Sam Ho's Blog

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Just Manic Enough: Perfect Entrepreneurs

Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs

But this thought exercise hints at a truth: a thin line separates the temperament of a promising entrepreneur from a person who could use, as they say in psychiatry, a little help. Academics and hiring consultants say that many successful entrepreneurs have qualities and quirks that, if poured into their psyches in greater ratios, would qualify as full-on mental illness.

The attributes that make great entrepreneurs, the experts say, are common in certain manias, though in milder forms and harnessed in ways that are hugely productive. Instead of recklessness, the entrepreneur loves risk. Instead of delusions, the entrepreneur imagines a product that sounds so compelling that it inspires people to bet their careers, or a lot of money, on something that doesn’t exist and may never sell.
Read more at www.nytimes.com

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Saturday, December 11, 2010

Will we be smart enough soon enough? Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Amplify’d from www.netcrit.net

Civic Intelligence defined pragmatically: people to have the ‘smarts’ by which to acquire the things they need to prosper in society.

The world needs ‘our’ help: global problems, local problems – all need attention and those in power, and the operation of the free market will not solve them. Doug frames his work by asking: “How smart need we be to solve these problems? Will we be smart soon enough for the problems to be solved before they overwhelm us?”.

Civic intelligence is a concept to lead us to the answer to these questions. It refers, effectively, to a judgment of how smart a group might be relative to the problems it faces; it is a form of collective intelligence, focusing on shared problems (eg the problems that define the group). Civis intelligence is about being smart, through civic means, to achieve civic goals. A particular modality of this form of collective intelligence is its distribution throughout society. Civic intelligence as a paradigm for activists and researchers.

Beehive Collective’s work in relation to land degradation and renewal, “The True Cost of Coal” – sophisticated interweaving of skills and action, notion of research through action at the grass roots.

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action involves very different paradigms of knowledge work where creativity, sharing, working together to represent the world and tell stories about it is more effective in addressing problems (and in doing so building civic intelligence) than traditional models of ‘research’

Liberating Voices project: promote and assist citizen engagement through thought and action – pattern language responses. Everyone is an activist. Patterns are not recipes: “tools for thought”; patterns “change the flow of what would have happened in its absence”.

Patterns here could be understood as scaffolding for cognitive developmental action – without them, people don’t know where to start even if they know what the goal might be. Patterns don’t determine the outcome but give sufficient support for people to begin work. Moreover, patterns provide a shared language through which people can identify commonalities and work together. Without them, they remain individuated. So, do patterns create a kind of autonomous foundation for collective engagement?

civic intelligence builds more civic intelligence (it is productive beyond any specific act)

inclusive and participatory

efficient and creative

real problems (e.g. inequality, not just increased wealth for a few)

addresses several problems at once

The last point is especially revealing: “Make activism cool (again)”. Schuler comments – “what is preventing people from doing this stuff? It’s not cool”
Read more at www.netcrit.net

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Monday, November 29, 2010

Buying Android is like joining the Dark Side... #metaphor

metaphor of the day.

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

いいなCM　NTT docomo　walk with you　「GALAXY Days」60秒

See more at www.youtube.com

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To Live and Breath - Inspiration is Not the Key to Innovation [29Nov10]

“The essence of a creative culture is openness, curiosity, connecting, collaborating, and courage.” - A.G. Lafley

Amplify’d from www.business-strategy-innovation.com

When faced with the challenge of creating a vibrant, innovation-capable culture, many organizations focus their efforts almost entirely on the front end of innovation. Their focus implies that innovation begins and ends with ideation, and their efforts extend little beyond the generation of vast numbers of ideas. Recently, A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble (P&G), spoke at length at the tenth World Business Forum in New York City, about what it took for innovation to be revitalized in the company during his tenure. While the fuzzy front end received attention, it was not the only area of focus. He noted that for innovation to be truly successful, it had to become something the organization lived and breathed. It was not only about the inspiration necessary for a good idea but the habits formed by making innovation processes stable and robust enough that they could be relied upon for the long-term.

The proof of his approach is evident: under Lafley, P&G’s sales doubled, profits quadrupled, and the company’s market value rose by over $100 billion.

Yet organizations continue to believe that if they can only find the right idea, the perfect brainwave, the single market-changing invention, their futures will be bright and rosy. There’s a reason they call it the front end of innovation; there’s a whole back end to innovation that requires effort and discipline and care for the value conceived of in the beginning to actually have any real value.

Inspiration is just a start

“Courage is the missing innovation ingredient for most CEOs.” – A.G. Lafley

Little do they realize that for innovation to truly flourish, the organization itself needs to rally around the support of innovation. That means everything from the generation of ideas to their evaluation, their prioritization and selection, to their testing and assessment and their eventual, planned-for, operation. An innovation-capable enterprise doesn’t only pay attention to the seed of an idea, they nurture that notion until it thrives of its own accord.

Let’s be clear: the reasons so many organizations choose to focus on the creation of new ideas are: a) it’s fun, and b) the effort involved is minimal when compared to all the associated activities required to afford it a chance of success.
Read more at www.business-strategy-innovation.com

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Step Forward - 5 Best Blogs to Announce a New Start-up [20Nov10]

Amplify’d from www.pamil-visions.net

Announcing a new business start-up is an exciting adventure for the small business entrepreneur. To maximize exposure, he should announce his site to as many portals, forums, blogs, and sites as possible. Sounds like a good idea, right? It is, but a large majority of sites don’t have significant traffic to make an impact. To streamline your efforts and to get the most exposure as possible, submit your announcement to a few sites guaranteed to have thousands, if not millions, of eyes read it.

# 1 – Killer Start-ups

The site at KillerStartups.com is a user-driven community of Internet start-ups. It members include entrepreneurs, bloggers, web developers, and investors. The community thrives on staying abreast of all new start-ups and entrepreneurs making their foray into the small business world.

The site uses a hardy blog platform that is very successful in creating a buzzing social networking environment. Internet entrepreneurs submit information about their start-ups to the community and gather feedback from the members to see what they think about it.

# 2 – Sun Start-up Essentials

Sun Start-Up Essentials has a comprehensive program that is useful in helping entrepreneurs get started in business. It offers several broad services, including networking, technological assistance, and web services like content storage and web hosting. The site provides the core essentials in getting a business from starting to running. It offers all the key tools an entrepreneur would need to make a significant impact into the business world. These include the following things:

A discount on servers, desktops, and storage.

A choice of operating systems: Windows, Linux, or Solaris.

Discounted software.

Free advice and technical support from top Sun engineers.

# 3 – TechDay

This informative website provides a comprehensive list of start ups and their area(s) of business or technology. Submission to the site places your business name, logo, and contact information in a large database for web developers and investors who may be of interest to your business idea. The site also features start-ups that are in other regions and countries.