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In the past 3 years I've done some of my best learning. A lot of it has reaffirmed some of my earlier thoughts on the validity of chaos theory, string theory, and assorted other explanations for both social and scientific phenomenon. So much of the same has rung true in my dive into online conversations. If you're not already reading people like Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Seth Godin, and many others commenting on how this space in maturing, start taking a look.
What I want to talk about is something that has fallen out of these past 3 years. As I take a leap into entrepreneurship I've been thinking about something I learned from Marty Anderson at Babson College. That is, if you can accomplish two things, you may be ready to successfully run or start a business. What two things?
1. See the network
2. Control or influence it without owning it
I'll be talking more about these two things in the coming months, but I had the need to publicly remind myself just how much these two things force me to think about all the most important things when sizing up opportunities.
See the Network
This is not seeing that my friends are friends with other people who I may be interested in meeting, although that is part of it. This is finding the connection between two seemingly unrelated things and boiling it down to an action I can take to benefit from that connection. One of my favorite examples is still the opportunity for Columbian drug cartels if they were only looking at how the fact that there is a northern
and southern hemisphere helps them tremendously in an unrelated business.
Control without Ownership
This one is pretty straightforward, but it's in the execution of this principal that separates a good idea from a successfully bootstrapped venture. You have much more leverage than you think.
More to come but let me know what you think. Can successful business strategy be summarized entirely by these two things?
For the past few months I have been writing everything inside an open e-mail. Whether that's a blog post, a product road-map, or a personal note, I've been hitting "new" in my mac-mail, composing there, and then copy and pasting the appropriate elements into the appropriate places. I'm sure this is a horrifically inefficient way to be doing things, but something about a blank e-mail message screams "Just Do It" to me. I can sit
and stare at a blank word document or rich-text editor inside a blog platform for an irrational amount of time without writing a thing. Open an e-mail and poof, the fingers start flying. Are you having trouble getting that first sentence down? Maybe this will help?
Podcamp Boston 3 has, so far, been a confirmation of social media's rising tide. Sitting here at the Utterz table giving demos and making people giddy with our little stuffed cow giveaways has been an eye-opener. Typically, I'd expect some of the usual personalities asking about when we'll be providing the new plugin for the whigetamaker for the whozigamwhat. Because, you know, that would be worth, what? Three more users? But no, so far today, I'd say 90 percent of people have opened with something along the lines of: "so I'm new to this whole social media thing, just trying to figure it out and someone told me 'you guys' were one of the companies to check out." Brilliant.
So what does this all mean? Probably not much of anything for people waiting with bated-breath for the explosion of social media into their everyday lives dealing with customer service, purchase orders or internal enterprise communications.
Why? You tell me, but I suspect it has something to do with our spot on the adoption curve. Not great news for you, my social media obsessed friend, but hey, at least you're probably not a company trying to make a living at it!
