books… Why We Read: Innovator’s Omnivorous Content Diet 21 Jan 202522 Jan 2025 Books have taken a beating in recent decades. In 2023, 767 million printed books were sold in the United States, down 2.7% from 2022 and 9% from a record 843…
Author… Be Exothermic: Igniting the Startup Flywheel 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Last week was a reawakening of sorts. A four-hour drive for my first in person business meeting since last March seemed a minor inconvenience after a lockdown that included nearly…
Author… Founder Fit: Insight Driven Innovation 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Founder Opportunity Fit Framework Venture investors profess preference for industry disruptors, yet this review finds that investors more readily back incremental innovation with credentialed founders than industry disruptors sponsored by…
Business Area… Experience vs. Insight: What Makes a Successful Founder? 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 What do Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Michael Dell have in common? These founders of Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, Google and Dell have created pathbreaking…
Business Area… Seeking Alpha: How Investors Derive Signal from Noise 16 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 In recent months, the investment community observed the passing of Charlie Munger and Daniel Kahneman. Munger and Kahneman came from different disciplines but shared the same objective: improving judgment in…
Business Area… Investing in Generative Artificial Intelligence & the Gartner Hype Cycle: Is the Hype Worth It? 15 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” Warren Buffett, 1998 Berkshire Hathaway annual report Is now a good…
Business Area… Turning the Flywheel to Reach Escape Velocity 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Achieving escape velocity is essential for startups to deliver venture returns. Escape velocity is a compelling image for an entrepreneur, as it refers to the speed – 25,020 miles per…
Business Area… Startup Pacing: Accelerate Growth to Win New Markets 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Pacing and Performance: Be Quick but Don’t Be in a Hurry As we enjoy March Madness, the college basketball tournament is a clinic in clock management. In games calibrated for…
Business Area… Seeing Clearly: Three Startup Strategies to Survive & Thrive the Gartner Hype Cycle 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Apple Vision Pro, released in February, presents a bold vision for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). AR/VR has promised for decades to supercharge gaming, enhance education, inform work, and enliven…
Business Area… Three Cardinal Sins of Investing: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Identify Founder Fit 15 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 What do Amazon, Alibaba, AirBnB, Bentley Systems, Cisco, DataDog, PagerDuty, Peloton, Pinterest, Robinhood, SquareSpace, Uber, Udemy and UIPath have in common? In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Scott Kupor described…
Business Area… Regulatory Capture: Navigating the Third Rail of Innovation 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Trailing through the darkened corridors of political power are the insidious tendrils of corporate and elite influence. A particularly pervasive and pernicious form of political influence is regulatory capture where…
Business Area… Atomic Habits: Forcing Functions to Fulfill New Year’s Resolutions 14 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 ‘The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.’ Samuel Johnson “Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but…
Corporate… Social Capital: Six Startup Strategies to Upend Incumbents 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 In 2015, thousands of taxi drivers in Paris rioted blocking thoroughfares, damaging cars, and threatening Uber drivers while seeking a ban of Uber in France. Local authorities responded by jailing…
Business Area… Paradigm Shifts: Ten Winning Strategies for Disruptive Innovators 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things … Whenever his enemies have…
Business Area… Dominant Design: The Superhighway to Industry Growth 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Though Apple Vision Pro has disappointed on sales, the product is a significant step forward and the future of AR/VR remains bright. When augmented by artificial intelligence, AR/VR promises to…
Business Area… The Five Forces: Five Startup Strategies for Winner Take Most Markets 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 “Full many a flower was meant to blush unseen and waste its fragrance on the desert air, Full many a man was meant to scale the heights but faint of…
Business Area… Exit Strategy: Reverse Engineering Successful Outcomes from the Outset 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 The above want ad applies as well to startups as the Antarctic: “hazardous journey, small wages … long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful.” Ernest Shackleton offered…
Business Area… Mapping the Territory: Exploring Uncharted Markets 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 “The Earth’s surface is 70% water. That water is uncarbonated. Therefore, the Earth is … flat.” When Mapping the Territory, beware of maps and mental models used out of context.…
Startup Cairns 