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For impact investment to thrive, the castle needs a foundation.

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.

To enjoy consistently superior performance, you need to know where to focus your practice.

Strategic fit, between the character of place and local industries, increases investment success.

For small companies, awkwardness is an oft unappreciated asset.

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

Small businesses, gazelles, and large corporations all face enormous pressure to grow. This pressure exists whether or not growth is a good idea.

How the character of place influences and shapes everything it makes.

When we build tools for decision-makers, we follow two intentions: Build simple tools and honor complexity.

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The best writers arc their stories to intriguing and unexpected ends. Can we arc businesses too?

Within my small circle of aquaintences, Blue Ocean Strategy is popular again. Reading it through for the third time (the last time was more than a year ago), the book is so smooth and so rich compared to the business …

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 say this best. …

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 the beach, …

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.

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:

“… we don’t need …

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, perfection, …

As investors we ask a lot of questions. It’s the part of the job I enjoy the most.

I’ve always been attracted to important questions … this work has cemented that interest.

Here’s a question I found a while ago. …

Retro post: No. 99

Philip Pullman in the Guardian:

“It’s when we do this foolish, time-consuming, romantic, quixotic, childlike thing called play that we are most practical, most useful, and most firmly grounded in reality, because the world itself is

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Answer both of these questions based on intuition alone. Who’s going to win the NFL playoffs this year? What is the future of your company? Bet you’re ready to answer both but only willing to put one answer on the …

Retro post #91

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 …

There’s an unobservable line between ambition and growth. Where movement can be too early, just right, or too late. When does growth stop and stagnation take over? When is a switch premature?

I don’t think the answer is outside us. …

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.

There’s been a big dust up between Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, and Werner Vogel (CTO Amazon).

The hubbub brings to a point several interesting dynamics:

1. Bloggers are entrepreneurs unable to strategically quantify their intuition (and that’s fine).…

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble are bloggers, the increasingly influential authors of the book Naked Conversations, and now speakers rising in popularity. Recently they were invited to join a caravan of blog-savvy evangelists (Seth Godin at Google, …

Christopher Alexander in an interview with Kenneth Baker:

“If you start something, you must have a vision of the thing which arises from your instinct about preserving and enhancing what is there. … If you’re working correctly, the feeling doesn’t

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[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 …

Strategy is a mindful, present response to hope.

The difference between hope and strategy: hope is a prerequisite to strategy but not a sufficient condition. Action is also required but also insufficient. The equation must also include understanding and for …

Past, present, future: What of strategy?

The only moment for color, joy, love, and grace is now.

Whilst lolling despondently on the sofa: “When will I start doing the things I am great at? I keep doing things that help me be greater.”

Good friend in from old places: “Maybe guys like you just keep growing and …

Compiling a list of lessons, this post presents a series of parables on entrepreneurism, perfect-for-purpose, and peerless innovation.

The consequence of absolute understanding? Perfect expression. Graceful execution.

A gracefully executed work has no peer.

I used to plant trees in the summer to put myself through university. It’s tough work but it pays well.

Tree planting is one of those few jobs that are so hard, so miserable, and so deeply testing that those …

A friend just handed me a chapter from Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline. In it Peter writes:

“At one of our recent programs, I talked to a manger who has worked in both U.S. and Japanese firms.

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I know I’ve been giving Dave Pollard props; but the guy does good work.

Today he has another piece I like. Today he’s describing four types of innovation and overlays it with the methodology from Blue Ocean Strategy.…

Just found an article at HBS that compliments the things I said earlier today.

Part of the strategy for small niche businesses: leverage the capabilities of other players in your niche.…

Last Fall I bought a copy of Seed magazine to read their piece on Revolutionary Minds: 18 icons and iconoclasts who are redefining science. The story on mathematician, Erik Demaine, tattooed itself on my mind and I’ve thought …

Below is a review of a new book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.

I’ve got a question, when sharks come to your blue ocean, …

Just finished reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

I enjoyed the book. One of the entrepreneurs I work with, the career coach, is already well …

The good part of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

The best part of the book is their Strategy Canvas. That paradigm alone is worth the …

Reviewing Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

Here’s the bad:

The authors forget (or ignore) something fundamental to business — all great innovations are copied. A …

Great thought by Rob at Business Pundit.

Opportunity Science: in an age of increasing competitiveness, falling barriers to entry and ever increasing business opportunities, the advantage will lie with the companies that pick the best opportunities to pursue — …

Ok, I’m back.

During the break — in between changing diapers, burping babies and battling a wicked cold, I’ve been thinking about this blog. What’s it for? Who cares? What now?

I asked a few months ago who was reading …

We used a labour coach. Maybe your company needs one too?

I love design, even if my vanilla background and black text don’t prove it. In grade five I discovered that Ms. Faulkner gave A’s for illustrated stories and B’s for the plain text version. By 13 I knew that ladies …

Having caught their attention with the 60-second pitch, you immediately followed with the 5-minute version and now you’re invited to do a full-blast presentation. How to?

Again, Bill Joss and Fast Company nail down next steps.

Before you get to

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An aggregated, curated list of business books.

I’m on the hunt for guidance on the all important, little exercised art of 60-second pitching. Yesterday’s initial landscape got me started but I still need to put the pitch together.

In June of last year Brad Feld scooped from …

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 – if I …

Brad, at Feld Thoughts, writes about the importance of business measures. I’m glad he did because it confirms some recent suspicions I’ve been having.

Let’s compare three of my favourite entrepreneurs. The first is a lawyer who loves …

“Why are you choosing this?”

That’s such a gorgeous question.

It’s complete answer either reveals:

- all the information included in decision making,
- the criteria by which choices are being made,
- the rank of alternative paths to action,…

A few days ago I shared supper with the CEO and one of the executives of a small company here in town.

The executive asked me to join them and discuss their company’s strategy — they’re navigating through a growth …

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 …

Be amazing and make up for it – hire people that fill in your gaps.

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.…

I’m re-reading Edward O. Wilson’s book, Consilience. He describes the biological conception of scale that I tried to illustrate below. He breaks up the magnitude of action by space and time. So, for example, brain synapses are minute, ultra-fast, …