“Our biggest challenge right now is fear,” she says. “The worst thing that a company can do right now is go into hibernation, into duck-and-cover. If you just sit on your backside and wait for things to get better, they’re not going to. They’re going to get better for somebody, but not necessarily for you.”
VC Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures has tips for startups in the Dec 2006 issue of Business 2.0
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Ram Shriram
Silicon Valley entrepreneur; Director, Google
Give Your Startup a Fighting Chance
1. Hire smart. Setting the DNA of a company starts with the founders, and hiring is the No. 1 pitfall for young ventures. Don't compromise on quality, verify passion, stay focused on doing one thing really well. The motivation should be to build something of value for the long term.
2. Define the market problem. Rather than rush to form a venture, think hard about the problem you're solving. Break it down into easily understandable pieces so you can explain it first to yourself.
3. Simplify the solution. Set specific goals and milestones to get you to a stage of validation; that ensures that your efforts and energies will be well spent. At that point, be flexible and open to changes. It's better to have half a product with a brutal triage of features at launch than to have a half-assed product.
Crime, they say, doesn't pay. If criminals are mentored, researchers have proven, it pays better.
Carlo Morselli and Pierre Tremblay, of the Université de Montréal, and Bill McCarthy, of the University of California at Davis, who studied the impact of mentoring on criminal success recently published their findings this paper titled “Mentors and Criminal Achievement: Researching Mentorship and its Impact”.
Morselli et al also cite an earlier researcher on mentoring, who quotes one of the subjects of his study as declaring, “Any man who hits the big-time [in crime], somewhere or other along the road, became associated with a big-timer who picked him up and educated him”. Adding, “No one ever crashed the big rackets without education in this line.”
The study however is not anecdotal but adopts a rigourous methodology.
When measured along the key metrics that signify success in this profession; the ones who were mentored made more money and got caught less often. “Those who had a mentor reported almost nine times greater earnings than nonmentored men” write researchers. “As for costs, mentored offenders experienced fewer days of incapacitation during the window period”. Download >>
As I have often written, "There are two ways of looking at life; the way it is, or the way we will like to believe it is".
The first step is a honest at our ownselves. This article on 'Critical Thinking' offers an interesting 'How-to list...' (see below).
The article is titled, "Becoming a Critic of your own thinking'.
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A how-to list for dysfunctional living
Most people have no notion of what it means to take charge of their lives. They don’t realize that the quality of their lives depends on the quality of their thinking.
We all engage in numerous dysfunctional practices to avoid facing problems in our thinking. Consider the following and ask yourself how many of these dysfunctional ways of thinking you engage in:
The previous post on a great vision statement received the highest views, so here is another one!
This mission statement was conjured up by the creative people at the mega-marketing services agency, WPP:
Our mission:
To develop and manage talent;
To apply that talent,
Throughout the world,
For the benefit of clients;
To do so in partnership;
To do so with profit.
WPP
According to a Wharton professor Yoram "Jerry" Wind and an Israeli venture capitalist, in a a recent article in 'Knowledge at Wharton', a company's ability to understand its customers' philosophical outlook may be as vital to its success as R&D and other efforts.
Sounds like Marketing 101 Revisited ?!
But if you ignore the hyperbole & cliches which Wind, a purveyor of pop-strategy (like Ram Charan), is very fond of, it does make sense.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1125.cfm
In a paper titled 'Irrational Optimism' three London Business School (LBS) Professors have asserted that historically stocks have had lower returns and higher risks than was previously believed.
To quote "Although the probable rewards from equity investment are attractive, stocks did not and cannot offer a guaranteed superior performance over the investment horizon of most investors. Furthermore, their prospective returns are lower than many investors project, whereas their risk is higher than many investors appreciate."
"Investors who assume that favorable equity returns can be relied on in the long term or that stocks are safe so long as they are held for 20 years are optimists. Their optimism is irrational. "
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The paper can be downloaded from : - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=476981
Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company
We will build good ships
At a profit when we can
At a loss if we must
But, always, good ships.
Note: NNS&D was recently acquired. You can compare the new "Value Statement" ( http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/about/our_values.stm ) with this powerful vision .
