site. These ideas are important to me as I seek to understand both my way forward and…

When you dream of an ideal space to do what you do best, what does it look like, sound like, and feel like?

Time away brings introspection.

Long hours in a canoe give lots of room for thought.

While I sort through those ideas – here is a compilation of favourite ideas from the past. It’s a series of posts about purpose,…

A good friend and I were chatting about personal branding, it started with the regular hoopla: posture, piercings, language, work ethic, body odour, etc. Gradually we got to talking about how we perceive ourselves and how we each perceive the…

Eccentricity comes from the Greek phrase “to prick”. I dream of working with eccentric people that dance within chaos and fragmentation.

Retro post: Revised based on “Look!” from November 30, 2004.

John Oliver (past President of DowElanco Canada Inc., a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Eli Lillys), once told me what he looks at when considering novel products.…

Action is directed by ideas. Action realizes what thinking has designed.

The difference between success and obscurity is self-knowing.

Here’s a list of pages I’ve cruised by lately that seemed to merit another peek. Mostly a list of pages I want to get back to, but may be of interest to others too.

Flickr: Scaling Fast and Cheap —…

To see further, stand on giants.

I’ve hit a snag with the Foundation Series. It reads like crap.

I’m still wobbly on what I ought to say so I default to obfuscation. Orwell said it best, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”…

Eric Schwartzman recently interviewed Doc Searls.  In the chat, Doc talked about the ways he uses RSS.  Listening to that conversation I finally understood the tremendous power of RSS functionality.

Until now I’ve…

Have you heard of Christopher Alexander? I’ve written about him before (1, 2, 3).

I’m fascinated by his ideas and have yet to read a single book he’s written. But his interests in…

One needs to have a comprehensive character.

Unlike Hugh, I still check my stats fairly regularly. I enjoy it. It’s marvelous that we can own words or ideas, even if it’s just for a flicker of time. Imagine owning the two-word phrase “sift…

The first job of every entrepreneur or corporate dilettante is to know your banker.

The mistake made by entrepreneurs is assuming their key resource is ideas. And corporate-types always mistakenly assume it’s knowledge.

For entrepreneurs the key resource is…

What’s with the wheelbarrow? This is a placeholder where I want to begin to use and understand the humanity of tags.

More here.

Metatags: first derivative of thought.

Metatags are key to meta-knowledge…

[posted January 16, 2006]

Below is the purpose I had for sift when I started this experiment.

I’m still all in on those ideas but I think the purpose is quickly evolving away from purely entrepreneurs and purely business. Just…

I love conferences.

There’s no better example of how dedicated we are to ignoring everyone else. Conferences are even better than meetings because we actually pay to be there. We pay for speakers to come just so we can…

Blogs are like flashers; books are like strippers.

Blogs give only a glimpse of substance where a good book builds to full revelation. Blogs present a snapshot of an idea’s evolution; a book constructs the idea from its creation

…

One late, introspective night in early 2003, I closed my eyes and typed till done. Dave Pollard’s recent post reminded me of this note to self:

If I dream about what would make me happy or content. Satisfied.

…

Web 2.0 … first time I’ve typed out those words.

Dion Hinchcliffe finally clarifies, succinctly, why it matters:

“Web 2.0 ideas [are] successful because they effectively put people back into the technological equation … [it] fundamentally revolves

…

What’s with the wheelbarrow? This is a placeholder where I want to begin to use and understand the humanity of tags.

Metatags: first derivative of thought.

Metatags are key to meta-knowledge

Clay Shirky: “Taggers are…

Back to perfect, one million one-dollar products vs. one million dollar products, and all these entail:

- the kind of client

- the kind of product

- the kind of work

- the kind of peers

- etc.

In…

Love this stuff.

Ever hear of the The Ad Lib Game Development Society (ALGDS)? The ideas behind it go anywhere. ALGDS is an attempt to rapidly gain experience which is usually hard-won and takes tonnes of time…

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed.

Kottke writes:

“… can we have a discussion about where technology and user experience on the web are headed without using any of the following words or concepts:

Ajax, web services, weblogs, Google, del.icio.us, Flickr, folksonomy, tags, hacks,

…

Stuck in a rut? Maybe these ideas will shake you loose.

(via Business Opportunities Blog)

I’ve been given several great career options recently. Two were particularly fetching:

1. Stay in government but raise the game to another level — Start helping the highest level bureaucrats identify, learn about, and build strategies on long-range issues facing…

43 Folders has an excerpt of an interview with Brian Eno.

“Brian Eno … on the creation of “The Microsoft Sound” (the gentle little tune that plays when you boot your Windows PC):

…

via loic le meur blog

That’s what’s on the mind of Jeff Bezos:

Execution.

Success is almost completely defined by execution. Too many ideas and too few actions. The trick is execution of the right things.

I love used bookstores; the messier the better. The owner can’t possibly know the value of all the books when they’re piled willy-nilly around the joint. I feel like a thief, pawing through the dark corners, earnestly listening for the…

It’s funny, improv is teaching us to be ourselves. I think, at its core, it’s a method for freeing ourselves from the straight jackets we’ve been taught to wear in various social settings. It frees us up to collaborate, persuade,…

This is fun stuff. Olivier Toubia, a Ph.D. candidate at the Marketing Group (MIT) has an article on Idea Generation, Creativity, and Incentives.

He writes:

“Idea generation is critical … However, there has been relatively little formal research

…

Brian Scudamore, CEO of 1-800 Got Junk?, on his his company’s success (two franchises in 1997 to 152 today; expects revenue of $72 million this year, nearly double last year and 30 times higher than revenue from 2000):…

Every few years there comes a moment where technology reaches into my life and shakes my brain. Today is one of those days.

I am sprawled out on my coach with a Tablet PC perched on my lap. Hugh Mcleod…

I’ve been poking at sift for the last month or two. I’ve been wondering what this blog’s for. Not because I doubt the value of what all this is about. Nor do I question my interest in this work. I’m…

Yesterday I laid out Brad Feld’s/Chris Wand’s 13 questions for entrepreneurs and said they would lay the groundwork for a ripping good pitch. Trouble is, once you do that work, all you really get is a ripping big…

While I’m busy fooling around with book lists, Dave Pollard’s dropping gems. He’s not only framed-up my initial idea but already started putting on the drywall. I guess that’s what you get for sharing ideas with bright guys.…

One of my friends is a teacher. He’s told me many times that the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else. Well I want to learn to do a 60-second pitch, so here goes.

Over…

Update: Dr. Ronald S. Burt from the University of Chicago backs up everything written here and adds his idea about “structural holes” — the notion that people can find opportunities for creative thinking where there is…

What’s with the wheelbarrow?

Related to metatags are memes.

Definition

From Wikipedia:

“Meme, (rhymes with “cream” and comes from Greek root with the meaning of memory and its derivative “mimeme”), is the

…

On the heels of my heartfelt yop – Frickin’ amazing vs. the long tail – as if guided by benevolent deities, I found “What really works.” With bemused resignation I note the publication date of July 2003 –…

Oh hey, this looks pretty good! Aggregation a la PEI.

Robert Paterson and Jevon MacDonald have started Marketing Filter and it has the promise of being an helpful sift technology.

Some interesting points are raised in…

When I started sift I was working with two entrepreneurs that seemed to be working about 12 hours daily.

Being so busy, these guys weren’t able to keep up with the massive amount of information available to them. My…

About 100 people (give or take 50) read this blog everyday. And I don’t have a clue what you’re coming here to see.

Outside of John Husband, Kevin, Alan, Evelyn Rodriguez, John Jantsch (only because I poked fun of him),…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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

…

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 …”…

Make the pool bigger. Look out, not in. Look in the dark, not the light.

Hugh McLeod writes a hopeful piece about the future of corporate blogging:

We want the corporate tipping point to arrive for two main reasons:

1. It validates those of us who got in there early … in the

…

John Moore at Brand Autopsy (love that photo) has a great post today: Peddling the Soup Peddler. This is the type of post I’d like to emulate in the future.

Ingredients for the soup post:

·

…

I’ve been pondering the relationship between entrepreneurs/young companies and the ideas presented in James Surowiecki’s, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Malcolm Gladwell’s, Blink. Without further synthesis, I’d argue there isn’t one.

Sir Francis…

I haven’t been blogging long, but throughout these novice days I’ve picked some of the fads of the craft. One is: Blog it once and never revise it.

I understand why you wouldn’t want liberal revision. Changing the blog threatens…

I’ve been reading a fabricated debate at Slate between James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, and Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink. I’ll be revising this post, I wanted to get it up…

One of my clients helps people make career decisions and he’s great at it. He’s also a great entrepreneur. A few years ago he was a top 40 under 40 entrepreneur.

Two nights ago we were draining glasses in…

I’ve been reading Human Action by Ludwig von Mises. He makes two important points: action is preceded by thinking and only individuals think. This is important because economists don’t understand individuals.

When I was in university I used to love swinging by this guy’s site: Analog Cereal. He was on this quest to “party like a rock star”. I’ve never wanted to be a rock star – but the…

My name is Jeremy Heigh. I am a husband, father, son, brother, friend, reader, thinker, economist, investor, gamer, artist, writer, and young man.

I liked school and have three degrees. The last is an M.Sc. in environmental economics. I enjoy…