Have a nice weekend…!

This commitment to hire people who think like entrepreneurs, or instill an “owner’s mindset” in every employee, should be a high priority in every business. It’s what every customer looks for in every transaction. Most people will tell you this is impossible, but I found a new book, “Army of Entrepreneurs,” by Jennifer Prosek, where she seems to have actually accomplished this.

I like how she was able to motivate, train, and reward employees, including the implementation of an incentive program to get every member of the team actively involved in generating new business. She also identifies the typical qualms about using this approach, and describes how to overcome each one:

• Entrepreneurs are born, not made. The reality is that all entrepreneurial skills are learnable skills. The entrepreneurial mindset is a function of motivation, priorities, and risk versus reward, all of which you set or enable by your leadership and example. Hire employees who have strong skills, with the motivation to learn new ones.

• Employees will care only about work they create. This is really an issue of the quality of the people you hire rather than the management or compensation system. The key is to hire people with the right mindset, and communicate it daily to your whole team, by your actions as well as your words.

• Junior people shouldn’t be involved in new business. This is the platitude of an obsolete corporate culture where you had to “pay your dues” in menial jobs before adding creativity or making decisions. In today’s marketplace, junior staffers are often the most intimately connected to the market, technology, and the customer network.

• Employees will lose focus on their work. Old management models encourage employees to optimize their own task, often at the expense of the overall company objectives. There is new evidence that people want to understand the bigger picture, and business growth financial incentives will increase productivity, rather than lower it.

• Sales will be the organization’s sole focus. Again, you get what you demand and reward. If sales are the only way to get rewarded in your organization, then sales will take precedence over other activities. Motivate for a spectrum of entrepreneurial behaviors, and you will see results.

• We don’t need to reward lead generation. For a startup, you don’t have a recognized brand to bring in the leads. All businesses need to proactively seek leads, rather than simply attract them, with the creativity and initiatives of every employee rewarded for every contribution.

• There is too much risk associated with decentralized decision making. When you have to move and change quickly to survive, centralized decision making is too slow. You become the bottleneck. If you train people properly, empower them, trust them, and they understand the business, your evolving business can become a revolution.

Every large company wishes they could harness the power of a thousand entrepreneurs within their employee ranks to re-create the exceptional business growth they once knew. Instead, for growth, most have resigned themselves to buying startups that exhibit these characteristics.

Thus, the last thing you need as a growing startup is a “regular employee.” Hire entrepreneurs like you, grow like an entrepreneurial company, and stand above competitors in the acquisition process to carry that fire forward. That’s a win-win for everyone in this new culture and new economy.

Marty Zwilling

Un articol de exceptie, un articol care subliniaza foarte clar ca doar oamenii ambitiosi si care au o anumita conduita si viziune pot aduce valoare in tot ceea ce fac, iar aceasta caracteristica umana este extrem de greu de gasit si foarte greu de format. Va urez succes!

I’m a technology follower from the early days of the Internet, so a couple of years ago I decided to dive into this new world and check it out (who even heard of blogging or mashups ten years ago). I realized quickly that this new world isn’t just for the social life of Gen-Y – it is a sea change for everyone in business, especially startups.

After any earthquake event, the first thing I try to do is to step back, get the lay of the land, and derive some guidelines for getting around efficiently, while avoiding personal injury (I spent some years in California). Here are the current big three in social networking for business:

1. Facebook is biggest, moving from social to business. Currently, the biggest site in numbers is Facebook with over 500 million active users. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day. Their primary visitors in the past have been Gen-Y socializers, but the fastest growing segment now is business people, and discussion groups for business, like “Facebook for Business” with 56,250 members.
2. LinkedIn caters to senior business professionals. The largest site traditionally targeted at business people is LinkedIn, with current numbers exceeding 80 million members. This one is a “must” for every serious business professional and executive out there today. You can join groups with your specific interests, participate in discussions or not, and highlight your business.
3. Twitter for business and networking is ‘hot’. This site is for text-messaging on the Internet, with about 100 million unique visitors per month, and was first popular for social updates and gossip. Now it’s the source of business leads and networking for thousands of people, and the source of the breaking world news for everyone. You need to be there.

Obviously, there are many others that you should evaluation, based on your geographic location, type of business, and personal interests. Here is my perspective on a few of them:

• MySpace is for tweens, forget it. The third biggest site (just passed by Twitter) is MySpace, with about 95 million unique visitors per month. They have groups for business and entrepreneurs, but the culture is primarily teen and pre-teen. You will find business advertising there, but minimal business networking.

• It’s not all about numbers. There are many more social networks which have good traction and a more specialized focus in the business networking world. Examples include Ryze, Plaxo, Orkut, RedWire, and Ecademy. In general, their membership is focused by geography, industry, or culture, so the value can be excellent.

• Business networking today starts with social networks. Social networking sites are more effective and efficient than attending all those boring business cocktail mixers and conventions. I’ll even be so bold as to say that if you aren’t on any of these sites, you are way behind the curve in business networking today.

• Protocols for each site are different. There is a hierarchy and a culture to social networking sites on the Internet, just like there always has been with professional business organizations and clubs. There are so many sites, so you need to choose wisely, and learn the rules for each. Most are free, so you can do serious business networking around the world without signing up for any of the fee services.

Maybe because the cost of entry is low, I see a swarm of startups today busy with add-ons, and building new offerings. It’s a brave new world, for me an exciting challenge and fun to explore. But like every good explorer, I’m asking everyone I meet what’s around the next corner. Are you there today, and what do you predict for tomorrow?

Marty Zwilling

…fie care toate valorile “sa-ti reziste”…!

Source: RedPeople

…sunt cuvinte puternice, sunt cuvinte care subliniaza perfect o cultura organizationala, un mod de viata, un sentiment puternic…pe scurt… “punctul rosu”.

Indiferent de numarul de proiecte castigate, indiferent de strategia pe care o avem, tehnica sau comerciala, indiferent ca tehnicu’ e un “cowboy code” reusit, TRP-ul este si va fi un sentiment puternic, un punct de energie pozitiva care graviteaza in jurul unor oameni deosebiti, oameni ca Andreea Esca(oricare ar fi fost ea/el), Anatol Programatoreanu, Adelini Petrisori(oricati au fost ei) sau Pestisori mici sau mari terorizati intr-un mod abuziv de guvernele din umbra si toti cei care poarta sau care au purtat insemnele unei culture rosii…

We are proud to be Red…!

He calls his dream ‘Web 3.0’ or the ‘Semantic Web,’ meaning it understands user context. He and many other experts believe that the Web 3.0 browser will act more like a personal assistant than a search engine. As you search the Web, the browser records your interests in your local storage. The more you use the Web, the more your browser learns about you, and the more relevant will be your results.

Current advertising and public relations startups are already thinking along these lines in fields all the way from clothes shopping, art galleries, online advertising, to managing press releases. In some ways, these aren’t that different from the old Amazon.com “recommendation engine,” which suggests new products based on your surfing and buying habits, but they go much further.

Someday you will be able to ask your browser open questions like “Where should I take my wife for a good movie and dinner?” Your browser would consult its intelligence of what you and she like and dislike, take into account your current location, and then suggest the right movies and restaurants. If you are the first to deliver this, your startup can be the next Google success!

But some are skeptical about whether the Semantic Web – or at least, Berners-Lee’s view of it – will actually take hold. They reference other technologies also trying to reinvent the online world as we know it, from 3D virtual worlds to intelligent avatars. Web 3.0 could mean many things, and most of the possibilities have not yet been invented.

The Semantic Web isn’t really even a new idea. This notion of a Web where machines can better read, understand, and process all the data floating through cyberspace first surfaced in 2001, when a story appeared in Scientific American. This article describes a brave new world where software “agents” lead the way in performing Web-based tasks that elude most humans.

A current example is the GetGlue from AdaptiveBlue. If you visit a movie blog, and read about a particular film, it immediately links to sites where you can buy or rent that film. Another example is WolframAlpha, an amazing computational engine that went live recently, which creates intelligent results, graphs, and reports from any natural language question.

But we are a long way from agents that can do full natural language processing and think on their own (artificial intelligence). A recent startup, Alitora Systems, provides software to enterprises based on a natural language processing (NLP) engine.

It builds knowledge statements from unstructured media files – that’s a particular challenge for the life sciences where high-value knowledge about many things, such as the relationship between genetics and disease, lies hidden within journal articles, research papers, clinical trial data, FDA websites, and even graphical data.

But extracting information from even less structured data such as Twitter feeds is a very different and sometimes more difficult knowledge extraction problem. The objective is the same; assimilating unstructured data, giving it some robust analysis, and offering the extracted knowledge across a collaborative network.

Just think of the fertile ground all this opens for startups! If you’re looking for that ‘million dollar idea’ to build a plan around, here is your chance. But don’t wait too long, because the din for Web 3.0 is getting louder and louder. Catch the wave soon or it will pass you by!

Marty Zwilling

Behind the actions are a set of principles and characteristics that entrepreneurial leaders, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, seem to have in common. Look for these and nurture them in your own context to improve the odds of success for your own startup:

1. Clarity of vision and expectations. You must be able and willing to communicate to everyone your vision, goals, and objectives. Just as importantly, you have to be absolutely clear about who you are, what you stand for, and what you expect from everyone around you. People won’t follow you if they are in the dark or confused.
2. Willingness to make decisions. It is often said that making any decision is better than making no decision. Even better than “any decision” is a good decision made quickly. Business decisions always involve risk, at times a great deal of it. Smart entrepreneurs always balance the risk with facts, when they have them, rather than their gut.
3. Experience and knowledge in your business area. Effective leaders set a personal standard of competence for every person and function in the startup. It must be clear that you have the knowledge, insight, and skill to make your new company better than your very best competitor.
4. Commitment and conviction for the venture. This commitment must be passionate enough to motivate and inspire people to do their best work, and put their heart into the effort. Behind the passion must be a business model that makes sense in today’s world, and a determination to keep going despite setbacks.
5. Open to new ideas and creativity. In business, this means spending time and resources on new ideas, as well as encouraging people to find faster, better, cheaper, and easier ways to produce results, beat competition, and improve customer service. Be a role model and guide others to excel.
6. Courage to acknowledge and attack constraints. An effective leader is willing and able to allocate resources to remove obstacles to the success of the startup, as well as removing constraints on individuals on the team. It is believing that where there is the will, there will be a way.
7. Reward continuous learning. You have to encourage everyone to learn and grow as a normal and natural part of business. That means no punishment for failures, and positive opportunities for training and advancement. Personally, it means upgrading your own skills, listening, and reading about new developments and approaches.
8. Self-discipline for consistency and reliability. An effective leader is totally predictable, calm, positive, and confident, even under pressure. People like to follow someone when they don’t have to “walk on eggshells” to avoid angry outbursts, or assume daily changes in direction.
9. Accept responsibility for all actions. Everyone and every company makes mistakes. Good entrepreneurs don’t want to be seen as perfect, and they have to be seen as willing to accept the fact that “the buck stops here.” No excuses, or putting the blame on the economy, competitors, or team members.

The good news is that all of these principles of leadership are learnable. The bad news is that it’s not easy. Don’t assume that success as an entrepreneur is only about great presentations, killing competitors, or having insanely great ideas. It’s really more about leadership, understanding the needs of your prospective clients, and communicating your solutions with clarity.

Marty Zwilling

A few months ago I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Roy McAlister, who has been a prolific inventor for thirty years, and a recognized authority on the use of hydrogen as the ‘fuel’ of the 21^st century. While he still remains upbeat, I can sense the frustration that comes from years of facing barriers to innovation.

In his world, and many others that entrepreneurs inhabit, the problem is not a lack of ideas or technology. It’s not even a lack of money or opportunity, but a whole series of artificial constraints which seem to be getting more prevalent rather than less. Here are some of the key ones I see:

1. People are too comfortable. One of my favorite sayings is that “Real change doesn’t happen until the pain level gets high enough.” In Roy’s world, most people proclaim that we must do something about global warming and our dependence on fossil fuels, but the real impact to them is only a minor annoyance so far. People tend to complain about minor annoyances, but spend money on entertainment.
2. The inertia of infrastructures. It’s easy to see value in electric, natural gas, or hydrogen engines, but these all need a huge new investment in service stations, maintenance, training, and manufacturing. Replacing the existing infrastructure is painful to its constituents (oil companies and auto companies), so it will take generations.
3. Government regulations. Especially after the banking debacle a couple of years ago, everyone seems to want more government regulations. Even the best ones take years to get through our democratic process, and take even more years to change when innovation would suggest changes. The result is minimal innovation.
4. Risk avoidance. You never get anywhere unless you take a chance. Is it just me, or are more and more people afraid to challenge the “status quo?” Risk aversion has in many cases now moved to the extreme, called ‘entitlement’. No risk, guaranteed reward.
5. “Silos” of knowledge. Areas of study in many domains have become so narrow and deep, that experts fail to see the forest for the trees. This is rooted in our educational system, but extends beyond. In other words, universities should be preparing students to think and problem solve innovatively (outside the box), rather than using a microscope.
6. Low persistence levels. Thomas Edison failed more than ten thousand times before finding the right design of the light bulb. Challenged by his contemporaries, Edison soberly responded: “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” Some Gen-Y’ers have been raised by doting parents who tried to protect their kids from even one failure. That does not lead to innovation.

The world needs more innovation, and I’m looking to the entrepreneurs out there for the energy, vision, leadership and hustle to make it happen. They should be striking partnerships with inventors like Dr. Roy McAlister to find the limits of technology that can be commercialized (see Roy’s book for examples, “The Solar Hydrogen Civilization: The Future of Energy Is the Future of Our Global Economy”).

The greatest thing about being an entrepreneur is the freedom to innovate and do what you want the way you want. You can connect with clients, friends, colleagues, and competitors on your own terms to figure out if you are doing things right or need to make changes.

Don’t let the artificial constraints described above slow you down. The cost of delay usually exceeds the cost of mistakes. We need you!

Marty Zwilling