6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes

With all the ‘Steve Jobs‘ posts flooding the internet, this one caught my eye.  It is not a Apple bash piece but rather a great object lesson for those that get caught up in the “Aim, Aim, Aim, Ready, Aim, Aim, Fire” mode.

By Scott M. Fulton, III / October 6, 2011 2:03 PM

Image via Wikipedia

This is not an Apple-bashing piece. It is also not an attempt to cut an American icon down to size at a time when were remembering the magnificent contributions of its fallen founder. This is about how failure makes us better.Ive lost count of the number of times Ive heard, seen, or read comparisons of Steve Jobs to Thomas Edison since early yesterday evening. Jobs did not invent anything – not the personal computer, not the MP3 player, not the tablet. But besides that fact, there are certain other stark similarities. One: Jobs, like Edison, was a fierce competitor who sought to control not only the delivery channel for his products, but the market surrounding those products. Two: Like the finest scientist, Jobs studied his failures and Apples very carefully, and unlike Microsoft, built his next success upon the smoking ruins of his failures.More Steve Jobs Stories6 of Apples Greatest MistakesSteve Jobs Legacy In the Pantheon of Great American InnovatorsFrom Silicon Valley to Bahrain, the Web Mourns Steve JobsA Great User Experience: The Web Legacy of Steve JobsWhat Steve Meant Back ThenReaders will likely remind me that certain of the

via 6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes.

Marathon Not Sprint

As I mention in my “Failure is not a Title” post, we need to look at things as a long process that we learn from, a Marathon if you will, not a 100 yard dash.  Yes, the above mentioned items are on the bottom of some outhouse of ideas, but the industry learned from then and evolved into what we have today.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• Think Different – The Legacy of Steve Jobs (legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com)
• Steve Jobs Reinvented What It Means to be Human (forbes.com)
• An Analogy of Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs (nytimes.com)

Make Some Magic

How many times do you find yourself in a slump.  We  need to shake off the old and create a new way of generating new ideas.  We need to make some magic, create some sparks, razzle and dazzle, have some fun!  When I read this post from Seth Godin it got me to thinking:

An end of magic

Arthur C. Clarke told us, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Head back to the 1800s with a Taser or a Prius or an iPad and the townsfolk will no doubt either burn you at the stake or worship you.

So many doors have been opened by technology in the last twenty years that the word “sufficiently” is being stretched. If it happens on a screen (Google automatically guessing what I want next, a social network knowing who my friends are before I tell them) we just assume it’s technology at work. Hard to even imagine magic here.

via Seth’s Blog: An end of magic.

How to Make the Magic

This is a fun exercise to take your team or department through.  You can read about the process in one my previous posts “Exceptionalism: Focus on the Never“.  But basically, take several idea lists you’ve created and follow the “Innovation Bonus Exercise” in the above post.  Then take some of those ideas and create you own little science fiction episode of “Stargete”, “Sanctuary”, or “Startrek” in which your team runs accross a civilazation with advanced technology like some of the crazy  items on your list and they now have to revewrse engenere it to gain the benefits of the new found technology.

You might be surprised how many of the way-out-there crazy ideas turn into actionable realistic projects for your team to investigate further.

It’s a fun off-site day, especially if you have a bunch of techie scifi geeks on your team!

Good Hunting!

Recommendation: Venture Voice

Recently, I reorganized and reprioritized my podcast library and listening preferences.  It’s been about a year and some of the material wasn’t doing it for me any more. I won’t get into the reasons or the methods right now.  Just know, I started poking around iTunes, my podcast subscription tool of choice. and began sampling several different podcasts.

There is a lot of free podcast  content out there and most of it is worth the price you pay for.  But occasionally, you can run across some work that is truly valuable and insightful.  I wanted to share just such a find.

Venture Voice

This is taken from their about page at Venture Voice:

What does it take to start a successful business? We’re working the phone to find the answers by calling on entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and their friends and foes. This podcast (or, for the uninitiated, Internet radio show on demand) features our conversations. Listen to the voices of those living the entrepreneurial life. The excitement, trepidation and ambition heard in their tones gives us a feel for what they’re going through.

We’re interested in people in all types of industries — those who’ve already made it big and those who will soon. We want to hear about failures as well as successes. Start-ups have effects on personal lives in addition to professional lives; we explore both. If you would like to suggest someone to be interviewed, or have feedback for the show, please contact us.

Host and Executive Producer: Gregory Galant

Associate Producer: Eddie LeBreton

Founding Designer: Aaron Quint

My Time is Valuable …..

So why do I think spending time listening to 1 hour interview so worthy that I would want to pass it along to you.  Just in a short time I have gained valuable insights that I believe will help even the most modest of achievers among us.

Here are some of the insights I’ve gain:

• All these people in the success stories we hear about are people just like us!
• All had mentors that helped them in the process of moving forward
• All failed … some more often then others … but all did.
• Some were visionary, Some were leaders, Some were lucky …. all tried and refused to give up.
• Some had great answers to difficult questions.
• Some seemed clueless and you end up wondering how they made it so far.

Generally speaking that if you want to become better at something then the time you spend must complement this.  After all:

• If you want to become thin … don’t do what fat people do.
• If you want to become rich … don’t do what poor people do.
• If you want to become better … don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

Here’s a Sample of Titles:

I wanted to share with you some of the episodes that I recently listened to.  Now keep in mind, I don’t agree with every point of view these people claim to be important.  Rather I listen to their thought process and try and understand how did they end up making the right choice and what created sustainable success.

• VV Show #56 – Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software
• VV Show #55 – Graham Hill of TreeHugger
• VV Show #54 – Tim Westergren of PandoraVV Show #53 – David Cohen of TechStars
• VV Show #52 – Sam Wyly of Maverick Capital, Green Mountain Energy, Michaels Stores and Sterling Software
• VV Show #48 – Frank Addante of The Rubicon Project
• VV Show #46 – Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp

Conclusion

I’d be interested in knowing what your thoughts are of some of the interviews.  Please drop by again and leave a comment. If there are other podcasts that you think are also valuable then please leave a comment here as well.

Good Hunting,

Spread the LOVE, I mean WORK (Part 1)

Recently the ROI Hunters had a good long talk with an overworked technical team within a small company. We were surprised by the lack of trust towards their business counterparts, so we sat and listened to their story. It went something like this: 1) They change their priorities every week, 2) They ask us to drop existing projects and start new ones, 3) Then they come back and complain why we haven’t got the original projects done yet! Well, realizing we only listened to one side of the story, we asked some simple questions. We thought we would share some of the highlights, after all, hunting ROI is not for the unintentionalists.

VISION

Does your company have a vision? Do you know your place in creating the end-state? They answered NO to both. This team could not articulate where the company wanted to be five years from now, nor could they answer how their efforts would help the company get there. This was problem #1.

Who does the work?

Do you creates solutions that help your business counterparts do their jobs better or do you make them more dependant on you? They didn’t understand the question, so we asked it this way. How many processes are you included in to have your business counterparts accomplish their work. They came back and said at least 60%. This is problem #2.

Why can’t they?

Why can’t they do the jobs without you? The answer came in two parts; 1) They might break something and then we loose more time trying to fix everything, 2) It takes to much time to train them on how to do what we can do in a fraction of time. This attitude was problem #3.

Read about our recommendations in Part 2 of this post ….