Here’s an excellent, timely addendum to my recent post on mining and remixing your personal data silos: Marshall Kirpatrick at Read/Write Web just did a piece on an MIT researcher named Sandy Pentland who – with funding from cellphone giant Nokia – is mining hundreds of thousands of hours of cellphone call data – including continue…
Q: Chris, It seems that you have a pretty good understanding of the business world. I, myself, have stayed mostly in the educational culture. I’ve played around a bit with the idea of starting a business after I get my bachelors in Math & Physics this coming year. What things, would you say one needs continue…
My wife and I met in business school (a statistically unlikely prospect if you stop to think about it). One of the many relationship advantages this confers is a large shared vocabulary of concepts we can use not only to communicate about our work lives, but that we often apply (sometimes in jest, sometimes not) continue…
In 1999 my partners and I sold our 50-person Web consulting shop Adjacency to Sapient, a public IT consultancy. The next two years of my life were a complete blur of post-merger integration, recruiting and discipline development to flesh out Sapient’s nascent e-business consulting capability, plus an ongoing role selling and delivering client engagements to continue…
One of the big ideas we were exploring at Judy’s Book was the topic of tacit or latent knowledge. Everyone’s head is filled with a richly personal blend of facts and opinions: where to get the best burrito in San Francisco, my current favorite band, the name and contact information of my childhood friend who continue…
Brevity has never been my strong suit. Witness this morning’s PE Week Wire (an excellent daily newsletter for those with an interest in Private Equity and Venture Capital): Alexander Haislip offers a single sentence that delivers the same message as my recent post on the same topic, but in just 25 words: Good companies, they continue…
Q: Hi Chris, I’ve randomly become an occasional reader of your blog, and I’m starting to get addicted. I remember that you were interested in questions…I read your last post about the founder feeling, where you said… “It also unlocks previously unknown reserves of energy, a “fight or flight” response that fuels the creative effort continue…
Thanks to my friend Robin (via Google Reader’s new Share with Friends feature) for pointing me to this post from Evan Williams on the Theory of Constraints. Reading it, I had a simultaneous flashback to my b-school Intro to Operations class, and to a great meeting I had with a very exciting pre-release Web startup continue…
I just got off the phone with another young entrepreneur who’s in the process of starting a new “social reviews” site for local restaurants. I tried hard not to be a complete wet blanket, but I have so many knives in my back from my Judy’s Book experience it was hard not to pull a continue…
I have my friend Sree to thank for introducing me to the writings of Warren Buffet’s longtime investment partner, Charlie Munger. In his excellent book of investment (and other) advice, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Munger offers 10 rules for investment success, one of which has been on my mind lately. Rule number 1: Measure Risk, includes continue…