Multiple Forbes 500 companies hired Dutchmen to design logistic processes, however most Dutchies try to board a train before other passengers get off.
The holding structure of IKEA is the opposite of their SIMPLE philosophy!
Found an article (PDF) explaining how IKEA/Ingvar Kamprad pays as few taxes as possible without violating the law.
Business opportunity or not?
Why doesn’t ClearChannel, owner of many public bicycle systems in Europe, offer free Wifi by adding access points to its stations?
In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.
No. 47, The Tao of Warren Buffet
Google Finally adds timeline filtering to it search
Hell I’ve been waiting for this apparently easy feature since years. Quite a lot I’m looking for information on Google which is recently published. Google used to return a lot of pages to me which were published in for instance 2002 and especially with rapidly changing subjects like technology, information becomes quickly outdated.
Engines like Maholo and Cuil already implemented this feature but Google waited till May 12th with the filter feature enabling users to filter results by: Past 24 hours, Past week, Past year or Any Time. Thank you very much Sergey and Larry because it saves me time, every day. But one question..Why did you Googol Guys wait so many years?
The Entrepreneurial DNA
Today we celebrate the Day of the Entrepeneur here in Barcelona and I attended the Sime event. Mainly the sessions were about the DNA of the entrepreneur and to me that is:
1 - Good entrepreneurs never buy a NO. There is always a buyer for your product, there is always an investors who believes in your business, there is always a company to partner with etc etc.. this reminds me of a scene with Joe Pesci in Casino:
“No matter how big a guy might be, Nicky would take him on. You beat Nicky with fists, he comes back with a bat. You beat him with a knife, he comes back with a gun. And if you beat him with a gun, you better kill him, because he’ll keep comin’ back and back until one of you is dead.” See scene on Youtube
2 - Good entrepreneurs know what focus is. Like Steve Jobs said:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
Good entrepreneurship is about patience, about knowing when to say YES and when to say NO. Sometimes you have to say NO to short term opportunities
More is better?
I like simple things, things that make life easier. A good example is Tumblr vs Wordpress. Wordpress gives me a shitload of options where Tumblr offers me only the things I need for running a blog.
This approach of keeping things stupidly simple should be used more often. Unfortuntely most developers of consumer technology don’t think this way. Their brains enjoy inventing as much features as possible. Check user interfaces of mobile phones, DVD players, TV remote control units or customizable homepages..they are all designed from a more is better perspective, resulting in a lot of hassle for the end user.
Another cause of bad interfaces is a lack of product focus. Take facebook for instance that wants to be twitter, social network and application platform at the same time.
Oh shit my internet credit is low..to be continued. Cheers from London City!
Fascination for growth
Although I stopped growing when I reached 1.70m I’m fascinated by growth, especially exponential growth. What hits me the most is the Tipping point, the point where the growth curve becomes a hockeystick and where things really get out of hand. Known examples are Facebook and Twitter, who currently experience this rapid automatic growth with doubling times of their userbase every 8 (facebook) or 2! months (twitter).
Exponential growth is often misunderstood. In fact the average person doesn’t understand a shit of it according to Albert Bartlett: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” Check out his lectures on Youtube.
Simplicity is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complicated ones. Simplicity can mean freedom from hardship, effort or confusion. It may also refer to a simple living lifestyle.
Wikipedia
