“Today, all around the world, people are not just more empowered and informed but they also are far less trusting of business and political organizations, leaders of all sorts and flatulence filled, florid, fancy marketing. They are looking for authenticity, community, value, relevance and simplicity. There is a gaping divide between the rulers and the ruled, between marketers, and customers and between the senior leaders and the rank and file. It is going to be critical to get real and stop repeating old shibboleths or behaving in ways that make so many leaders caricatures of themselves. Get real. Get great. Or you may be forced to get out. Personal re-invention is critical.”

The Five Keys To Great Marketing in 2012, Co.Create

Seth Godin challenges you to fail and keep playing to finally succeed. Great interview by Brian Elliott, the author of Behind the Brand.

Doesn’t matter if you fail in your life when following your dream. It is all about trying new things and figuring ways to get where you want. Great analogy was presented by Seth when he described how programmers work – they just keep tweaking code until it works. The same with your life, your business or a job – you are the coder. A keyboard is in front of you – start typing.

There is so much potential in people working for big companies – they keep great ideas in their heads instead of just trying new ways to improve their businesses. “It’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission” – tell this to your employees if you are a manager and show them that it is OK to try…

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
George Bernard Shaw

“When I was a little kid I loved playing with LEGOs. You’ve got to build whatever your mind can
create. And entrepreneurship is the same thing. You build what you want to build and through this process of building all these amazing ideas you change the world.”
The Entrepreneurial Spirit – a film by Justing Gutwein

There is a lot of buzz around startups and sometimes you can see too many young people spending too much money on something that brings little value. But if you look globally, there are thousands of great entrepreneurs around the world bringing change through making ideas happen.

Getting an idea is an intangible impulse. After that you bring the right people and resources into one place to make it happen. To make it tangible. And it is easier than ever before because the entry level is so low these days. You invest the time of a small group of geeks and after a few months you’ve got a product out on the market.

A documentary film that was shot during StartUp Weekend Baltimore gives you a flavour of 4 groups of people that want to bring idea into life. Delivery is the hardest parts. There are many passionate dreamers but persistency is the hardest part.

“Every company is a Startup, at some point it started up”

The Entrepreneurial Spirit from ShineOn Storytelling on Vimeo.

Remember, when you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given a responsibility to bring out the best in others. For that, your people need to trust you. And they will, as long as you demonstrate candor, give credit, and stay real.
“Winning”, Jack Welch with Suzy Welch (page 72)

Sometime ago I watched his Stanford Commencement speech from 2005 and I really liked it. Today, when reading about his resignation I stumbled upon his best quotes and read again this fine part:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Watch the whole speech and enjoy it!

You can read a transcript.

My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.

More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services – from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.

Why is this happening now?

“Why Software Is Easting The World” by Marc Andreessen

Jim Coudal always dreamt about becoming a Creative Director and getting awards as an acknowledgment for his hard work but when he got it he felt miserable. The same happened when he worked for clients in his own web agency. Then he realised there must be the other way.

Jim gave an informative and funny presentation at Chicago Creative Mornings where he share his experience and knowledge. I listed down a few quotes and thoughts that caught my attention.

Jim Coudal at Chicago Creative Mornings – Quotes

“We are a pretty traditional ad agency design firm except we have no clients”

“For us the disadvantages of working with clients became bigger than the advantages.”

About working for clients: “If somebody somewhere can make a decision about whether you are going to be in businness next year that’s a bad thing to carry around with you all the time. At least with our experience.”

“That very thing that we always loved about the creative work is that idea of a variety of satisfying our curiousity by working on a lot of different things.”

Advices for building your own products

They carry their own in-house projects in the same way they treated external clients.
Three golden rules they share:

1. Don’t do it in your spear time.

2. Don’t do it in 6 months, do it tomorrow.

3. Find the way to work it into the regular workflow of your system if you are interested in experimenting and fail spectacularly.

Everytime John asks agency owners about how they made the switch from client business to entrepreneurial business they always say “I should have done it sooner”.

Your own stuff is potentially more lucrative

This is the philoshophy that John Coudal has been following since the difficult 2001 – you have great talents in your agency and they should benefit the agency, not the clients.

It is worth recalling two more quotes from a blog post which is a part of a great “Bootstrapped, Profitable and Proud” series.

“After 9/11, we lost a lot of business. And we were in trouble. It wasn’t any problem of ours. One company got bought and other people cut back on their spending,” he explains. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to us because we pulled back and said, “Well, do we wanna build up this whole thing again and go chase business that we don’t want and get into pitches and win or not win business based on the whims of people who are stupider than we are? Or is there another way?”"

“We never really maximized our creative potential by, I can say it, whoring ourselves out to people who knew less than we did” he says. “If you have the skills to do client work, you have the skills to make your own product. You’re selling yourself short by selling that on a work for hire basis.”

1. Quora fills the niche and does it right

When I first found out about Quora I thought that the concept was nothing new – there were plenty of Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. But when I started exploring the topic and use Quora I quickly changed my mind.

There was no Q&A site for new technology professionals before Quora. Or maybe not the site that brought so many specialists and experts into one place. From Sillicon Valley companies CEOs to small business entrepreneurs from all around the world. The target audience has one thing in common - hungry for expertise and eager to share their knowledge with others.

2. They got attention of the new tech gurus

Quora’s founders Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo were the leading Facebook engineers so they had all they needed – web development experience and Sillicon Valley connections to make their new project work.

Their mission is very sticky – they want to build the largest set of expert knowledge in the world (larger that Wikipedia) starting with the tech-industry full of savvy people and then covering other areas like film, art, literature etc.

They brought so many Sillicon Valley leaders that you can find unique answers to questions regarding particular start-up failures, find out details about spectacular buyouts or why somebody was fired (Sillicon Valley and new tech world secrets!).

3. Quora is highly addictive – especially for internally motivated people!

Many users answer questions for a few hours a day what affects their jobs and family life. They are so addicted to it as it boosts their morale and self-esteem. They want to feel they are experts in new technologies and they want to be awarded by other community members.

Quora – satisfaction in small doses guaranteed!

The other day I posted a great video about internally motivated people who are driven by intrinsic rewards like:

• enjoyment of the task itself,
• the feeling of satisfaction from being involved in a given project,
• the sense of meaning from carrying out of work.

It is so true for the Quora members who share their time, knowledge, expertise and passion. Because sharing matters, right?!

“It’s a sense of sharing what we know, and it’s being part of a community” Michael Wolf, Wired

It is like with Open Source software developers who code after hours because they want to get satisfaction by being praised and acknowledged and to be part of the community that brings change to the world.

5. Get A Job On Quora!

Apart from internall motivation, many Quora users build their personal brand on the platform as they want to get a job. They use it as a tool to leverage their profile and build personal brand. For example, Keith Rabois, an investor and an internet entrepreneur, invested in two startups he learned about on Quora.

To sum up

Even if you are fed up with all the social media buzz it is worth to go and hang around on Quora to feel its taste. Maybe there is an answear for your own business that you strive for. Maybe it keeps you from moving forward.

My bet is that Quora will be popular for another 1-2 years and it will then start dying a slow death. Even though it got so much attention. Meet me in two years and we will find out.

Are you looking for a Quora invitation? Just post a comment below and I will email it to you right away! You can follow me on Quora.

There is also a great artcile on Inc Magazine about Quora - 10 Tips on using Quora for Business purposes.

I use Evernote for managing my favourite quotes, to write down ideas, save interesting links and articles. It is a great app to manage knowledge across many mobile devices. I had been looking for something like that for a long time. Highly recommened, especially for people dealing with creativity and innovation on a daily basis.

Today I got a newsletter from them about their latest product – Evernote Peek. I was trully stunned what a clever product that is. They use an iPad 2 Smart Cover in such an innovative way! This kind of cover seems to be a simple thing – you lift it and it wakes your tablet up. But it folds in way that make an Evernote Peek a practical solution for tests and quizes. And it is so usable and natural like lifting a notepad cover. Don’t take it for granted and watch the video below.

What I love about creative ideas is that they really bring a WOW effect and a smile on your face.