800-CEO-READ Blog: research_and_development

Jack on IBM and Business Development by Rebecca

2007-02-08T11:40:30-06:00

From Jack....

I am currently reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. He tells an interesting story about what Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, attributed IBM’s success to. He is said to have answered:

IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream—my vision—was in place.
The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company which looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done.
The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there.
In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.
From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we are and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference.
Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business.
We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one.

As I look at this again and again, I realize that I have built 8cr and, before, my record store differently. I wonder if that is a function of living in the late 20th century and the early 21st vs. Watson’s early 20th?

Cage Match - Galdwell vs. Surowiecki by Todd S.

2005-01-14T11:18:28-06:00

I have decided that my headlines need more flair. This one might have been a little over the top.

Anyway, I wanted to point you to the storyteller showdown between Malcolm Galdwell (Blink, The Tipping Point) and James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds). Slate is hosting the email exchange as the two authors debate decision making. They posted Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
It's worth checking out.

[via Crossroads Dispatches]

Books from Biz Media - Biz 2.0 by Todd S.

2004-04-30T12:14:45-06:00

Here is another feature we are going to try on for size. I thought it might be interesting to see what books the business media is picking up on. In our first installment, we are going to look at the May issue of Business 2.0.

I found three books referenced in the magazine:

Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki gets a small write-up on page 32. From the book (and magazine):

"under the right circumstances groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."

Richard Smith and James Citrin are quoted extensively on their The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers in the article "How to Get Paid What You're Worth" (pg. 106).

Creative Commmons creator Lawrence Lissig ends their "Giving it Away (for fun and profit)" article (pg. 116). His new book is Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. As is mentioned in the article and in various places on the net (most recently at Business Evolutionist), you can download the book for free.