Monthly Archives: May 2011
Point: Entrepreneurs in high-growth companies can influence the federal government to increase their company’s access to capital, people, and markets. Story: Accelerating high-growth entrepreneurship Background: The Startup America Partnership, an initiative launched by President Obama in 2011, seeks to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship. One step is to reduce the barriers entrepreneurs face when starting high-growth businesses. To accomplish this step, senior Obama Administration officials convened roundtables in eight US cities to hear from entrepreneurs and local leaders about what the federal government can do to help high-growth entrepreneurs. Event: Congressman Jared Polis kicked off the event, along with panelists Phil Weiser (White House National Economic Council), Don Graves (Department of Treasury & President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness), Michael Fitzpatrick (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) and local leaders like venture capitalist Brad Feld (Managing Director & Co-founder of The Foundry Group) and Kathy Rowlen, (CEO and founder, InDevR). After the … Continue reading
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore remains one of the best sources of information on how to market and sell “disruptive products to mainstream customers.” Despite being first published almost twenty years ago, the book remains on the recommended reading list for most entrepreneurs today. One of the best chapters of the book centers around targeting the point of attack and one of tools that Moore uses to prepare for this is to create what he calls ‘Sample Scenarios’. These target-customer scenarios are used in the decision-making process to help identify the target customer. In the simplest terms, these scenarios focus on a before and after ‘day in the life of a customer’ and how the new product solves a given problem. Moore proposes that the results of these scenarios (quantitative information based on a number of a different factors) be used to determine the best target market segment to … Continue reading
It took more than two years for Michelangelo to carve his famed David, but now you can have a mini-masterpiece of your own in a matter of moments. A group called blablabLAB has created a small kiosk in the heart of Barcelona’s La Rambla pedestrian mall where, if you will just stand still briefly, a machine will complete a 3D scan of your whole body before producing a statuette replica of your chosen pose. Cleverly, the whole thing isn’t just fun – in the instant that you pose for your scan, and afterwards when your statue is complete, it makes you part of La Rambla by transforming you into one of the many human statues that line the mall. Participation. A magic moment. A lasting memory. A keepsake you can’t help but love. Brilliant. Image Source: Rebelart.net Don’t miss an article (2,700+) – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join … Continue reading
From the outside, looking in at innovative firms, it seems that the innovators must be fantastically insightful, smart and rapid responders. After all, innovation requires that someone or some team spot a great new opportunity, create a product or service to fill the gap, and arrive in the market with the solution before anyone else, yet not too early. What is it that good innovators know that you don’t? Perhaps it’s easier to answer this question by examining what they’ve learned. First, they’ve learned that interesting, valuable innovation comes from cues and signals on the adjacency of their markets or businesses. Good innovators combine ideas from the edges of their markets and industries, introducing new ideas and new concepts. Second, they’ve learned that a lot of ideas that seem very valuable are often misguided or just plain wrong. What they’ve learned from those experiences is that one …
Yesterday I wrote about how innovation requires courage. It takes guts and vision to do something that is so remarkable, that it changes everything. Here then, is a great example. Innovation in the gaming industry is hard to come by. Games haven’t changed much in the last decade. The only noticeable different take on games was introduced by one of my favorite gaming studios, Rockstar Games, the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series and the recent Red Dead Redemption. They introduced games with free roaming worlds and great story telling, approaches that have been adopted by various game studios and applied to other genres with great success. And now, with the recently released L.A. Noire, they’ve topped themselves once more. Video game developers have been making realistic cars and buildings for years, but L.A. Noire is set to take facial realism to the next level. Games will never be … Continue reading
A while back I wrote a blog about resilience being one of the most important qualities for today’s leaders. A number of readers agreed with me, and one went on to point out another very important leadership trait that often gets overlooked – empathy. Most people don’t associate the word “empathy” with effective leadership. Business leaders are supposed to be tough, hard-driving visionaries who set a firm course for the company and then lead people in that direction with their charisma and force of personality, right? Maybe in the old “command and control” leadership model. Not so much in the new. Today’s leaders need a slightly different approach if they want to inspire and engage their followers. They still need the visionary and strategic direction setting skills. And they need empathy if they want to enlist others in achieving objectives. So what is empathy and why is it so important? … Continue reading
