Edison viewed the world as a place of strange and wonderful things, and he wanted to know about everything. He became the most prolific inventor of our time by pushing questions into discovery. It was best known to him as the analogy: If you want to make a sculpture, take a block of stone and carve away what doesn’t need to be there…all while he learned that he was an inventor, Edison took the opposite direction…by taking pieces and putting them together to create something new and useful. Hence, one of his infamous quotes: “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

Inventing is the purest form of entrepreneurship. Yet many good ideas for inventions are never completed because people are intimidated by the process: not only must your idea come fruition, you also need to patent it, make it in large numbers, and sell it. Sometimes it’s just simpler to cash out: sell your design to someone else to produce and sell your vision.

If you want to hold onto all of the profits, you will have to go through the complicated patent process yourself. You would be wise to hire a patent attorney. Those who preserve though the patenting process can realize substantial rewards. Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway personal transport, holds over 440 U.S. and foreign patents. He was already the inventor of the infusion pump for insulin and chemotherapy before the invention of the Segway, and Kamen is now referred to as an “inventrepreneur.”

We need to be reminded that so much to be learned in life isn’t learned in school. Each day presents a chance to figure out a way to view your life. Look for the opportunity to learn new things about yourself and you business that no graduate school course could possibly teach.

Educating the Inventrepreneur is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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Many times new rifts open as industries progress. Take the television, for example. The Digital Age forced analog televisions owners to purchase a converter in order to tune in to the digital television world. Hands-free headset manufacturers made a fortune once lawmakers made it illegal to drive and talk on their cell phones at the same time.

Where do you think the next rift will be? Seth Godin has come to the conclusion that “Most people who build important businesses build them on a rift, usually one that they find by accident, and usually only once.” Today’s marketers are looking for the rifts where businesses can address the aging baby boomer.

Seth Godin has filled a rift, partly as the author of several bestselling marketing books. He has fully embraced the computer age, writing a popular marketing blog and founding a “recommendation” website. Although someone else will come along and replace Godin’s ideas as fast as you can hit Ctrl/Alt/Delete, his early entry into the Web community brought marketing into a contemporary world.

Seth Godin became remarkable by taking a clear look at the age of technology and assessing exactly what was going on. Then he was able to make sweeping statements about how businesses had to think about this new world, not only to succeed but to stand out. Godin was a small business owner who has churned out books that have made him a big success. Try adding these concepts into your entrepreneurial mix:

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit– Godin promotes the theory that there is a dip in the road that is either the entrance to superstardom or the signal you are hitting a dead end.

Small Is the New Big– Godin discusses the backlash against bigness after several pivotal events, including the Enron debacle. He talks about how “small” can move faster than “big” and how that can mean the difference between success or not.

All Marketers Are Liars– Godin gives countless examples of marketing people “stretching the truth.” But he makes one thing clear: “Your story won’t spread (which is the whole principal of marketing) if the facts don’t back it up.”

Survival Is Not Enough– Successful entrepreneurs embrace change… and change is only happening faster with the Information Age.

I’m really interested in your feedback and comments. If you have anything you’d like to add or express, please comment below.

The Entrepreneurial Rift is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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A generalized overview with the expansion of the Internet and the resulting globalization of business activity, the capacity of the influence of information technology (now referenced as IT) has increased significantly. Many innovative business practices are being enabled specifically by IT. The capacity for integration of information in alpha/numeric, text, voice, and video form will give rise to an even greater abundance and impact of IT in the future. Also, the information systems (now referenced as IS) development profession has been maturing and IS has been recognized as a socio-technical endeavor for some time. For system developers, the need to communicate effectively with users and team members has been increased significantly.

A survey taken in 1993 of 192 human resource personnel responsible for hiring new IS graduates in the Denver, Colorado area discovered that, in addition to knowledge in applied computing and business, it was very important that a new IS hire be educated in: 1) the ability to learn, 2) the ability to work in teams, 3) oral and written communication, 4) problem solving and reasoning, and 5) a point of reference to health and wellness. In short, adaptability, communication, and stress management are seen as key skills for the IS professional. Yet, such skills are not developed through logic alone, but involve the “soft areas” of feelings, instinct, and senses.

A little over 25 years ago, there were two researchers, Couger and Zawacki, who  reported that, while IS professionals (systems analysts and programmers) had the lowest needs for social interaction on the job, they reported much higher “growth needs” than the other professionals surveyed. While at the time, growth needs were largely understood as greater development of professional proficiencies, there now appears to be some evidence that the IS development profession may be ready for a more holistic approach to growth.

For example, a management scientist, in his book on IS management, has called for extending Maslow’s hierarchy of needs beyond self-actualization to “self-donation” and has provided a concrete example of such a stage in the career of a systems analyst. An article in Computerworld has called for “emotional literacy among IS professionals” in the context of personality awareness. There was a convention of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), where a keynote speaker proposed that “love” and not confrontation be the model for organizational communication, and received a standing ovation. A job advertisement for IT professionals within an insurance company in a prominent U.S. software center points out that this employer is interested in contributing to the employee’s professional and personal life, and advises candidates to “listen to their inner voice.” A prominent U.S. textbook author has referred, in the dedication of his text on IS for the Internetworked Enterprise to “experiencing the Light within.” In a recent Canadian survey on stress among IS professionals, the most frequently mentioned desired coping resource was “personal development seminars,” closely followed by “conflict resolution seminars.”

Also, the concept of “emotional intelligence” is being increasingly emphasized in management literature. It is being recognized that, while the traditional IQ (intelligence quotient) can help a person to get a job, it is the EQ (emotional quotient) that will allow the person to keep the job and to progress satisfactorily in his/her career.

Thus, the stage appears to be set for a preliminary attempt to address specific psychological factors as applied to the work of various IT professionals such as system and data analysts, programmers, project managers, help desk personnel, and also software engineers, telecommunications designers, and others. In this context, the term IT is considered to include a broader range of positions, whereas IS is more restricted to the activities of planning, analysis, design, development, and deployment of computerized business application systems.

Emotional Intelligence in Technology is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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Here is an interesting article about some former Google employees leaving to build social networking sites.   This was found on the Mashable and it offers an insight into the importance of building your brand or products community.  This continues to be the secret success for online companies as well as traditional companies.  As Seth Godin describes in his book Tribes, once you have a loyal “Tribe” following you and your product there is nothing you can’t achieve. But how do you do this?  In my opinion, it starts with being authentic. Second, have to build trust.  Finally, you have to provide a product or service that can go viral.  Are your customers proud to talk about your product and promote it to their friends and family?  If you can answer yes to all three you are well on your way to having a smashing success on your hands.

For an outstanding article summarizing some of greatest Lessons Learned from Seth Godin, just click on the hyperlink.

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Messages you send and receive on Twitter are no more than 140  characters, or about the length of a news headline. That means they’re really easy to write and read.

Messages on Twitter are public, like blog posts, and you don’t have to give people permission to see what you’ve written. That means you can readily meet new people on Twitter.

The messages are opt-in, and people choose to get a stream of others’ messages. (On
Twitter, this model is called “following.”) That means you have to be interesting, or
people will choose not to get your updates.

You can send and receive the messages via a variety of mechanisms, including mobile
phones, PCs, websites and desktop programs, and they’re distributed in real time. That
means that Twitter can fit with nearly anyone’s workflow.

When you add all that together, and you throw in a dose of the friendliness common on
Twitter today, you get a powerful and appealing communications platform that turns out to
be highly useful for a slew of personal and professional needs.

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“Most days I interview between 8 and 12 college seniors, all in the upper third of  their class, all at least mildly  interested in coming with  us.  One of the main things we want to determine in the screening interview is the individual’s motivation. We want to find out if he or she is the kind of person who can, in a few years, direct major projects, manage a branch office, or in some other way make a really substantial contribution to the company.  “I must say I’m not too pleased with the personal objectives of most of those I talk with.  You’d be surprised,” she went on, “how many 22-year-olds are more interested in our retirement plan than in anything else we have to offer.  A second favorite question is ‘Will I move around a lot?’  Most of them seem to define the word success as synonymous with security. Can we risk turning our company over to people like that?  “The thing I can’t understand is why should young people these days be so ultra-conservative,  so narrow in their view of the future? Every day there are more signs of expanding opportunity.

This country is making record progress in scientific and technological development.  Our population is gaining rapidly.  If there ever was a time to be bullish about America, it’s now.”   The tendency for so many people to think small means  there is much less competition than you think for a very rewarding career.

Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family  background;  they are measure by the size of their thinking.  How big do we think determines the size of our accomplishments. Now, let’s see how we can enlarge our thinking.

Ever ask yourself, “What is my greatest weakness?” Probably the greatest human weakness is self-deprecation    that is selling oneself short.  Self-deprecation shows through in countless ways.

John sees a job advertisement in the paper;  it’s exactly what he would like.  But he does nothing about it because he  thinks,  “I’m not good enough for that job, so why bother.” Or Jim wants a date with  Joan, but he doesn’t call her  because he thinks he wouldn’t rate with her.  Tom feels Mr. Richards would be a very good prospect for his product, but Tom doesn’t call. He feels Mr. Richards is too big to see  him.  Pete is filling out a job application form.  One  question asks,  “What  beginning  salary  do  you  expect?”  Pete puts down a modest figure because he feels he really isn’t worth the bigger sum that he would like to earn.

Philosophers for thousands of  years  have  issued  good  advice: Know Thyself. But most people, it seems, interpret this suggestion to  mean Know Only Thy Negative Self. Most self-evaluation consists of making long mental lists of one’s faults, shortcomings, inadequacies.

It’s well to know our inabilities, for this shows us areas in which we can improve. But if we only know our negative characteristics we’re in a mess. Our value is small.

Thinking Big is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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