Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship & Leadership’ Category
All Rise or A Standing Ovation
Monday, February 13th, 2012Last week I decided it was time for a major change in my working lifestyle. This weekend I made it happen. I spent the entire weekend offline, tearing apart my home office and working on my solution. I now have a beautiful, modern, standing desk.
To be accurate and fair, this lifestyle change was spurred on by my wife. She’s wanted a standing desk in her office for sometime. As I looked into the benefits of such a setup, I decided that I should switch to a standing desk as well. Now, both of us have a standing desk in a home office that we share.
Do You Live to Work, Or Work to Live?
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
At my previous company, my partners and I agreed on many issues. We also disagreed on a number of issues. But perhaps the biggest area of disagreement between myself and my partners was work style.
As a consulting company, we tracked each hour of each employee’s day. We knew what they did and for how long they did it. We could calculate an employee’s total number of hours worked per year, average hours worked per day/week/month, what activities they spent most of their time focused doing, and therefore, each employee’s chargeability. That is consulting slang for how much profit we could squeeze out of each lemon employee. Read more »
The Emerging Global Brain and the Internet’s Future
Thursday, January 5th, 2012A few interesting posts and seemingly-unrelated themes have been circulating around Google Plus for the past few weeks or so. These thoughts have, I believe, been spurred on by the impending threat of the insanity of the SOPA and PIPA legislation.
I see the issues of Internet censorship, access rights, and content reuse as part of a much larger phenomenon that many people are unaware. Whereas the Internet has been a revolutionary force in humanity’s communication capabilities, facilitating numerous societal, cultural, political, and economic changes, I believe that it is the emerging evolutionary changes fueled by the accelerating growth in technology that will bring about the most radical and fundamental transformation.
Let me lead you through my thinking. Read more »
The Ecosphere And the Economy
Friday, December 9th, 2011One of the many joys I periodically experience is that aha moment of seeing connections within and between systems. As a trained scientist with a graduate degree in business, my insights often transcend the myopic blinders of those who remain oblivious to the larger connections on Earth. One such aha moment I had almost 20-years ago was that of the relationship between the economy and the ecosphere.
Life Is About Complex Adaptive Systems
What was the impetus behind this aha moment? In 1995 I read the first edition of the book, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin. It changed my perspective on humanity’s relationship to the ecosphere. Read more »
The New Garage: Bootstrapping Your Startup
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011I came across a Google Plus debate awhile back discussing what the new garage was for startups. To give you a brief background, a few famous startups actually started in a garage.
The Apple boys used Jobs’ parents’ free garage. The Google boys used a friend’s garage for free (initially). HP founders used an unattached garage that was part of the home for which they shared the rent (Dave Packard and his wife lived in the house).
Building the Social Web: the Layers of the Smartup Stack
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011<Smartups Series Part 5 of 5>
As a Social Web architect and an open source advocate I frequently write, think, and promote the notion and ideals of the Open and Social Web. My work in the areas of user-centric control (identity, privacy, data portability, and rights), federated Social Web models, future-of-money projects, and W3C standards groups has shaped my views presented here.
Soon after publishing my 4-part smartup series (almost a year ago), I began to think about key parts of what has become this article. I’ve had bits and pieces of this article jotted down in various places. Over the past three months, the ideas have coalesced into a cohesive framework. With a recent and lengthy process of helping a potential smartup try to find its foundation, I’ve been motivated to assemble, clarify, and share my views on what I call the layers of the smartup stack. Read more »
