How many olympic gold medalist swimmers do you remember? Unless you are in swimming, I would say the answer would be “Not many” Anthony Ervin (olympic gold medalist for swimming in 2004) is about to change that and is carving out a name for himself in a very unique fashion. Ervin is auctioning of his… Continue reading
Date Archives → April 2005
Make it easy or make it hard..
My friend from India was staying at Homestead Hotels. Last night, I wanted to reach him by phone. I thought it should be easy. I was wrong! I knew his room number and it was easy to get the hotel number from the website. However, when I called the main number, I got a message… Continue reading
The world is your R&D unit
We have talked about this multiple times – if you want to have a competitive advantage, you need to innovate. What if we have no resources to invest in R&D and innovation. No problem. The whole world can be your R&D unit 🙂 There are several examples where companies have used outside help (paying in… Continue reading
Compelling Offer #3 – Send This File
My friend Karthik Sundaram of PurplePatch Services referred me to this interesting service on the web called SendThisFile. Their offer as stated on their website is: SendThisFile® enables you to easily send a large file to anyone, anywhere! I love the simplicity of the offer and the model. I wish them all the success. Please… Continue reading
Ways to distinguish yourself – #23 Learn systems thinking
If everyone in a company learns the basics of “systems thinking” life would be very simple. Here is a definition of a system from the late Austrian Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy A system is an entity which maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts. Systems thinking, in essence, is an understanding of… Continue reading
Ways to distinguish yourself – #22 Learn to sell
If you are not in sales, this might surprise you. Many of you may be thinking “I don’t ever intend to be in sales. This does not apply to me!” Believe me, it DOES! Everyone of us are selling something almost on a daily basis. We may be selling our abilities to perform a job,… Continue reading
"Free" to "Paid" – The Meetup Story so far
Meetup, as most of you know is a hosted service for organizing, well, meet ups. Until recently, Meetup was a free service. A few days ago, Meetup announced that it will no longer be a “free” service. I have observed (sitting on the sidelines, of course) a lot of discussions and opinions about whether charging… Continue reading
Ways to distinguish yourself – #21 Balance Innovation and Continuous Improvement
All of us know that if you we want to make sweeping changes, we need to innovate. Incrementalism (small improvements) won’t attract much attention. Fedex became a success story as they changed the expectations (absolutely, positively overnight) of people, delivered on their promise and charged a premium for it. However, Innovation projects are never “complete”… Continue reading