Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Once you start writing for a blog you look at the world differently. Objects, events and people will be either ‘blogable’ or not.

In the last few weeks I have heard several people use the word as qualification for things. When I tell a story at the office my partners at the office will say “Wow, Blogable!” and I’ll know it was good.

Turns out that it is a known word. Check it out at the Urban Dictionary: blogable

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Last week I wrote about the word Monocarpic which means to bloom once and then die. How sad.

This week I heard someone use the term ‘Scotoma’. I decided to look into it because it is a nice illustration of a common Entrepreneurs problem. But first:

Scotoma
An area of diminished vision within the visual field.

You might not know it but everyone has a Blind Spot, which is the popular name for Scotoma. Your eyes don’t actually see everything in front of you. There is a black spot somewhere but your brain fills in that gap for you.

Don’t believe me?
Here is a test:

This whole fenomena reminded me of the blind spot entrepreneurs (including me) have for the weak spots in their own businesses. I am often surprised at how we can collectively fool ourselves when it comes to new businessplans. Even some of my own plans, in hindsight contained clear errors, or blind spots, which are now suddenly very clear for me.

As an entrepreneur you learn to ignore your weaknesses and concentrate on your strengths. This is only logical and even good sometimes. But it can also become a problem if you fail to see real problems and shortcommings in your ideas and plans.

You have to find a balance between believing in yourself and questioning your own logic.

Last week i wrote about Palliative Treatment and thought about a way to adopt that medical terminology for entrepreneurial activities.

This week I found a biological term that might be useful.

Monocarpic
A term used to describe a plant that flowers and fruits once and then dies

It seems that a lot of plants or even trees are Monocarpic instead of Polycarpic. Bamboo can grow for 30 years and then bloom and die.

You could say that a Monocarpic business is a one time wonder. You could argue that V3.com (my first company) was a monocarpic business. It worked once, very well, but won’t work again. The opposite of a Serial Entrepreneur could be a Monocarpic Entrepreneur.

An idea might be extremely useful for one purpose and one time and sometimes it is better to bloom and fade away than keep repeating the same trick over and over again.

As always, I’m looking forward to hear from you on how you are going to use this word in your daily practices.

Last week I learned and wrote about Valorisation. This week I learned about Palliative. Tessa picked up this word at work. She works at a scientific publishing house. The word is used in medicine to describe how a drug works.

There are curative, palliative, symptomatic and prophylactic treatments:

Curative
Serving or tending to cure
You actually get better

Symptomatic
Constituting a symptom, as of a disease
You feel better

Prophylactic
A prophylactic measure such as a vaccine
You don’t get sick at all

Palliative
Treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms or slowing the disease’s progress, rather than providing a cure
You don’t get sicker and you feel better

With a palliative solution you don’t actually fix something but stop the problem from getting bigger and make sure it doesn’t bother you anymore.

That is interesting! If you are sick you obviously would always go for the curative cure. But in business that might not always be the case. Sometimes it is better to opt for a quick and dirty cure and just make sure the problem doesn’t get out of hand.

Example: if two people don’t get along in your team you won’t spend weeks in group sessions to make them like each other. You just use a palliative solution. You seperate them and stop the problem from getting bigger.

Can you come up with similar palliative solution that you have used or are using in your business? Looking forward to hearing about it…

I received a newsletter today with this word in it and decided to look it up.

Invented by Marx and first described in Das Kapital. In my own words: if you hire someone you pay him a certain amount of money. He starts working and earning money. Your goal wouldn’t be just for him to earn his wages back but to earn YOU more than you pay HIM. When that starts to happen your capital starts valorising. This is called the valorisation of capital. Marx didn’t think this was a good thing.

I hope I got it right but suggest you look it up in a dictionary anyway and then try to use it tomorrow at work and let me know how that turns out. A few possible ways to use it:

“We should try to valorize this project”
“I don’t get the feeling that this company is valorizing its capital to the max”
“We have a huge valorizing opportunity here!”
“Can I valorize that for you?”

From 1995 till 1997 I studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Since then I returned at least once a year for various reasons. A few weeks ago they invited me to talk to the new students about how I felt about being there for two years and what I did since then.

I arrived in time and was offered a drink. While I was left waiting I picked up a dictionary and looked up the word ‘Entrepreneur’. The description wasn’t that interesting so I looked at the words beneath and below ‘Entrepreneur’ (and ‘entrepreneurial’ and other similar words). The word below ‘Entrepreneur’ was:

Entrench
To provide with a trench, especially for the purpose of fortifying or defending

And the next word was:

Entropy
A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.

So I figured being an Entrepeneur is like

Providing a trench for the purpose of fortifying or defending the disorder and randomness in a closed system

Okay, maybe it isn’t but I enjoyed myself for a few seconds…

An friend of mine uses a dictionary (the paper version, not Answers.com) if he has to come up with a new name for something. He takes a sharp object like a knife or a needle, closes his eyes, and stick it somewhere in the middle of the dictionary. He does this 10 times and uses the word that makes most sense. Like this:

Paradox
Mediatrix
Veneer
Araby
Stalwart
Therapy
Tendency
Nictitate
Tendentious
Consider
Trucial
Blithe

More fun than television!