This post was written for the Fleck.com blog where I posted it on April 16, 2006. I'm posting it here so it is more easily accesible. The original post can still be found here, including some comments and pingbacks. On Sunday I was visiting my parents house to celebrate Easter Day. As we drove there we noticed a perfect white rabbit sitting by the side of the road. I stopped to show it to our children and told them it must have been the Easter bunny. My parents hid painted real eggs and chocolate ones in the garden, which the kids had to...
Success and failure are quite similar. Just as there is only a fine line between genius and madness there are a few striking similarities between failure and success. In general people think that success is a matter of having a good idea and working hard. In reality there are 5 components of any success and failure story. Heinrich’s Domino Model of Accident Causation is a theory that is being used in Risk Management. It explains that any accident can be broken down in 5 components that follow each other as falling dominos that lead...
[Warning: If you like cats and/or have strong feelings about animal cruelty you might be shocked by part of this story.] The first time I started a company I spend a lot of time writing a press-release. On the day we launched I faxed the press release to a few newspapers, relevant magazines and websites. I hoped the press-release would get picked up and make us famous. I was hoping for a spark to start my media engine. And it did. These days things are different. Sure, I would still write a press-release but just a spark isn’t...
Most people think software development is like traveling to a certain destination by train: You set a goal, pack your bags, board the train, and the only variable between you and your goal is the speed of the train. Unless the whole thing derails, you end up where you were planning on going. Unfortunately software development is more like hitchhiking: You set some general goals (somewhere sunny), pack your bags and after that where you end up depends on a whole lot of variables: who will pick you up and where will they be heading to?...
Do you ever find yourself thinking 'That will do'? I do and have learned to accept it as a warning sign. 'That will do' means you are about to deliver something below par. If you find yourself about to walk away from a job that seems just good enough you should stop yourself and think about what you could add to turn your job from 'That will do' into 'This is it!'. The 'quick fix' is seldon a real fix, the 'Good enough' solution is never good enough and 'that will do' never...
When I was 15 I found an audio tape with a bunch of weird songs. One of them was this song by Tom Waits. It was unlike any other song I had ever heard. I was so impressed by his imagination to come up with the idea of the concept of a drunk piano.
“the average person (and, thereby, common sense) is right almost all the time. it correctly predicts that most new products will be failures, because most new products ARE failures. What it can never predict, in fact is 100% wrong about every time, is a GOOD new idea. It will always miss those.”
‘Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine’ is an interactive sculpture by Yarisal and Kublitz.
“Experience the most satisfying feeling when a piece of China breaks into million pieces . All you have to do is insert a coin, and a piece of China will Slowly move forwards and fall into the bottom of the machine, breaking, and leaving you happy and relieved of anger.”
Visit their website and click the images. Some are movies and each one is cute, inspiring or even just plain funny.
Automatic is a video and drawing project by William Lamson.
Doctors have the Hippocratic Oath. It is an ethical framework on which they can fall back when they have doubts about the right course of action. I think it must be comforting to have some kind of guidelines to fall back to when the shit hits the fan.
As far as I’m aware there is no Hippocratic Oath for entrepreneurs. I think there should be. In business you are often forced to seek out the boundaries of ethic behavior. How much profit can you make before you feel like an extortionist? How many people can you email before it becomes spam? Just like doctors we are faced with difficult questions every day.
I’m not sure an entrepreneurial oath would have stopped the guys at Enron or Bernie Madoff. But things might have looked different if they would have had been exposed to some business ethics earlier in life.
Today I would like to make a start with an Entrepreneurial Code of Conduct. We might call it Schumpeter’s Oath, after Joseph Schumpeter, the economist credited with introducing the concept of the Entrepreneur. Or simply the Entrepreneurs Oath.
I don’t care much and I hope someone takes the whole thing, publishes it on a wiki and comes up with a better text. What I drafted here is just that, a draft. If you know the Hippocratic Oath you might recognize parts of it. I took one version and rewrote it to fit us entrepreneurs better.
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won experience of those entrepreneurs in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of my customers, shareholders and partners all measures [that] are required, avoiding self enrichment
I will remember that there is art to entrepreneurial activities as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the managers skills or the businessman’s experience
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a company or project success.
I will respect the privacy of my customers, partners and shareholders, for their information is not to be disclosed to the world. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of profit and loss. If it is given me to make profit, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to lose my shareholders money; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not serve an anonymous person, but a human being, whose needs may affect the person’s family, business and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the customer and everybody affected by my actions as an entrepreneur.
I will prevent problems caused by my business whenever I can, for the social impact of my company is as important as its goal of turning a profit.
I will remember that I and my company remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body and well as rich and poor.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life, friendship, revenues and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of serving those who seek to acquire my products, services or company.
Was Picasso a great painter or a great artist? I think he was a great artist and used the technologies that were available to him at the time. What would have been his medium of choice were he alive today?
Would he blog? Use Twitter? Make animated GIFs like the image above? Or produce weird videos and be famous on Youtube?
Is talent universal and timeless?
I talked about ‘Der Lauf Der Dinge‘ before. The original is a classic but I like this new bluetooth, gsm and infrared powered version too…