We are all early adopters now. Everyone is looking for the new new thing. When someone finds the latest new new thing, technology helps everyone else find out about it and we get to decide if we want to follow along. When done right this process moves lightning fast and blockbuster products surface almost instantaneously. New products cross the chasm faster than they’ve ever crossed before. For remarkable products, the chasm has shrunk.
Despite all this progress, there remains a lack of both art and science in the field of new …

Wait for the fat pitch. That’s what great baseball hitters do. The fat pitch is one that is so juicy and perfectly served to you that you can no doubt take a swing and hit a homerun.
Fat pitches don’t come often. Life is a cunning pitcher. So good hitters don’t swing at everything. They pass on dozens of balls, take walks, and just wait for that one perfect pitch.
The point is to be selective. Every pitch that comes your way looks tempting. But just as you swing at one, it curves …

Entrepreneurship looks easy, glamorous and fun from a distance. When you’re in the thick of it, risking your name and credit, things get a little less glossy. When you’re deep in The Dip, when everything seems to be going wrong, when the world doesn’t care, you start to think about quitting. After all, you left a comfortable job with great benefits. You get no vacation days now. Everything is shipping late and costs much more to make than you anticipated. Cash flow just isn’t materializing.  Quitting seems the reasonable thing …

My first impression of Seth Godin upon meeting him was that he is an extraordinarily efficient person.  You wouldn’t think of a “creative” as efficient in the sense that a supply chain manager, hamburger flipper, accountant, or the Octomom are efficient.  But Seth conducted interviews with about thirty candidates for the SAMBA program in under three hours.  He made up his mind on who fit perfectly soon after and, it turns out, he picked an amazing group.
How amazing? That remains to be seen. Everyone in the group was so remarkable, I …

Seth said something that really boggled my mind.
“Instead of fitting the marketing to the business, fit the business to the marketing.”
“What?!?! What is he talking about?” was my initial reaction.
Turning things upside down and completely rearranging the order and relationship of things seems appropriate in times like these. Wise men throughout history have championed the art of contrary thinking as one way to develop new ideas, options, and decisions.
Instead of Marketing as an afterthought designed to fit whatever product or service you’ve already decided to create, the business you create will …

The world would be a much better place if less people tried to build startups. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we could use less entrepreneurship. Innovative entrepreneurs will pull us out of this recession more sustainably and more meaningfully than any government bureaucrat with indirect policy levers could ever do. What I am saying is that we need more people wanting to build companies, not startups. That is not a too subtle distinction.
Would-be entrepreneurs proclaim proudly how they are starting new businesses and are willing to endure many …

Today marks the 233rd birthday of the United States Marine Corps. That’s right, the Marine Corps is older than the nation itself. Organized on November 10, 1775 in Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Marines have been defending our lands since before the Declaration of Independence. I served in the Marine Corps as a basic rifleman – the most fundamental function of all Marines. Fond memories come to me November 10th of every year. It was in the Corps that I learned about leadership. I learned the true meaning of teamwork, not …

I don’t get things right as much as I’d like when it comes to the market but my Latticework Linkfest back in late February was spot on:
In times of recession, when unemployment is high, the unemployed go back to school to add marketable skills and increase future earnings power. The leading companies in for-profit education include Strayer Education (STRA), DeVry (DV), ITT Educational Services (ESI), Career Education Corporation (CECO), Capella Education (CPLA), Corinthian Colleges (COCO), and industry giant Apollo Group (APOL). Apollo operates the ubiquitous University of Phoenix campuses. This …

A while ago, I wrote about patent trolls and wondered about the viability of intellectual property, in the form of patents, as a liquid, tradeable, securitized asset class. I also mentioned Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures as one outfit that could drive patents toward an elevated asset class status. In a recent TechCrunch post about Myhrvold, it appears he’s gone a long way in pushing patents to become more liquid and tradeable. In summary, Intellectual Ventures has systematically acquired a patent portfolio of over 20,000 patents. In the eight years since …

A few months ago I came across a piece by Jeff Nolan, titled Incrementalism and “The New New Thing,” which struck poignantly at a raw nerve. He called attention to the incrementalism gripping Silicon Valley despite the flush amount of capital available for startups. Much of the attention and hype has surrounded social networking and Web 2.0 startups but each new entry is a slight improvement over the previous. But only discontinuous, quantum leap innovations create disproportionate value. So what’s next?
Umair Haque’s An Open Challenge to Silicon Valley put it …