Opinion

Entries Tagged as 'Opinion'

Useless Businesses and the Damage Done

November 5th, 2009 · No Comments · Business Models, Opinion

Umair Haque, Director of Havas Media Lab, and one of my favorite troublemakers. His recent article, titled Is Your Business Useless?, provides a great framework for thinking about the value of organizations and enterprises of all sizes. Good reading for people considering new ventures. As Guy Kawasaki says, “Tell me how you make meaning in [...]

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Tags: LinkedIn

Who Suffers Most?

September 15th, 2009 · No Comments · Opinion

There are many versions of the old adage, “When the economy catches a cold, the poor have pneumonia.”
A poll on LinkedIn asking about business spending patterns shows a wide range of responses to how much the economic downturn is effecting spending patterns (self-reported) of businesses. At last look, 100% of those in large enterprises reported [...]

Redesigning Product

June 9th, 2009 · No Comments · B2B, Business Models, Consumer Products, Entrepreneurial Culture, Opinion

If things are still slow for you, it’s probably a good time to rethink how you define product.
I spend a lot of time with clients outlining the space between how they define their products and how their customers define their products. Sometimes this has to do with real or perceived benefits. Sometimes this has to [...]

Farewell to a Great Entrepreneur: John Patrick ‘Packy’ Hyland, Sr.

May 30th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Entrepreneurial Culture, Opinion

Entrepreneurship is the art form of organization development. All art forms are about synthesizing or transforming or juxtaposing objects from one realm and infusing them with the life forces of talent, vision, and craft to create something new and quite different from anything that has existed before – something with a life of it’s own [...]

My Letter in the New York Times 22 Feb 2009

February 23rd, 2009 · No Comments · KOYONO, Opinion

I’m really not much of a fan. I don’t get all weak in the knees over much of anybody. I’ve worked with rock stars, movie stars, billionaires and geniuses and pretty much kept an even keel (I did stammer when I met Neil Young – I really wasn’t prepared to be as impressed as I [...]

Defining Context: Success in Bedford Falls & Stone Soup Entrepreneurship

February 5th, 2009 · No Comments · Consumer Products, Entrepreneurial Culture, Free Resources, Lucky's Cafe, Opinion

This article about my sister’s businesses in Cleveland is a review of the restaurant, yes, but is also a review of the restaurants raison d’etre.(disclosure: I am part owner of my sister’s empire – but we’ve never really figured out what part.)
The first half of the review consists of a discussion of the social and [...]

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Tags: Cleveland·Google Alert·Restaurant

Workplace Culture: Crisis is not an excuse for bad behavior

October 22nd, 2008 · No Comments · Entrepreneurial Culture, Opinion

The culture of an organization gets defined by how crisis is handled. As much as culture is developed everyday in ways both subtle and overt, operational (where desks are placed, who has access to office supplies, offices or open space, titles, parking spaces) and conversational (first names or last names, encouragement or retribution, blame or [...]

Zenph proves their point

April 28th, 2008 · No Comments · Opinion, Zenph

Most of my clients are companies that apply technology to media in new ways. Sometimes this category results in an obviously fundable situation, sometimes it requires some vision to understand the implications.

Zenph Studios has successfully proven their business plan and forecasts to be both visionary and conservative. The success of their initial release, Bach: The [...]

Best RDU Blogs for Start-ups

April 2nd, 2008 · No Comments · Free Resources, Opinion, Resources for New Business

Bookmark or RSS both Jason Caplain’s Southeast VC blog (http://southeastvc.blogs.com/) and the Center for Economic Development’s (CED’s) Start-Ups 24/7 (http://www.startups247.com/). Jason is both connected and communicative, including an on-going list of local RDU start-ups that are hiring. The new CED offering includes ample resources for entrepreneurs at most levels – advice, contacts, and community. [...]

Predictably Irrational

February 26th, 2008 · No Comments · Duke University, Entrepreneurial Culture, Opinion

I find research in human behavior fascinating and constantly applicable to both the BizDevGuy consulting business but also to how I advise our clients. Marketing, business planning and human resources are complex, if not tricky, because our models and understanding of human motivations and behaviors are, for the most part too simple or sometimes dead [...]

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