Saul Klein of Index Ventures turned me on a few weeks to OpenCoffee Club – a new program he started in London that is quickly making its way across the world (including Palo Alto, Paris and Amsterdam. Sacramento, Dublin, Brighton and Zagreb.)
Saul’s got a great overview of the first and second events on his blog. According to Saul, “the key is a regular place and a regular time – it’s not important who comes along, some days it might be no one – just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.”
Jason has committed to trying this in Boulder – look for more in the next month or so.
In January, I posted Part 1 of an empirical approach to determining whether software patents are bad (or good). The essay was sent to me by John Funk, founder of Evergreen Innovation Partners. This is part 2 (please read part 1 first if you are interested.)
As a quick reminder – the premise of the essay is: What if we attempted to craft a social policy hypothesis that would defend the existence of software patents, and then we went about creating an experiment that would attempt to disprove that hypothesis?
Now, what if we created an interview / survey methodology that talked to hundreds of software companies, ranging from large ones (e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Google) to ones as small as small as angel-backed or bootstrapped startups. We define a methodology that attempts to understand whether the basis for the rationale of software patents (1: public disclosure accelerates innovation because future invention rests on prior patent disclosures) or (2: conferring a patent monopoly will encourage innovation that otherwise would not occur due to perceived risk/return) has empirical evidence to demonstrate social policy success.
It would seem that addressing (1:) is easy: For example:
Addressing (2:) may be a little more difficult to accomplish. Some questions might include:
Evidence of any of these would show a business model that is like pharma vs. generics where when a product goes “off patent” there is more competition (and, therefore, the existence of monopoly profits generated during the term of the patent – which would prove the social policy is actually working.)
I’ll post part 3 sometime later this week.
If you’ve ever been a management consultant you’ll love Consulting Demons by Lewis Pinault. My first company (Feld Technologies) did a lot of work for and with a major east coast consulting firm between 1988 and 1993 and I got to see the consulting industry from the inside. In addition to writing all of their back office software (stuff like accounting, recruiting, expense management, time tracking) we worked with them on a number of their client projects as their “IT specialists.”
Pinault’s book totally nails the life, the industry, and the experience of management consulting. It’s cynical and not that pleasant, but it’s a classic confessional that – if you identify with the business – is enthralling. BusinessWeek had a short review when it came out titled First, Let’s Kill All the Consultants and CIO Magazine had an except on one of the great sections titled The Devil You Don’t Know.
At the end of the book, Pinault steps off the consulting treadmill in 2000 to go follow his dream (getting a JD with an emphasis on Space Law and working toward a PhD in Planetary Geosciences and Future Studies.) A short trip on the web determined that he got back on the treadmill at some point, establishing himself as a “Guru” (there is a hysterical chapter on this – Chapter 10 – The Great Centurion) via his book The Play Zone: Unlock Your Creative Genius and Connect with Consumers. He’s chairman of BOX and is a Senior Client Partner in Korn/Ferry’s Leadership Development Solutions practice.
The book – plus Pinault’s trajectory through his consulting career – helps reinforce any cynicism one might have about management consulting.
Jason Wood has an interesting post up titled Failure: Can fearing it impede professional greatness? It’s consistent with the title of his blog (The Ponderings of Woodrow) – really good ponderings on failure here.
There was much Guitar Hero playing last night. Those who were there know who they are and should now bow before a real master. 475,402 and a 425 note streak (hang in there until minute 7 if you want to see some amazing stuff.)
I bet this dude is really good at Tempest. Of course, I’m not the master – I’m frustratingly stuck on medium and still get excited when I break 50,000. Yeah – I know it’s kind of weird to be watching Youtube videos of people playing Guiter Hero – Alex and Eran are giggling.
I love it when a smart employee of a company calls out stupid / foolish / irrational / annoying behavior of his employers. Don Dodge – a Microsoftie who I like and respect a lot (and who has a super blog) has a great post up titled Microsoft lawyer rips Google on copyrights – Why? I don’t have a lot to add other than “I agree – why?” and “don’t the lawyers have enough work to do dealing with their own issues?”
Thanks Jake for the reminder. 4 8 15 16 23 42 to you.
Every now and then I realize that I had a theme to my weekend reading. This weekend I absorbed three books: Ego Check, Toilets of the World, and The No Assholes Rule. Do you see the theme?
Ego Check – written by CU Professor Mathew Hayward – was pretty good although once again a 225 page book could have been edited down to about 75 pages and gotten the same point across. The anecdotes and stories were mostly familiar to me, although Hayward put them together in a cohesive framework that’s useful if you want to study leadership styles and how “executive hubris” can destroy people and companies. Note to anyone writing a business book – think “75 pages.”
I’m fascinated by toilets and Toilets of the World didn’t disappoint. Enough said.
The No Assholes Rule weighed in at 186 pages – about 100 pages too long. Like Ego Check, it wasn’t a bad business book, but it was too long for the simple point that it was making. So far, my favorite business book of all time is On Bullshit which is about the perfect length.
Finally. We had an amazingly wonderful normal weekend in Boulder – sunny, 50 degrees, a little snow hanging around, especially in the mountains. Notwithstanding the daylight savings nonsense (which is irrelevant to me since I wake up while it’s still dark outside and I use Vista now), it’s beautiful here once again now that the White Witch of Narnia has apparently been defeated.
Of course, Amy just reminded me that March and April typically bring major spring storms. Fortunately I’m on the road most of the next two months. Wait, what am I saying?