Welcome to the first in, what we hope will be, a series of weekly blog posts that outline some of the interesting news we’ve come across in the world of strategy, venture capital and startups.
- Joan Magretta’s Five Common Strategy Mistakes on the HBR Blog Network – Here are five traps that the author has seen managers fall into over and over again. Understanding Porter’s strategy fundamentals will help you to avoid them.
- Jerry Weissman’s Replace Meaningless Words with Meaningful Ones on he HBR Blog Network – Meaningful words stated in the declarative mood, assertively, and positively are more likely to beget meaningful actions.
- Ron Ashkenas’ Innovation Is Everyone’s Job on the HBR Blog Network – To what extent are you responsible for innovation in your company? The reality is that unless they’re in research or product development, most people in organizations don’t think of themselves as innovators. In fact, many managers discourage their people from inventing new ways of doing things — pushing them instead to follow procedures and stay within established guidelines.
- Dan Pallotta’s I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore on the HBR Blog Network – You will gain tremendous credibility, become much more productive, make those around you much more productive, and experience a great deal more joy in your working life if you look someone in the eye after hearing one of these verbal brain jammers and tell the person, “I don’t have any idea what you just said to me.”
- Ndubuisi Ekekwe’s Tech Startups Need Non-Techies to Succeed on the HBR Blog Network – You can have the best tech team on earth, but you need someone who can also invent market success. Most times, those people are not techies. That’s why start-up founders need to look beyond technology when building their teams.
- Brad Feld’s Startup Summer In Boulder on his Foundry Group blog – In exchange for free housing in CU-Boulder campus dorms, Startup Summer interns will spend the summer in Boulder interning with companies, learning about the world of startups, and building entrepreneurial business skills.
- Steve Denning’s Forbes blog post entitled Innovation: Should We Just Let The Mastodons Die? – National prosperity in each country is going to depend on a national capability for continuous innovation. The sooner a country gets into that mode, the less the economic damage there will be.
- Charles Moldow’s Forbes blog post entitled Every Startup Needs A Little ‘Screw-Up Insurance’ – There are enough complications and hazards in starting a new business, and worrying about funding will distract you from running yours. My advice: take the “screw-up insurance” and focus your efforts on building the company of your dreams.
- Erin Bury’s announcement that Montreal-based FounderFuel is Accepting Applications for Spring 2012 Session – Applications for the spring 2012 FounderFuel session are currently open. Apply before December 16, 2011 to get additional consideration, but you can apply until January 7, 2012. Applications are open to teams worldwide.
- Scott Denne’s WSJ Blog post entitled Why Human Resources Software Start-Ups Are On Cloud 9 – This year alone, several human resources software companies, from small start-ups like TribeHR and Dayforce to Workday–which is rapidly establishing itself as one of the largest cloud computing companies–have raised new venture capital.
- Lizette Chapman’s WSJ Blog post entitled Russians See U.S. As Land Of Start-Up Funding, Investment Opportunity – Government plans to create a 600 hectare-business park dubbed Skolkovo Innovation Center are taking shape just outside Moscow, with 300 start-ups already signed up and the effort attracting strategic support and $1 billion from the likes of Google, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco.
- Heather Kelly’s CloudBeat blog entitled CEOs love iPads, and other things you need to know about the cloud – As more companies are switching to cloud storage and software, it’s allowing a surge in the use of mobile devices for work. Traditionally, getting new technology adopted within a large company was a difficult and timely process. The iPad, iPhone and a slew of Android smartphones are bucking that trend, and the results aren’t as disastrous as many CTOs feared.
- Julia Hu’s VentureBeat blog post entitled Why women have to work harder to do startups – Startups are not too hard for women. Women just have to work way harder to create a startup.
- Sean Ludwig’s CloudBeat blog entitled Cloudera upgrades Hadoop management tools, offers free version for startups – Cloudera Manager Free Edition supports up to 50 nodes and can be downloaded at cloudera.com/downloads. It allows developers and businesses to configure and perform basic management of a Hadoop cluster.