Strategy Wins

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  snasta 1:11 am on February 28, 2015 Permalink  

  Yeah…I’m a Star Trek Geek…Leonard Nimoy passes away 

  A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

  — Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

  Dad is an engineer, 2nd graduating class of IIT Mumbai. He got me deep into tech stuff long before I knew Star Trek existed–with oscilloscopes, audio waveform generators and soldering irons laying around the house. However, when we moved to this country in 1977 watching Star Trek reruns was one of my favorite things to do. Of course as a tech guy, Spock was a favorite character.

   

  A photo posted by NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) onFeb 27, 2015 at 11:59am PST

  It was interesting to hear a former football jock on the radio, a mere kicker no less, making fun of Trekkies and sci-fi geeks on the radio tonight. It got me thinking how much science fiction has inspired the tech sector. Before Star Trek, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov inspired scientists and engineers. Star Trek, no doubt, inspired a generation of scientists and engineers–some of whom insisted that the first space shuttle be named Enterprise. As much as I love football, I do wonder if the country would be better served with a bit more science fiction on TV and a bit less NFL.

   
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  snasta 3:14 pm on February 20, 2015 Permalink  

  Performance is reality 

  “I think it’s an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises — but only performance is reality”

  Harold Geenan

   

  via my friend Cameron Herold, author of Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less.   Cameron’s Painted Picture concept is hugely valuable—a topic of a separate blog post.  Want to improve your PR?   Read Cameron’s book.   He created incredible PR at 1-800-GOT-JUNK (where he was the COO).

   
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  snasta 6:14 pm on February 16, 2015 Permalink  

  Culture and Strategy 

  Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

  Peter Drucker

  The first time I saw this quote was when we were moving into our new office.  The company that had occupied our offices previously was a venture backed company that had been extremely well funded…and failed.  Ironic?   Ah well, at least we got the benefit of very well appointed offices at the expense of some VC’s.

  This pithy quote is attributed to Peter Drucker–one of the people I study carefully on my entrepreneurial journey.   We are very careful of the values based culture we have created at our MicroAssist and definitely see benefit in alignment, in ease of management, in a better product.   I am still trying go understand this quote by Mr. Drucker.  For us Culture, Values and Strategy have to align.

   
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  snasta 2:03 pm on February 11, 2015 Permalink  

  Startup Defined…from Lean Analytics 

  A startup is an organization formed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

  Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster (Lean Series)

   
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  snasta 2:22 pm on February 9, 2015 Permalink  

  Best Blogs for Entrepreneurs from HBS’ Tom Eisenmann 

  

  There are thousands of blogs dedicated to entrepreneurship and business.   Finding time to read all of them is near impossible.  Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann (@teisenmann) teaches a course on Launching Technology Ventures and Product Management.  As part of the reading material for these courses Dr. Eisenmann, curates the best of business and entrepreneurship blogs.  His class reading lists offer a curated a primer for any entrepreneur, not just MBAs.   

  A couple of favorites:

  • Avinash Kaushik, analytics evangelist for Google, is the author of the Occam’s Razor blog and Web Analytics 2.0, a MUST READ book that provides comprehensive and practical guide to analytics.
  • Brian Balfour on how to build customer acquisition skills

  Dr. Eisenmann also offers an annual compilations of the best blogs for each year.   The list of blogs that Dr. Eisenmann follows (on the right) is a useful starter set for an entrepreneur.

   
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  snasta 8:45 pm on October 21, 2014 Permalink  

  Blog: Matt Mullenwegg – Unlucky in Cards 

  Matt Mullenweg is the founding developer of WordPress (my favorite publishing platform).   His blog has a good set of links to  thought leaders, fun quotes, and tech reviews.

  http://ma.tt

   
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  snasta 8:34 pm on October 7, 2014 Permalink  

  Book Summaries: Dave Martin of Automattic 

  Dave Martin is the Creative Director at Automattic.  His blog focuses on Design Thoughts but what attracted me to his blog were summaries of some of the books that interest me.  Two in particular:

  • 36 Thins you might take away from Creativity, Inc.:   Creativity, Inc., written by Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney Animation, was one of my favorite books that I read last year (and is in the pile for a re-read).
  • 84 Highlights from the Startup Playbook:   The Startup Playbook is on my list of books to read.   A lot of the codes that Dave picked definitely resonated from the past successes and especially failures.

        

   
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  snasta 8:07 pm on September 28, 2014 Permalink  

  If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside, the end is in sight

  Jack Welch

   
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  snasta 5:01 am on September 21, 2014 Permalink  

  Bertrand Russell — Warren Buffet’s Favorite Philosopher 

  “When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man…. It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty. The less reason a man has to suppose himself in the right, the more vehemently he asserts that there is no doubt whatever that he is exactly right.”

  Bertrand Russell
  Sceptical Essays or The Scientific Outlook