Is Entrepreneurship The New Degree?
I saw this clip of Alan Patricof and started wondering how the increase in entrepreneurship will influence the job market and hiring in the future. Historically… well a century ago… building a business was the norm for most people to earn a living. Granted the businesses were different, but earning a living was a family affair or that of a small group of people building a small company (a blacksmith for example). That isn’t to say that higher education didn’t exist, it just wasn’t the norm for most people. It wasn’t really required as anyone could build a great business and those that built great businesses were known as good people to work with. I wondered as Alan talked about all of the incubators and the startup fever that has taken … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups
The Most Important Online CRM and Social CRM Apps
You thought I was kidding when I said that the Salesforce.com’s strategic advantage in the CRM space was quickly disapearing? Have a look at this infographic that specifically addresses the Online and Social CRM space. There is a growing number of apps that are coming out. Looking at the innovation that is happening from older and newer companies it is hard to see how Salesforce.com will survive as an unprofitable company in this business. Of course that is why Salesforce.com is trying to move into other businesses (where the competition is tougher and the margins are lower)…. CRM Apps Social CRM … Read entire article »
Filed under: Innovation, Investing, Microsoft, Startups, stocks, Technology
What Happened To Cloud Productivity?
Thinking about cloud based productivity tools, it seems that there is a lot of perception issues that I’d like to help clear up. The recent IPO of Jive and the incredible mis-perceptions of accounting over at Salesforce.com are certainly shading my view of the space (that and my short position in Salesforce.com). Similarly I won’t be shy to admit that the ownership of Microsoft stock and the financial compensation I get from Microsoft are also shading my view. Despite those factors I am looking the industry as a whole here and not a particular firm or a specific aspect of competition. I see a lot of great non-Microsoft products and I see a lot of reasons why there is a bull story in Salesforce.com The generally accepted model of the industry … Read entire article »
Filed under: Innovation, Investing, Microsoft, Startups, stocks, Technology
Learning From The Best or The Rest?
Another good interview over on Vimeo with Howard Marks… Watching this and so many other videos from experts got me thinking about how we usually approach learning. The norm is that we all go to school with some good and some bad teachers. We learn the basics and later select what to do with our lives. An increasing number of us in the US and in the World are making the decision to go get a Higher Education. What is interesting though is that those higher education instructors are usually mediocre at best. Even the great universities are not always filled with The Best instructors available. What impact does that have? If most of the people in society that have higher education degrees are being taught by a pool of mediocre … Read entire article »
The Difficulty of Pursuing Your Ideas
I recently came across this story on TechCrunch about Fitbit’s new $12m business Fitness Tracker Fitbit Raises $12M To Market New Wi-Fi Enabled Smart Scale, Aria. Like all ideas, someone else thought of this one well before Fitbit thought it up. In fact when I thought it up eight years ago, I probably wasn’t the first to think it up either. But being a relatively good idea that I thought I had at the time, seeing this funding got me thinking. Why didn’t I pursue that idea further seven years ago? Whether you are an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or even a wantrapreneur. When you have ideas that you think are good, what holds you back from pursuing them? Is it fear, is it being lost at where to start, or is it … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing, Startups, Technology
Does The Mode of Communication Matter?
Communication is at the heart of all things in life… finding the love of your life, raising a round of financing, getting a promotion, or enjoying life with friends and family. Some of those communications are obviously more critical than others and some are more time sensative than others as well. Living in a world where corporate training dollars fuels the research and instruction that permeates our training attention we are all well aware of the communication styles that research such as Myers-Briggs brings us. This is good and we all make efforts to adjust what we are saying depending on the type of person we are talking to (more data/less data, small talk/straight to the point, etc.). All of this focus on communication style seems to skip the relevance of … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Investing, RealEstate, Technology
