My favorite book about creativity is If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit. I recently read Hugh Macleod’s ChangeThis manifesto called “How to be Creative,” and I think it’s as empowering as If You Want to Write. Hugh is the guy behind Gapingvoid (“cartoons drawn on the back of business [...]
Check out this excellent compilation of visualization methods called “A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.” This came to my attention via a convoluted path from BoingBoing (who thanks Mike Love) to Seth Godin to Acorn Creative. Ralph Lengler and Martin J. Eppler created it. You might also enjoy reading their paper, entitled “Towards a Periodic [...]
My prediction for Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is that it will join The Tipping Point and Built to Last as a must-read for business people. The book explains why some ideas stick and some don’t--and I’ve been on both sides of this equation. A warning though: If you read [...]
Talk about unintended consequences, all I wanted to do with “A Review of My First Year of Blogging” was provide some factoids about my blog. However, this tidbit became quite the topic: Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve tried several times during [...]
The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven. The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes. People with [...]
Matthew E. May is the author of The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation. He has held a key advisory role with the University of Toyota for over eight years, and he is a graduate of the Wharton School and Johns Hopkins University. You can download a copy of his ChangeThis manifesto by clicking [...]
2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day. 262 posts generated 6,961 comments and 1,937 trackbacks. That’s 25 comments/post and 7 trackbacks/post. 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz. Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve [...]
For the last post of 2006, here is a funny comment from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog: The Days Before PodPhone Twas a few days past Christmas and all through the house, Vista was waiting to hear from your mouse. Jim Allchin retired and bought a nice Mac. He transferred his data and [...]
Communications coach Bert Decker just named the ten best and worst communicators of 2006. To whet your appetite, here is the ten worst list: Nancy Grace Barry Bonds Mel Gibson Ray Tillerson Lindsay, Paris, Britney, and Nicole Senator George Allen OJ Simpson Shaquille O’Neal Rosie, Katie, and Meredith George Bush Check out his ten best [...]
Here’s a New Year’s resolution for entrepreneurs: ”I will fix my pitch.“ And here’s a suggestion on how to do this written by Bill Reichert, my colleague at Garage Technology Ventures. Endless articles, books, and blogs have been written on the topic of business plan presentations and pitching to investors. In spite of this wealth [...]
Marti Nyman is “director of global innovation networks” for Best Buy. This means that his job is to find leading-edge, cool stuff for Best Buy—and yes, he gets paid to do this. Marti has held a diverse array of positions in strategic alliances, business development, mergers and acquisitions, business-unit leadership, sales and marketing, manufacturing, and [...]
In the spirit of Christmas, this entry is dedicated to the gift of giving. I’ve come across a couple of very interesting ways to change the world through philanthropy: First, Unitus. The purpose of Unitus is to fight global poverty by increasing access to microfinance. It accelerates the growth of the world’s highest-potential emerging microfinance [...]
A little known story: When I was writing Selling the Dream—How to Promote Your Product, Company, or Idea—and Make a Difference Using Everyday Evangelism, I attended the Billy Graham School of Evangelism to learn from the best. It was a very interesting experience. Some of the finest speakers that I’ve seen (and tried to copy) [...]
I added a “Recent Jobs” section to the sidebar on the right side of this blog—I know: monetization is so “Web 1.0.” :-) If you want to advertise a position in this jobs board, it’s only $49 for thirty days (this is an introductory special). I have a highly-qualified readership of people with entrepreneurial, evangelistic, [...]
Jajah will provide free global phone service between consumers in eighty countries on Christmas Day. Registered Jajah users will be able to make free calls, conference calls, scheduled calls, and text messages to anyone in the eighty countries even if the recipients are not in registered Jajah users. For example, families can use Jajah to [...]
I love vertical-markets companies and recently learned of one. Airspun, Inc. offers commercial radio airtime to bands and songwriters for the purpose of showcasing their music to genre-targeted radio listeners around the world. Here’s how it works: Bands browse sixty-second airtime slots on radio stations by genre and city. After booking their slot (at prices [...]
What’s the most inspiring story of entrepreneurship that you’ve heard in 2006? My answer does not involve two guys in a garage who sell their company to Google for $1.6 billion. No way...my answer is a woman who runs a soccer-ball factory in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her name is Aziza Mohmmand, and she told me what [...]
It’s been two years since The Art of the Start hit the streets, and I’m ready to write another book. I have some ideas, but I'd like to tap the “wisdom of the crowd” in order to ensure that it appeals to “the long tail” in this “Web 2.0” world. :-) So...I’ve created a wiki [...]
Check out this great article in the San Jose Mercury News entitled “Venture Capitalists Switch to Startups—Many Are Surprised By Type of Work.” My two favorite lines from the story are: “I had no idea of the number of details that I’d have to deal with every day...” “I used to sit and nod and [...]
Pretty soon everyone on the planet will have an iPod. My buddy John Hawbaker of Clarity (part of Plantronics) pointed out this study to me. It’s probably a good thing to read for iPod owners. I have significant hearing loss in one ear (not because of an iPod), and it’s a pain in the ass, [...]