Monday, December 23, 2013

Christmas Shopping


So, December’s here. How’s your Christmas shopping going?



Zibbet has over 6,000 shops selling exclusively hand-made items and offering various membership options ranging from the free basic package to the $79-a-year premium package (all on a no-contract basis). For that you get your own personal domain, unlimited storage and bandwidth, training materials, Zibbet’s customer service and support, secure Verisign and PayPal checkouts, and access to the Zibbet community hub.

Handmadeology exists for the purpose of teaching artists how to successfully sell their handmade and digital goods online, and to feature the newest handmade, vintage, digital and supply items found around the web.

Their marketplace is: ‘a blog/resource for sellers that see over 5,000 readers everyday. With 20,000+ fans on Facebook and over 100,000 followers on Twitter, Handmadeology has the reach to help sellers get the exposure they need.’


Have Fun shopping and learn some new words:
The Oxford English Dictionary has named their word of the year. It is "selfie". They released a
list of new words that had been added this year. Some of the recently recognized words
are:

bitcoin, buzzworthy, chandelier earring, digital detox, click and collect, double denim,
food baby, geek chic, grats, internet of things, phablet, space tourism, street food, twerk,
and unlike.
See the rest at
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/08/new-words-august-2013/


Merry Xmas and Have a Perfect Holiday
 


Monday, November 25, 2013

The Invisible Government


 

When the president signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913] the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized"
— Charles A Lindbergh Sr. U.S Senator, Minnesota


Charles statement still holds a lot of truth even after a century; cashflow is still king for many companies and government. The MBA Oath, now invoked at graduation includes a provision about being a good steward of entrusted resources.

However, great leadership and good management should be about the visible government and it is a series of well thought-through actions including phases, communications, checkpoints, customer-impact-testing, metrics, contingencies, and feedback loops, designed to produce specified results on time and on budget, based on known circumstances. Where circumstances are unknown, as with innovations, then good management proceeds with a flat organizational structures that encourages series of pilot tests, rehearsals and rapid prototypes.

The visible government is practical as well as visionary and cares about efficiency. The leaders might not be the ones to roll up their sleeves for the tasks of execution, but they know what to ask of those who do and they grow with experience.


China seems to have borrowed a lot from this concepts and it should not be hard to see why. When a country’s governance is structured in such a way that incentives for the political elite are aligned with the economic interests of the country, the country is likely to grow rapidly and in a healthy way, and with minimal political disruption. When they are misaligned, however, there are likely to be significant strains and pressures that resolve themselves through political conflict.

China makes massive change possible; from one child policy to the state owned enterprises while the government is willing to partner and learn from other governments and businesses.

We can also learn a great deal from China while we maintain an exposing pressure on the negetive aspect of corruption, human rights and intellectual property violation.

For instance; When you introduce yourself in the West, you say "Hi, my name is Mike Stuart, CEO of Nike, from Boston, United States." In China, you would say "Hi, I’m from China, Shanghai. I’m Nike’s CEO, Mike Stuart." That speaks volumes on the importance of the collective versus the individual.


Here is a big dream worthy of our attention, from China's, Alibaba, CEO

The company [Alibaba] will remain a ‘start-up’ no matter how long it has been in existence. Whatever has been stable, I will disrupt that stability. The company needs to continue to innovate and grow. I want the employees to believe that we are a small company, no matter how big we get. I believe we can create a system and culture to perpetuate this culture of entrepreneurial and start-up spirit.

Monday, November 04, 2013

Follow your Dream

 

If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, you will meet with uncommon success in common hours..............Emmanuel Sodipo


The great minds do something special. The great minds combine, in an artful way, logic with intuition. Great insights are made by people who combine deduction with feel, structure with improvisation and sciences with the arts..............

I think the Japanese term “ikigai” sums it up best. Ikigai is the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. The reality is that most people don’t have a job that hits those four things. Many people don’t even get two. I had some great experiences with this. I consistently dabbled in something creative, but my heart was always elsewhere. I loved tech and I loved writing and didn’t believe I could make a living writing. I certainly didn’t know I could combine both of those worlds. 

The idea is to find a balance and overlap among these four elements. When a person aligns their passion, vocation, mission, and profession, they are said to have found their ikigai—a sense of purpose and fulfillment in their daily life. The concept encourages individuals to explore the deeper meaning and satisfaction that comes from living a life that integrates these aspects.

Ikigai is often depicted as a Venn diagram, with the overlapping area at the center representing one's ikigai. This visual representation helps people reflect on their lives and make decisions that lead to a more purposeful and harmonious existence.

It's important to note that ikigai is a personal and subjective concept, and it may evolve over time. It encourages self-awareness and the pursuit of a meaningful and fulfilling life dream that goes beyond mere financial or career success.


See You at the Top

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Follow with Ideas

 

The lack of innovation is not sudden, obvious or dramatic. It does not make headlines, you do not see or feel the dangers on a daily basis, It develops slowly over time, you become aware of them only when you realize you are stuck in an unprofitable business.

 

                       

The fact is that good — and even great — ideas aren’t always accepted with open arms. In fact, new ideas are often met with fear, and sometimes anger. What is there to say? We like comfort and control. Risk, even if calculated, is not our thing


Follow with Innovative Ideas; Use the following 3 strategies

Convergence Thinking. A process by which the boundaries across industries, businesses, markets, geographies, customer experiences is pooled for ideas, resulting in new business opportunities and customer value.By leveraging on technology, competition and customer you can provide leadership and design a future for your industry.

Orthodox Overturn. By learning new tools, techniques, and methods, you can Identify old organizational labits and legacy systems that serves as bottlenecks to innovation and growth. These allows for breakthroughs in applications and management.

Challenging orthodoxies can provide clarity needed to improve your business model, products, services, processes, customer experience, or brand. Starbuck has this one checked

Frugal Thinking. Scarcity of time and resources is the primary driver for frugallity that forces individuals and companies to be highly creative. It is not about being cheap, it is about the origin of successful start ups.

Even large companies can be successful corporate innovators by tapping into the right internal and external resources. You dont need a big budget R&D to be innovative.

Teach and practice these skills to keep your innovation pipeline full.

Twitter StatisticsTwitter Advertising Revenue 2013 (Projected)     $399,500,000
Twitter Stock Market Valuation (Projected)          $20 billion
Total number of registered Twitter users              554,750,000
Number of active Twitter users every month      115 million
Number of new users signing up everyday          135,000
Unique Twitter site visitors every month             190 million
Number of tweets that happen every second     9,100
Average number of tweets per day                       58 million
Twitter search engine queries every day              2.1 billion
Percent of users who use their phone to tweet  43 %
Number of people employed by Twitter              2,500


Great entrepreneurs, innovators, marketers, you name it, know that a good idea won’t stand alone on its own merits; it needs to be accompanied by an argument of equal or greater value.

Monday, October 07, 2013

The Global Top Brands

 


Apple just ended Coca Cola 13 years dominance as the most valuable brand.

What did Apple and Google Do Right?

Customer Experience:
Positive interactions and experiences with a brand contribute to a favorable brand image.
Customer service, responsiveness, and post-purchase support impact perception.

Brand Consistency:
Maintaining a consistent brand image across all touchpoints (online and offline) reinforces brand identity.

Reputation:
Public perception of a brand based on reviews, word-of-mouth, and media coverage.
The brand's behavior in social, environmental, and ethical contexts can affect reputation.

Brand Personality:
Human-like characteristics attributed to a brand, influencing how consumers relate to it.
For example, a brand may be perceived as friendly, innovative, or trustworthy.

What to learn from effective branding:
In situations with insufficient information to make a good decision, you must minimize the 
impact of making a bad one. To do so, you must create an environment that simplifies reversals and course corrections in response to new context. This “iterative governance” 
is antithetical to how our institutions run today.

 “Admire talent but cherish character.”

Rely too much on experience and you close yourself off to the new. 
Rely too much on understanding and you lose a risk tolerance that brings big upside, whether investing or otherwise. 
Rely too much on gut and you are shooting in the dark. 

So somehow, you navigate the balance, hopefully better and better, and that’s the process of improving. 

See you at the Top.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Innovation Culture

 

"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; ...who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it; ... who has never lacked appreciation; ...who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had..." ~Ann Landers


70% of successful entrepreneurs got their business idea while working for a previous employer. Innovators can transform an organization more quickly and effectively than others because they are self-motivated free thinkers. They are not always your top talent or the obvious rebels.

You can spot them, and they can help you build your next business.

Here is how............Innovators are.

Strategic - highly engaged on strategic projects privately.

Motivated - motivated by freedom and not necessary money

Pivotal - courageous to make a shift from the norm.

Authentic - believes in integrity and honesty.

The unfair reality of today's business world is that success hates the weak, despises the meek and ignores the uninformed. Successful companies must learn to build their own innovation engines by grasping how to find, develop, and retain innovators.


Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon recommends these three books to his top executives.
Bezos was kind enough to share the titles.
  • The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
  • The Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen
  • The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

If you are trapped in failed leadership, you can begin your entrepreneurial journey.

Here are some project management tools:

Activecollab - open-source project management tool

Zohoproject - full featured tool including Gantt chart.

Producteev - works well with Gmail or google apps to create task from emails.

ActiveInbox - free plugin to managing your inbox.

Smartsheet - online spreadsheet that can allocate task to a specific row.

Liquid Planner - advanced project management tool with the ability to analyze the ripple effect of a change on multiple projects on a Gantt chart.

Web based process mapping tools include: Bubble.us, Griffy, Creately, Lucid Chart, Smart Draw and MindJet

"The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration,
Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication."

-- Harold S. Geneen


See you at the Top.

Monday, August 26, 2013

The Way Back

The Way Back

About 86% of all wage earners in France enjoy "contrats a durée
indéterminées," permanent contracts that make layoffs extremely expensive
and time-consuming.




France now has half as many exporting companies as Germany or Italy.

German industry benefits from 19,000 robots, five times the number in France.

French spending on R&D has also dropped 50% in the past four years.

The result is a steep fall in French manufacturing and the services that
support it, everything from consulting to logistics.

What is the way back up?

Lets take consulting for example:

The business model for management consulting is based on selling knowledge and skills by transforming these two intangibles into tangible best practice and case studies.

This business model can open the door to "disruptive innovations" at the bottom of the market. An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of leaders, innovators and consumers at the bottom of the market pyramid get access to new "knowledge and skills" that was historically the previlege of a few firms with deep pockets.

If you take professionals in the developed world, chances are that many of them will create less wealth than their parents as oppose to professionals in developing countries and emerging markets, who are probably going to generate 100 times the wealth of their parents.

Some of the best engineers and scientists working for top innovators are actually located in their offshore technical centers in the BRIC countries; these are often called "captive" R&D centers or offshore R&D locations. Engineers from emerging countries will play an increasing role in global innovation. While Some will continue to work for their current western employers, others will lead startups that will become an invaluable index to the innovation value chain

For example, many notebook computers are designed and built by Compal Electronics of Taiwan. The company's clients include Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Siemens, Sony, and Toshiba.

Innovation often happens away from the centers of organizations in emerging countries that can help transform the society and organization as a whole.

In France it's actually possible to recruit, engage, motivate, and retain the very best talent, by creating a more purposeful, collaborative, ethical, and diverse company with a clear mission and purpose.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Investors are Optional


 

Entrepreneurs with small ideas can also build great companies, your business can grow organically, with revenue and profits by selling to customers as early as possible from the idea incubation.

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." --Bill Gates




What incubation stage are you? Are you Chasing customers? or are you Chasing Investors?

Consider these Equations:

Customers = Validation, Revenue, Profits, Valuation, Funding

Investors = Distraction from chasing customers, outside capital

A good strategy:

Business = Customers (Revenues + Profits).

In this equation, outside financing is Optional.

There are several entrepreneurs who built great companies using this strategy.

Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho built a $200milliion a year revenue starting this way.

 
Examples of established companies also using this strategy:


Amazon, where CEO Jeff Bezos often insists on leaving an empty chair at meetings to represent the "customer's voice," encourages employees to build experiments based on customer insight. Innovations such as shopping cart recommendations and behavior-based search were first implemented by an intern, resulting in a three percent revenue increase.
Zara, the Spanish fast-fashion company, analyses observations from store managers daily to better understand what customers want. Every day, store staff chat with customers, asking questions like, "What if this skirt was longer?" or "What other colors would you like for this item?" This has allowed Zara to meet customers' expectations 99% while producing ten times the number of products as its largest competitors.

As an entrepreneur with a proven business model and execution capacity you have no capital gap

It may take time, sweat and tears, but like every dream you live, it comes with invaluable benefits including personal and business growth.

If you are yet to incubate your business idea and you like the idea of making money, online check out these sites:

Websites like Quidco and TopCashback offer cashback when you shop with certain retailers via the web, while the Quidco mobile app pays you money on the high street just for walking into a shop.


I Wish You Great Success

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Business Illusion of Security by Government



Maintaining privacy from the powerful duo of government and business is basically
an illusion. Any privacy we percieve is based on either ignorance or deception.


The Cloud of Things refers to a world where much more than our
computers and mobile phones is Internet-enabled. A world where our cars, clothing and home appliances are equipped with Internet-connected modules.
Consider these Illusions:

If the government requested that we all carry tracking devices 24/7?

We would rebel. Yet we all carry mobile phones and drive our cars.

If the government requested that we deposit copies of all of our messages with the police?

We would declare their actions invasive and unconstitutional. Yet we all use Gmail and Facebook.

If the government requested that we give them access to our photographs, identify
the people and tag them with locations?

We would refuse and call it a Police State. Yet we leave those details on our devices and applications while the updates on those devices and applications happen automatically, without our knowledge or consent

Consider these Possibilities:

Today's cyber-issues involve systemic social, economic, organizational, and political components

What if we decide to stay away from all these cloud technologies?

Our friends could tag, call or even visit us in their brand new cars and we would still be living in a world of illusion.

What happens when we are faced with a Rogue Business or Government?

See You in Space..........


Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Downloaded Business

 

Most jobs that existed 20 years ago are not needed now;
Most of the cubicles are empty, the middle class is being squeezed out by
outsourcing and technology.

Amazon has taken over and eliminated the need for most bookstores.

Social media has replaced many media outlets, look at these numbers;

Facebook has 1.2 billion users who make 2.5 billion posts

per day ... Twitter has more than half a billion users who send 175 million tweets daily ... and LinkedIn has more than 175 million members and is adding 2 new members every second.

How do we plugin?

Well I believe it is not every business that should follow the download model, the landscape is now perfect for creativity and enterpreneurship.
Just recently a yoghurt tycoon was named the world's best entrepreneur for building a $1bn turnover business in less than 6years.

Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant to US who launched New York-based Chobani in 2007 is now America's biggest yoghurt business. It began with just five employees with the odds stacked against him.

He only moved to the US in 1994 to learn English.

He dropped out of business school to start a business making feta cheese.

He purchased a closed factory from Kraft using a government loan

But like every success story, he was persistent............

Everything in life worth having is a direct result of persistent and

innovative follow-up!--Paul Jacobson, MD

See you at the Top

Saturday, May 25, 2013

The Hybrid Entrepreneur


 

Seldom does a mortal exceed his own expectations, for each dead dream is a missing chapter in the annals of his greatness...Emmanuel Sodipo




The hybrid concept fundamentally changes the way we go about our lives and business. From our homes, our offices and to our cars, we can become more productive and efficient

The hybrid enterpreneur maximises his knowledge of cloud computing, uses the social media as a collaboration tool and adopts the bring your own device policy in his work environment. He is experienced enough to take the consumerization approach to new technology.

This quasi-technology/business executive is skilled in the language of business as much as the technology that feeds and drives profit. He is able to speak to the technology and to the marketing side without creative conflict about where to spend the dollars.

He operates a scalable but innovative digital ecosystem of organizations and individuals transacting across the globe in open transparent collaboration.

Here are a few of such Enterpreneurs
Born in Taiwan, Jerry Yang created the popular Yahoo! website in 1995 when he was a Stanford engineering graduate student. Forbes magazine estimates his net worth at $1.2 billion.
Sergey Brin was born in Russia and earned degrees in mathematics and computer science in the U.S. In 1998, along with another Stanford University doctoral student, he launched the Google search engine. He is the fourth youngest billionaire in the world.

French-Iranian American entrepreneur Pierre Morad Omidyar came to the U.S. as a youngster. When he was 28 years old he founded the prolific eBay Internet auction site. He is the 145th richest person in the world and 47th in the U.S. "I started eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby, while I had my day job."

What if we apply the hybrid concept to a Nation outside the U.S

As an enterpreneur in Chile, you have an incredible latitude to hire whomever you like, no matter their country of origin and those employees can apply for their passport within a year of their stay.

Chile is party to more free trade agreements than any other country in the world with one of the lowest unemployment rate.

You are only limited by your imagination

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Socialize to Grow the Business


"Golf and Business can mix just fine if you remember why you’re really there. To have fun with your friends, treasure the golf, and enjoy the day.".... Stephen Rayfield




You won't be promoted because you have a graduate degree. You may get promoted because of what you applied from graduate school, which is very different - it requires a lot more insight and effort.
You can double your business insight and effort by scocializing. Golf is only second to restaurants for generating the most effective business leads.
In a digital and social age, People are your channel to success; you don't own them, you don't rent them, you can't control them. You can only serve and support them.
Here two effective methods:
Empower your customers to be brand advocates.

Treat your entire organization as your marketing team.

Socializing with people is made a lot easier by intensive use of technology and data — not only to automate but to analyze and personalize. Technology brings speed and scale to what previously was impractical or unaffordable.

Social media monitoring enables you to listen and respond on problems on a global scale and in real-time.
Approximately 25% of Americans listen to podcasts regularly. Source: Arbitron
Here are some ways to be innovative.
1. Use a site like Odiogo or iSpeech – adding your blog to the site automatically generates a recording of the post in digital voice. Download regularly as it only stores the last 10 post by default.

2. According to ComScore data, SlideShare is the biggest content sharing community for professionals? According to info on the SlideShare site, 60 million people use it each month. That means it’s the perfect place for you to reach your peers.

Socialize to success.

See You at the Top 


Monday, March 18, 2013

Social Risk and Private Reward


Both optimism and pessimism are two different forms of delusion and in business, the game is to treat Triumph and Disaster with the same level of caution.




We all know funding is critical for innovation and the survival of SMEs, A lot of the funds spent for upstream research can be channeled back to the business through downstream commercialization.

One form of funding that should not be ignored is the government:
Google’s algorithm was funded by the National Science Foundation, Iphone smart technologies were also funded by the U.S government; GPS, touchscreen display and Siri. Apple also benefited from early stage finance from the U.S. government's Small Business Investment Company program.
Venture capitalist only got involved long after the proof of concept had been established, in other words the government took more risk to spark innovation in a strategic area.Once the business is running, the stock market can be an excellent source of funds for expansion, growth and wealth. The same way Apple became the most valuable company for a couple of years
An efficient market prices things accurately. The more informed buyers and sellers who behave in a logical fashion, the more efficient a market becomes. The stock market is somewhat efficient, meaning it prices stocks at rational levels over the long term. But on any given day, the stock market is driven by alternating cycles of fear and greed which distort prices away from their fair value. Day traders are simply gamblers who are one trade from disaster and the market is more efficient with investors.
A smart way to innovate and grow your business is to spread the upstream investment risk for a triumphant downstream reward which should benefit all stakeholders. 

See You at The Top


Friday, February 22, 2013

Building a Global Footprint

Poor innovation culture is simply poor leadership strategy, poor leadership is simply poor planning. While SMEs are better able to manage the tension between operating today's business and creating enabling environment for tomorrow's opportunities, traditional multinationals struggle.






SMEs tend to gravitate away from the command-and-control systems built by expensive lawyers and consultants for giant corporations. By leveraging on group intelligence while keeping their businesses small and lean SMEs encourage greater awareness of value and cultural models across the global landscape.

The SMEs in emerging markets are getting more proficient at building on this model ........

However, in U.S. SMEs account for 97% of the total exporting firms creating less than 30% export value; this is far from optimal, even though SMEs are recognized for their vital role in creating jobs and supporting supply chains in the domestic market, there is still some distance to go in the global village.

In Europe over 90% of all businesses are SMEs creating two-thirds of all jobs in the domestic market

As the online cloud services takes a foothold, it becomes more beneficial to SMEs by allowing entrepreneurs to deploy new operational models, competitive and quality service. The SMEs becomes a micro multinationals by keeping the costs of operating in new countries and emerging markets very low.

Here are some tips:
"Once you decide to work for yourself, you never go back to work for somebody else" - Lord Alan Sugar – founder of Amstrad

"A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts" - Sir Richard Branson – founder and chairman of Virgin Group

"The best entrepreneurs keep a tight lid on expenses and will wisely re-invest profit to continually improve their business" - Peter Jones, CBE – founder of Phones International Group

"I knew nothing about the way bras were made" - Michelle Mone, OBE – founder and CEO of Ultimo

"The key to success is failure… Success is made of 99 percent failure" - Sir James Dyson – founder of the Dyson company

Why not get involved leave a footprint and be a global player, you can even loan as little as $25..........
 


Your loan for as little as $25 on sites like kiva.org can make a great impact on entrepreneurs in developing nations. Loans can go to families trying to support an agricultural business in El Salvador. Or groups purchasing additional products for their fruit market in Rwanda. Or a man who needs new tires on his van for his transportation company in Kenya.





Monday, January 21, 2013

The Magnetism of Stupidity

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness - Chinese proverb.

Most executives rarely think that organizational inefficiencies start with their own management team’s stupidity.

The combination of intelligence in different people is more difficult than the combination of stupidity. This isn’t only because the power of stupidity is generally underestimated and its consequences often unpredictable. But,

“Stupidity is brainless; it doesn’t need to think, get organized, or plan ahead to generate a combined effect.......Giancarlo Livraghi.

When elements of the management team are dysfunctional, they soon start recruiting people with similar traits, the organization becomes polarized with massive pool of super stupid.

Teamwork is also stifled when management has not clearly communicated their vision and strategic plan to the organization as a whole.

This management inefficiencies soon runs the entire organization into extinction.

Look out for the following dysfunctional trait:

         Super-human that does not need the help of anyone
         He does his own thing without asking the advice or input of anyone
         So smart that simple communication with anyone on the team is an absolute waste of their time and energy
         You just don’t know what their temperament will be.
         Everything has got to go their way and cannot see beyond themselves

Coincidence can put wise words in anyone's mouth.........But the transfer of intelligence is a much more complex process.


See You at The Top