Sunday, January 23, 2005

Top 25: Innovations - CNN

CNN.com - Top 25: Innovations - Jan 17, 2005

1. The Internet
2. Cell phone
3. Personal computers
4. Fiber optics
5. E-mail
6. Commercialized GPS
7. Portable computers
8. Memory storage discs
9. Consumer level digital camera
10. Radio frequency ID tags
11. MEMS
12. DNA fingerprinting
13. Air bags
14. ATM
15. Advanced batteries
16. Hybrid car
17. OLEDs
18. Display panels
19. HDTV
20. Space shuttle
21. Nanotechnology
22. Flash memory
23. Voice mail
24. Modern hearing aids
25. Short Range, High Frequency Radio

E M E R G I C . o r g: January 20, 2005 Archives

E M E R G I C . o r g: January 20, 2005 Archives

Boston Globe has an article by Scott Kirsner:


Pure entrepreneurs are loopy and obsessed. They have a vision of the future, and while others are casting their lines into the water to see what will bite, pure entrepreneurs are jumping over the gunwales and swimming after the white whale.

Pure entrepreneurship, by my definition, is often driven by a belief that a major shift is coming -- and thus it's hard to find customers who already understand that they need the product a pure entrepreneur is developing.

Pure entrepreneurship is often a solo enterprise, funded by credit cards, consulting projects, and second mortgages. It sparks revolutions and spawns big companies.

''Something just clicks, and you say, 'This is worth doing, and I think other people will be interested,' " Dan Bricklin says. ''It hits you that there's a need, and that pursuing it is worth the risk."

Peter Drucker on Leadership

Forbes.com - Magazine Article

What Needs to Be Done
Successful leaders don't start out asking, "What do I want to do?" They ask, "What needs to be done?" Then they ask, "Of those things that would make a difference, which are right for me?" They don't tackle things they aren't good at. They make sure other necessities get done, but not by them. Successful leaders make sure that they succeed! They are not afraid of strength in others. Andrew Carnegie wanted to put on his gravestone, "Here lies a man who knew how to put into his service more able men than he was himself."

Check Your Performance
Effective leaders check their performance. They write down, "What do I hope to achieve if I take on this assignment?" They put away their goals for six months and then come back and check their performance against goals. This way, they find out what they do well and what they do poorly. They also find out whether they picked the truly important things to do. I've seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things. They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters.

Mission Driven
Leaders communicate in the sense that people around them know what they are trying to do. They are purpose driven--yes, mission driven. They know how to establish a mission. And another thing, they know how to say no. The pressure on leaders to do 984 different things is unbearable, so the effective ones learn how to say no and stick with it. They don't suffocate themselves as a result. Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done. They are very popular because they always say yes. But they get nothing done.

Creative Abandonment
A critical question for leaders is, "When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?" The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, "Don't tell me what you're doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing."

The Rise of the Modern Multinational
The modern multinational corporation was invented in 1859. Siemens invented it because the English Siemens company had grown faster than the German parent. Before the Second World War, IBM was a small maker, not of computers, but of adding machines. They had one branch in England, which was very typical for the era. In the 1920s, General Motors bought a German and English and then Australian automobile manufacturer. The first time somebody from Detroit actually visited the European subsidiaries was in 1950. A trip to Europe was a big trip. You were gone three months. I still remember the excitement when the then head of GM went to Europe in the 1920s to buy the European properties. He never went back.

21st Century Organizations
Let me give you one example. This happens to be a consulting firm headquartered in Boston. Each morning, between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M. Boston time, which is 5 A.M. in the morning here in California and 11 P.M. in Tokyo, the firm conducts a one-hour management meeting on the Internet. That would have been inconceivable a few years back when you couldn't have done it physically. And for a few years, I worked with this firm closely and I had rented a room in a nearby motel and put in a videoconferencing screen. Once a week, I participated in this Internet meeting and we could do it quite easily, successfully. As a result of which, that consulting firm is not organized around localities but around clients.

How To Lead a 21st Century Organization
Don't travel so much. Organize your travel. It is important that you see people and that you are seen by people maybe once or twice a year. Otherwise, don't travel. Make them come to see you. Use technology--it is cheaper than traveling. I don't know anybody who can work while traveling. Do you? The second thing to say is make sure that your subsidiaries and foreign offices take up the responsibility to keep you informed. So, ask them twice a year, "What activities do you need to report to me?" Also ask them, "What about my activity and my plans do you need to know from me?" The second question is just as important.

Prisoner of Your Own Organization
When you are the chief executive, you're the prisoner of your organization. The moment you're in the office, everybody comes to you and wants something, and it is useless to lock the door. They'll break in. So, you have to get outside the office. But still, that isn't traveling. That's being at home or having a secret office elsewhere. When you're alone, in your secret office, ask the question, "What needs to be done?" Develop your priorities and don't have more than two. I don't know anybody who can do three things at the same time and do them well. Do one task at a time or two tasks at a time. That's it. OK, two works better for most. Most people need the change of pace. But, when you are finished with two jobs or reach the point where it's futile, make the list again. Don't go back to priority three. At that point, it's obsolete.

How Organizations Fall Down
Make sure the people with whom you work understand your priorities. Where organizations fall down is when they have to guess at what the boss is working at, and they invariably guess wrong. So the CEO needs to say, "This is what I am focusing on." Then the CEO needs to ask of his associates, "What are you focusing on?" Ask your associates, "You put this on top of your priority list--why?" The reason may be the right one, but it may also be that this associate of yours is a salesman who persuades you that his priorities are correct when they are not. So, make sure that you understand your associates' priorities and make sure that after you have that conversation, you sit down and drop them a two-page note--"This is what I think we discussed. This is what I think we decided. This is what I think you committed yourself to within what time frame." Finally, ask them, "What do you expect from me as you seek to achieve your goals?"

The Transition from Entrepreneur to Large Company CEO
Again, let's start out discussing what not to do. Don't try to be somebody else. By now you have your style. This is how you get things done. Don't take on things you don't believe in and that you yourself are not good at. Learn to say no. Effective leaders match the objective needs of their company with the subjective competencies. As a result, they get an enormous amount of things done fast.

How Capable Leaders Blow It
One of the ablest men I've worked with, and this is a long time back, was Germany's last pre-World War II democratic chancellor, Dr. Heinrich Bruning. He had an incredible ability to see the heart of a problem. But he was very weak on financial matters. He should have delegated but he wasted endless hours on budgets and performed poorly. This was a terrible failing during a Depression and it led to Hitler. Never try to be an expert if you are not. Build on your strengths and find strong people to do the other necessary tasks.

The Danger Of Charisma
You know, I was the first one to talk about leadership 50 years ago, but there is too much talk, too much emphasis on it today and not enough on effectiveness. The only thing you can say about a leader is that a leader is somebody who has followers. The most charismatic leaders of the last century were called Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini. They were mis-leaders! Charismatic leadership by itself certainly is greatly overstated. Look, one of the most effective American presidents of the last 100 years was Harry Truman. He didn't have an ounce of charisma. Truman was as bland as a dead mackerel. Everybody who worked for him worshiped him because he was absolutely trustworthy. If Truman said no, it was no, and if he said yes, it was yes. And he didn't say no to one person and yes to the next one on the same issue. The other effective president of the last 100 years was Ronald Reagan. His great strength was not charisma, as is commonly thought, but that he knew exactly what he could do and what he could not do.

How To Reinvigorate People
Within organizations there are people who, typically in their 40s, hit a midlife crisis when they realize that they won't make it to the top or discover that they are not yet first-rate. This happens to engineers and accountants and technicians. The worst midlife crisis is that of physicians, as you know. They all have a severe midlife crisis. Basically, their work becomes awfully boring. Just imagine seeing nothing for 30 years but people with a skin rash. They have a midlife crisis, and that's when they take to the bottle. How do you save these people? Give them a parallel challenge. Without that, they'll soon take to drinking or to sleeping around. In a coeducational college, they sleep around and drink. The two things are not incompatible, alas! Encourage people facing a midlife crisis to apply their skills in the non-profit sector.

Character Development
We have talked a lot about executive development. We have been mostly talking about developing people's strength and giving them experiences. Character is not developed that way. That is developed inside and not outside. I think churches and synagogues and the 12-step recovery programs are the main development agents of character today.

Feld Thoughts: End of Year Spouse Questions

Feld Thoughts: End of Year Spouse Questions

* What were the significant events of the year?
* What were my accomplishments?
* What trips did I take?
* Who was I closest to?
* What significant reading did I do?
* What gave me joy?
* In what ways did I grow?
* What personal gifts did I use to serve this year?
* What did I learn this year?
* What in my life is dying (literally or figuratively)?
* What in my life is rising (literally or figuratively)?
* What are my goals for the next year?

Knowledge And Insight

Innovation Weblog - Gary Hamel on the relationship between knowledge and innovation

"Today you can buy knowledge by the pound -- from consultants hawking best practice, from the staff you've just hired from your competitor, and from all those companies that hope you will outsource everything. Yet in the age of revolution it is not knowledge that produces new wealth, but insight -- insight into opportunities for discontinuous innovation. Discovery is the journey; insight is the destination. You must become your own seer."

e-Choupal

Indra's Drishtikona (Viewpoint): Indra's weblog: Individual Archive

It's achievement

5,050 choupals, 29,500 villages, 3.1 million farmers.

Using e-choupal to source a range of farm produce (foodgrains, oilseeds, coffee, shrimps).

Marketing a variety of goods and services though e-choupal (agri-inputs, consumer goods, insurance, market research).

Transactions: $100 m (2003)

It's ambition

To reach 1,00,000 villages, 10 million farmers by 2010.

Source a larger range of farm produce (spices, vegetables, cotton).

Market a wider variety of goods and services (education, health, entertainment, e-governance)

Transactions: $2.5 billion (2010)

The New York Times, The Economist, the Harvard Business School and the United Nations- all have described the initiative as path breaking.
ITC's e-choupal network with 37 companies, NGOs and state governments as parteners is creating a new revolution for villages by establishing a direct link between what consumers use and what farmers grow.

THE POWER OF 'e'
The Choupal is a Hindi word for village square where elders meet to discuss matters of importance. The letter "e" has brought in a computer with an Internet connection for farmers to gather around and interact not just among themselves but with people anywhere in the country and even beyond. ITC installs a computer with solar-charged batteries for power and a VSAT Internet connection in selected villages. The computer's functioning is free from the usual troubles of power and telecom facilities in rural area. A local farmer called sanchalak (conductor) operates the computer on behalf of ITC, but exclusively for farmers. The e-choupal offers farmers and the village community five distinct services:

Information: Daily weather forecast, price of various crops, e-mails to farmers and ITC officials, news-all this in the local language and free of cost.

Knowledge: Farming methods specific to each crop and region, soil testing, expert advice-mostly sourced from agriculture universities-all for free.

Purchase: Farmers can buy seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and a host of other products and services ranging from cycles and tractors to insurance policies. Over 35 companies have become partners in the e-choupal to sell their products through the network.

Sales: Farmers can sell their crops to the ITC centres or the local market, after checking the prices on the Net.

Development work: NGOs working for cattle breed improvement and water harvesting, and women self-help groups are also reaching villages through e-choupal. In some states farmers can even access their land records online, sitting in their village. Access to health and education services through e-choupal begins next month.
In many villages e-choupals have brought a significant change. Be it for accessing newspapers online in the mornings or checking the supply of products they ordered on the Net, or watching movies on farming techniques in the evenings, farmers frequent e-choupal at all times of the day. Each e-choupal covers between five and six villages.
The sanchalak or pratinidhi- a farmer from the local community provides the most critical link in the e-choupal network. So e-choupal is run by the farmer and for the farmer even though it is fully paid for and maintained by ITC. Sanchalaks have become the agents of change. They are the farmers' pointmen for information, sales and purchase.
And then there is an incentive for the sanchalak. For every quintal of the produce sold to ITC from an e-choupal, the sanchalak gets Rs 5. He also gets a commission on every product or service farmers buy though e-choupal. This has turned sanchalaks into entrepreneurs. It is in his interest to maximise e-choupal transactions, which benefits ITC. But since he is from the village, he also has to earn the trust of villagers and is answerable for deals made through him.
Sanchalaks are required to take a public oath of serving their community without discrimination and sign a social contract to spend a part of the income they earn from e-choupal on community welfare.
To manage the hub of 50-odd e-choupals, ITC appoints a sanyojak (coordinator) who is either a former mandi trader or a local dealer of ITC products. He is the link between ITC and the sanchalaks. He also earns a commission on e-choupal deals.
By building this unique human organisation in which farmers, traders, companies, government agencies and NGOs compete and collaborate with each other, the ITC is-by design or by default-creating a new institution that is not a company, not a cooperative venture, not a government department but has some merits of all. It is this institutional innovation.

EMPOWERING THE SMALLEST
Indian farmers typically buy at retail prices and sell their produce at wholesale prices, losing out on both ends of the deal. By virtually aggregating them, e-choupal brings the power of scale to the smallest of farmers. ITC ensures that there are at least two suppliers of all products sold through the e-choupal. Farmers can pool their demand, compare prices and place orders on the Net. Bargain and choice-two key virtues of competition-are delivered to the farmers right on their doorstep.

When it is time to sell the produce, e-choupal helps the farmers by breaking the monopoly of local markets that are controlled by trade cartels. In most mandis, farmers are cheated at several stages-arbitrary pricing, underweighing, delayed payments. In Uttar Pradesh, farmers lose between 10 and 30 per cent of their income to such malpractices. ITC is setting up its own purchase centres in the six states covered by e-choupals. The farmers' response has been overwhelming. In 2001-2, the company purchased 60,000 metric tonnes of crop through e-choupal. By 2003-4 the purchase increased to 2,10,000 tonnes and in four months of 2004-5, the company picked up 1,80,000 tonnes of farm produce.

For farmers it is a win-win situation. Sitting in their village, they can check the prevailing purchase price at the mandi and the ITC centre through e-choupal and sell wherever they wish to. ITC's entry into crop purchase invariably means a rise in mandi rates too, benefiting even those farmers who can't sell to ITC. In places where ITC rates aren't higher than the mandi rates, farmers are drawn to ITC centres because the company uses electronic weighing, better quality testing and ensures spot payment.The model is win win for also the final consumers. The companies can share the saving in cost with consumers.

Some cases
Shukla from his five-acre field in Malau had never produced more than six quintals of crop per acre. Last year Shukla reaped up to 12 quintals of corn per acre. Reason: for the first time in his 20 years of farming, he used high-yielding, branded seeds bought through e-choupal. Akhilesh's wheat crop nearly doubled and the income from sale almost tripled, because of better seeds, better herbicides and better sales prices-all achieved in a single year..
In Andhra Pradesh, a shrimp farmer logs on to the Internet to check the prices of shrimp in the local market and decides the best time to sell. A soya bean farmer in Madhya Pradesh also checks the price movements of soya bean on the Chicago Board of Trade from his village and in his local language. That gives him and other cultivators an idea of the future prices of soya bean in the local market. Are they all transiting from the world of low-knowledge, low-productivity, low-income farming to one of information-based, high-productivity, high-income agriculture?

And the business aspects
ITC is setting up six e-choupals a day at the cost of about Rs 3 lakh per installation (Rs 2 lakh for hardware and Rs 1 lakh for pre-installation preparation). Since each e-choupal covers between five and six villages, the company is entering 30-36 new villages a day. About Rs 125 crore already invested in e-choupal. ITC is committed to spending Rs 1,000 crore. A chain of rural malls will part of e-choupal initiative. My entry on the first Indian rural mall relates to that.(Archives- October5, 2004)

With global restriction on tobacco, ITC intends to expand fast its food division with e-choupals as a critical link in its supply chain. Sourcing inputs directly from farmers (instead of agents) gives ITC a competitive edge over its rivals in quality and cost. The company is able to build a link right from farm to fork. It buys wheat for Aashirbad atta, one of the most successful brands in market. With already in branded garment business, it plans to enter cotton procurement to forge linkages between fibre and fashion.

It is a story of a commercially viable way to reach 600 million villagers that forms the bulk of the total Indian consumers. Already 37 companies including biggies like Godrej Group sell their products through the e-choupal. These products range from tractors to soaps to hair oil. ITC charges a fee from every user company. By 2010 the turnover of the e-choupals is likely to log over Rs 9,000 crore.

E-choupal's speed and spread have also created resentment among mandi functionaries in Madhya Pradesh who perceive ITC's participation as interference on their turf.

This the growth model that will chaange the face of rural India.

How To Inspire Your Team

How To Inspire Your Team - - CIO Magazine Dec 15,2004

Charlie Feld's latest leadership article for CIO Magazine is about How to Inspire Your Team. It's a quick read that explains the value of trust (table stakes - you've got nothing without it), hope (fuel for achievement), enjoyment (sustenance for high performance), and opportunity (individual growth is required for people to work at peak levels.) It's well worth reading and sending around to your leadership team.

Seth's Blog: The top 1,000 things to know

Seth's Blog: The top 1,000 things to know

So what are they? What are the one thousand teachable things that every third grader ought to start learning so she'll know them all before before she graduates from high school?

Here are twenty to get us started.

1. How to type.
2. How to speak in front of a group.
3. How to write clear prose that other people actually want to read.
4. How to manage a project.
5. The most important lessons from American history.
6. What the world's religions have in common.
7. Evolution.
8. Formal logic.
9. The 15,000 most common English words.
10. Conversational Spanish.
11. How to handle big changes, with grace.
12. How to run a small business.
13. Basic chemistry.
14. Not arithmetic, but algebra.
15. A little geometry, a little calculus.
16. The most important lessons from ten other world cultures and their history.
17. Speed reading with comprehension.
18. How to sell.
19. Pick one: how to paint, write a poem, compose a song or juggle really well.
20. Understanding the biographies of 500 important historical figures and 200 fictional ones.

Pricing your software - Joel

Joel on Software - Camels and Rubber Duckies

Take my advice, offered about 20 pages back: charge $0.05 for your software. Unless it does bug tracking, in which case the correct price is $30,000,000. Thank you for your time, and I apologize for leaving you even less able to price software than you were when you started reading this.

Hiring 101

Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled: Hiring 101

# The most important rule about interviewing:
# The initial few moments of an interview are the most crucial.
# Interviewing is about creating a dialog with the candidate.
# Interviews are about the past
# Always check references;
# It is more important than ever to develop people into high performers.
# Too often hiring managers focus on a candidate's skills and qualifications rather than on who s/he is or her/his personality.
# Never hire anyone who doesn't wear a watch.
# Don't ever, ever hire somebody just like yourself.
# Hire the very best, act as if your life depended on every person you bring on your team, and put a ton of cycles into finding, referencing, recruiting, and retaining those people.

extra 1-2 hours of productivity each day from my Blackberry

Paul Allen: Internet Entrepreneur

I already use my Blackberry for Google phonebook searches, using the integrated web browser. (I also use Google SMS). But the thought of location aware Google Local or Yahoo Local searches on my Blackberry really gets me excited.

I've gone through 4 RIM Blackberries since they were introduced and absolutely love them. The thumb key pad is awesome--I can type more than 50 words per minute now. And I can take notes everywhere without pulling out a laptop and booting up. (At church I always feel a need to explain to church goers around me that I'm taking notes--not playing games.)

Until I saw a news release a few months back about Lexis data being made available to Blackberry users, I hadn't consider that the Blackberry could be a development platform for all kinds of third party software and data services. But since I consider it the most usable of all the portable computing devices I have used (because of the thumb keypad, the scroll wheel, and the integration of cell phone services with the address book and email), I'm definitely going to investigate their application development environment further.

I have said this before and I will say it again--the single best productivity investment an entrepreneur can make is to purchase a Blackberry and stop using desktop computer time for email. I seem to get an extra 1-2 hours of productivity each day from my Blackberry.

Feld Thoughts: Term Sheet: Liquidation Preference

Feld Thoughts: Term Sheet: Liquidation Preference

I've written about liquidation preferences (and participating preferred) before, as have most of the other VC bloggers (and several entrepreneur bloggers.) However, for completeness, and since liquidation preferences are the second most important "economic term" (after price), Jason and I decided to write a post on it. Plus - if you read carefully - you might find some new and exciting super-secret VC tricks.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

[VENTUZ]

[VENTUZ] | Solutions | Showcase

 

Friday, January 07, 2005

Llearn by example quick reference series

Digital Photography Basic Work Flow - learn by example quick reference series -[ e. g. educational guides -]

Thursday, January 06, 2005

300 Free Truetype Fonts You Should Have

Here

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Six thinking hats

Mind Tools - Six thinking hats

How to Use the Tool:
You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of blocking the confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

* White Hat:
With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

* Red Hat:
'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

* Black Hat:
Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them.

Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher' and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.

* Yellow Hat:
The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

* Green Hat:
The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.

* Blue Hat:
The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors, etc.) or different customers.


W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

At W3Schools you will find all the Web-building tutorials you need,
from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, XSL, Multimedia and WAP.