You Must Be Mistaken
It’s easy to tell someone that they are mistaken or wrong. It rarely encourages teamwork or useful dialog.
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Rules of Thumb
Innovation Needs Starvation, Pressure, and a New Perspective
Successful innovation results when entrepreneurs manage their own shortcomings, find a problem they care about, and approach it from different angles with small safe-to-fail experiments.
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Distant Early Warning Signs of Market Disruption
Disruption is caused by the new business models an innovation enables. A disruptive innovation can be hard to spot because competitors can offer a different value proposition, not necessarily a better one.
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Deprecating Facebook
I have decided that deprecating Facebook, migrating off of it as a social network, is the most prudent response to a series of actions by management. Because my decision is based on a lack of trust of the current leadership I will revisit it every six months or so to see if things have changed sufficiently
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Jack of All Trades
It’s easier to become very good at two or three things than the best at one specific thing: this “Jack of all Trades” strategy applies both for career and entrepreneurial endeavors.
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Common Mistakes in New Product Introduction Demos
A baker’s dozen of common mistakes that I have seen founders make preparing and delivering new product introduction demos and presentations.
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Self-Mastery, Expertise, Connections, and Perseverance
Four keys to success in any career, but especially as an entrepreneur, are: self-mastery, expertise, connections, and perseverance.
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Cost Effective Approaches to Trademarks
We had a situation earlier this week where a potential competitor started to use the name of a client’s service for a similar offering. Fortunately the client had registered the trademark it last year and we were able to politely bring this to the incipient competitor’s attention. They have notified us that they will stop
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Be Wary of Relying on a Ramjet For Early Growth
Be wary of relying on a ramjet For early growth, no startup starts growing on day one without effort by rolling down hill.
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Real Business Planning Example: Re-Scheduling a Workshop
An actual situation of a business planning example with decisions that are similar to what many entrepreneurs have to make.
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Inspiration From Ecclesiastes For Bootstrappers
Three selections from the book of Ecclesiastes using the New Jerusalem Bible translation. Chapter 3 from the Ecclesiastes–popularized in the Byrds version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!“–begins with “There is a season for everything, and a time for every occupation under heaven:” but I think 3:3 A time for tears, a time for laughter, a time
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Are You Building An Expertise Driven Startup?
An expertise driven startup relies on know-how or procedural knowledge accumulated by the founders to differentiate their product or service.
Are You Building An Expertise Driven Startup? Read More »
The Business is Everyone’s Business (Part 2)
To grow the business founders must assess the task relevant maturity of each employee’s experience with a particular task to manage them effectively.
The Business is Everyone’s Business (Part 2) Read More »
Listening to Customers
Jensen Huang: “Sometimes you have to ignore your customers and follow Moore’s Law.” But acknowledging Moore’s Law is listening to customers.
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Use Wikis for Team Projects
Wikis dissolve voice and authorship. Use them where there are rewards and incentives at a team level, where a team is being held accountable for a result. Blogs and forums preserve voice and authorship. Use them where knowing who said what is important. Start with frequently updated information that is also frequently accessed: Meeting agendas
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I Don’t Understand, We Won the Argument, Why Didn’t We Win The Sale?
It’s Rare That You Are Actually Bringing Fire To The Savages If you think you are so much smarter than your customers that you are “bringing fire to the savages” you will find it hard to learn from them and hard to actually close deals. What follows are three true stories. We Won The Argument,
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Sustaining Is More Important Than Starting
Bootstrappers are well served to focus on recurring revenue and charging early: sustaining is more important than starting.
Sustaining Is More Important Than Starting Read More »
Lindsay Robertson Do’s and Don’ts for On-Line Publicity
Lindsay Robertson Do’s and Don’ts for On-Line Publicity Great post by Lindsay Robertson on “The Do’s and Don’ts of Online Publicity, For Some Reason” where she lists nine rules of thumb for getting publicity. Here were my top three from here list, but read the whole thing piece: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE means FOR IMMEDIATE DELETE
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SKMurphy Featured In Case Study For Central Desktop
We were featured in a case study for Central Desktop. Compared to emailing Word files we felt Central Desktop made us at least 5 times more productive, especially in making reaching consensus on a project approaching a deadline.
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Quotes for Entrepreneurs – December 2009
You can follow @skmurphy to get these quotes for entrepreneurs hot off the mojo wire or wait until the end of the month when they are collected on the blog. Enter your E-mail if you would like new blog posts to your inbox.
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