How often have you heard someone say, "It's a small world, isn't it?" Unless the person just happens to be exiting the popular "It's A Small World" attraction at Disneyland or Disney World, the reference is usually to how interconnected we all seem to be, prompted by running into a surprising connection to someone you've just met.
We shouldn't be too surprised when such coincidences occur....
The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
--Albert Einstein
I have always been fascinated with the past. As a youngster, the older a story, myth, or legend was, the better I liked it. By quite a young age, David, Icarus, and Ulysses seemed quite real to me.
That interest soon led me into reading histories as well. The battle of...
Champion chess players report that the key to winning is to start looking for a better move as soon as you have found a good one. Then repeat the process. Naturally, you don't have time to repeat yourself in very much of what you do. For business model innovation, repetition is essential to building the ultimate competitive advantage.
When you feel like you've exhausted all of the important...
How many times have you started doing something new, and found out that the environment changed in a way that made your new offering inappropriate? That happens all the time in business. Successful business model innovators avoid this problem by looking at what could happen before anything changes.
Something that is minor irritant or opportunity today can become an enormous factor...
Could you personally rewire and replumb your business? Probably not. You would get expert help. The same principle applies here, except that the expert help is often in places you don't think about.
Suppliers and partners, as well as potential suppliers and partners, can find many more ways to add benefits at the current price that you will never notice, consider, or realize. Since few...
An artist's perspective is a key that unlocks the door into a new world of understanding for viewers. Yet where does such a novel perspective come from?
While natural objects often inform artists, few powerful artistic perspectives emerge solely from viewing nature. In fact, until the 19th century most serious artists viewed painting or sculpturing from nature with skepticism.
Spending...
In many cultures, rules, roles, and choices are very circumscribed. I remember speaking once with an Italian friend about gondoliers in Venice, Italy. Gondoliers usually inherit their tiny mooring places from their fathers, who had done the same from their fathers. Most gondoliers live lives circumscribed by their mooring place, thinking about little beyond the small territory within which they...
If you ask most young people about what they are learning, they will make an unpleasant face. Even those who enjoy learning will often pretend that they don't. Why? The youthful ideal is to float through life without a care in the world . . . and if you can't do that, to at least pretend to be carefree.
Under the surface of that real or pretended insouciance, young people are usually...
Young people have always looked upward and outward . . . seeking opportunity, freedom, adventure, and guidance. But they rarely search for practical routes to fulfill their high-flying yearnings. Dr. Roy Rissanen is an exception. His experiences show how you can grow beyond your starting point to live up to your high-flying ambitions and potential.
Growing up in his native Finland, Dr....
People go through four stages before any revolutionary development:
1. It's nonsense, don't waste my time.
2. It's interesting, but not important.
3. I always said it was a good idea.
4. I thought of it first.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
Give customers something they value more than the competition offers at the same price, and your business grows faster. Repeat this well enough, and...
