chapter four – my 30s
Umair Haque wrote a post for the Harvard Business Blog a couple of months ago talking about “Awesomeness”, the principal being that being Awesome will trump innovation. Personally, I prefer amazing to awesome. Being amazing… well it amazes. It leaves people with their jaw open, tweeting people, facebooking people, whatever it is, being amazing means [...]
Earlier this year, I set myself some objectives and gave my year a theme. 2009 was to be the year of “Learning to do”. I spent previous years, thinking, pontificating, learning but not really doing much. So, I told myself that by LeWeb in 2009 I wanted to have done some stuff and go to [...]
Duane over at Kashflow wrote a great blog post about SEO as a marketing strategy over at the Kashflow blog. I couldn’t agree more. His main point is summed up nicely in this bit: “Whilst free traffic (as opposed to paid-for Adwords) is highly desirable – and we certainly do well from it ourselves – [...]
There’s lots of news around Newscorp and getting Google to pay for the content on Newscorp newspapers. I don’t like is companies using Google as a scapegoat. Newscorp feels that Google should be paying for access. MSFT is talking about paying Newscorp for their content. The rationale being that perhaps this will make Google follow [...]
Two articles today got me thinking about giving stuff away to make money. First a survey on the Independent shows that on average people who admit to illegally downloading music actually spend more on music than those who claim that they never down music dishonestly. I totally buy this. People who download music illegally are [...]
Is Google wave overhyped? Maybe. Is it a wash of productivity destruction and the worst of IM and email? Maybe. *Robert Scoble seems to think this about Google Wave and a whole lot worse. But people said the same thing about Facebook, and then joined and spent hours daily on it. They said the same [...]
While watching the Apple special event from last night I was really touched when Steve Jobs thanked the 20 something year old who had donated his organs and whose Liver he was the recipient for. He encouraged everyone to be an organ donor, something I would encourage everyone to do as well. I wonder if [...]
Another day in the hospital, so while Mira sleeps and the bee showers, I write another blog post. On the way to the hospital this morning I picked up the FT and was annoyed by the cover story. Not the one about Swiss banking secrecy being amended – I don’t have enough assets in this [...]
The Bee was telling me James Walcott’s article in Vanity Fair last month about the Kindle and how Book Snobbery was at danger of extinction. I was under strict instruction that she was going to blog about it and I wasn’t allowed. Fine. I waited… and waited and waited and then said if you don’t [...]
I’m a big fan of using sporting analogies for business strategy. From Yogi Berra (“It ain’t over till it’s over” and “If you come to a fork in the road take it”) to Wayne Gretzky (“Skate where the puck is going”). So it’s no surprise that I use sports philosophies when thinking about acquisitions, mergers [...]