Business Transformation

If you set your bar at "amazing," it's awfully difficult to start. Your first paragraph, sketch, formula, sample or concept isn't going to be amazing. Your tenth one might not be either.[read more]

The announcements that Google and Lockheed Martin have purchased quantum computers has led to a lot of recent coverage on the topic. Quantum computers are very, very fast. Instead of using the traditional approach of a string of 1's and 0's that are either turned on or off, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits.[read more]

I am excited about the combination with Yahoo. When Marissa took over Yahoo, I expected that acquisitions would play a role in her transformation of the company. At the time I wrote that the ideal target would be “startups that have very talented people and also interesting products but could benefit from the scale of Yahoo.”[read more]

Well known author and academic Richard Florida has written extensively about the rise of the creative class. According to his work, the creative class - a grouping of knowledge-based professions - has rapidly increased its share of total employment over the last 2 decades and now comprises about one third of all U.S. jobs.[read more]

Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.[read more]

Self-employment increases with age, peaking with over a quarter of workforce participants 65 and older being self-employed. This works out to about 1.9 million 65+ self-employed workforce participants.[read more]

Earlier this year, AP reported “Some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers for smartphones and tablet computers. Overall, though, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating.”[read more]

Even the most zealous advocate of superior customer service will surely agree there is a limit to how far we should be expected to go with the old “customer is always right” principle. Because, objectively speaking, sometimes customers can be quite unreasonably demanding, or just plain rude. But it’s not good business to allow our initial or even abiding sense of annoyance or indignation to waste what is paradoxically a gift to our business by passing up the learning opportunity.[read more]

Jeff Cornwall interviews venture capitalist Vic Gatto. Gatto co-founded InfoTech, a software company in Boston, which grew from three to over 250 employees when sold in 1999.[read more]

A lot of discussion on engagement has focused on providing new and quirky benefits – foosball tables, unlimited vacation, and gourmet food in the cafeteria. Those are all great things. But in my mind, they are the “benefits” of working at a particular company.[read more]

If we're in a position to initiate something new or different, the time we've invested building solid relationships can determine our ability to gain support and moment. The leader who spends time playing corporate video poker may revel in his individual genius, but lacks the relational chips needed to convert that genius into action.[read more]

We face a future that will be defined by the end of work - it can become a golden age or one of horrific consequences. Horrific because we have no means of dealing with this type of future. We have nothing that has prepared us for it. We only know how to punish and ridicule those that don't work. But what if there is no need to work?[read more]

There is always less risk with a well-defined problem in a large and growing market. All the people in China is a large and growing market, but all the people with cancer is much more well-defined. It’s hard to make money in a shrinking market, or with a solution that is “nice to have” versus painfully needed.[read more]

If you make decisions based on spurious correlations or assume statistical significance where there is none, you will quickly get in trouble. Since there is no causal linkage, the relationship can break down at any point. Going back to skirt length theory, if you bet on the stock market using it you're going to get wiped out.[read more]

Because business conditions shift a lot quicker than they used to, cost committments that last more than a year are now considered fixed costs (5 years used to the norm for fixed costs). And because it's gotten harder to fire or lay-off traditional employees - especially quickly - more firms are viewing employees as fixed costs.[read more]

Men still out earn women on average. But the gap has significantly closed over the last 2 decades and we are forecasting earnings parity between the sexes will occur within the next decade. We also believe women's earnings growth will outperform men past that point and by the 2030 time frame women, on average, will substantially out-earn men.[read more]

Barbell industry structures consist of a relatively few giant corporations on one end, a narrow middle consisting of a shrinking number of mid-sized firms, and a large and growing number of small, micro and one person (solopreneur) firms on the other end.[read more]

If you rolled out your annual strategic plan in January, it’s time for a first-quarter checkup. In fact, depending on your industry, it may already be overdue. Which means it’s time to start asking questions like: Are we making progress towards the goal? Is it still visible?[read more]

Whether you're a non-profit fundraiser or someone selling b2b, understanding the profile of what's succeeded before you is a little like understanding where it snows. Sure, it's possible to invent an entirely new market dynamic, to persuade the previously unpersuadable. But should you?[read more]

We make a lot of early stage investments and we work hard with those companies to help them succeed. But if you hung out at USV, you would see that we spend a lot of time on policy stuff. And that begs the question "why do you do that?"[read more]