‘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.

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.

The Entrepreneurial Code of Conduct

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’m so glad someone finally gave me a map. Click for a bigger view…

A friend of mine had an argument with his girlfriend about who should do what in the house. She told him she was doing all the laundry and that maybe he should help out with that. He replied that he always took care of dinner. He bought groceries, prepared the meal, served it and then cleaned the dishes. She replied “Yeah, but that’s not fair. You ‘like’ cooking”.

They were both right, of course.

It is easy to discard anything you are good at as nothing special. You make something and when someone praises you it sounds unfair. You reply “Well, I don’t deserve credit for that. It didn’t take any effort. I just happen to know how to do that”

If you are talented (and everybody is) the things you ‘know’ don’t seem that special. You just know things and they seem to come natural. Why brag about it?

Please do brag about it. Make a list of things you can do. Brag all you want.

You might think “everybody knows how to do that”. Chances are you are wrong. What you know (and the combination of things you know) is special and extraordinary. Often we say “As we both know…”. In most cases, we DON’T both know. Even when it seems logical to you that what you know is common knowledge, it probably isn’t.

The girlfriend in the story above knows her boyfriend very well. One of his talents is that he knows how to prepare a good dinner. Didn’t seem to take much effort. Doing what you like doing never feels like work. Although she was dividing what had to be done by input (the chores that take effort) he was diving by output (the result of all the chores put together).

What are your talents, skills and what unique knowledge do you possess?

My parents….

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? Along the ride your goals can change at every turn. You might end up pretty close to your goal but the further you are planning on traveling the greater the chances that you won’t.