business
David Heinemeier Hansson on creating a profitable company
You'll recognize him as the creator of the Ruby on Rails framework and a Partner at 37Signals.com. Time will tell whether his Occam's Razor approach to features will keep the money flowing in.
Some great insights to the subscription based model (something that I think is excellent).
9 tips for negotiating
Negotiating has a bad rap. "Negotiation" conjures up images of a "coke'd out" business man from the 80s aggressively and maliciously winning a deal by screwing the other party at the table.
The reality is that negotiation is much more 'touchy feely' than that. Furthermore, it is not applicable just in the business realm but in every facet of your life.
Take, for instance -- deciding which restaurant to with your friends: Everyone has different positions and underlying interests on what, where and when they would like to eat. Or, perhaps you are negotiating with your spouse to decide if a re-location it doable for both of you.
So, without further delay, here are my top 10 tips for negotiating based on the book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
1. Plan your negotiations
Top 5 resources to learn about business, strategy, entrepreneurship and management
I love learning. I love reading about new techniques, models, or different ways of thinking which challenge the various preconceptions I have.
One ritual I current have is printing out an article and reading it on the commute home on London's tube. While the rest of the smoldering hot traincar are listening to iPods or sleeping, I am reading, highlighting, making sidebar notes and thinking about how the article applies to anything else in my life.
There are many places on the web where you can find free and powerful knowledge on the web. The following are some of my favourite resources for knowledge and thought leadership.
- McKinsey Quarterly - They may be consultants who generally write about issues for large corporations, but these guys definitely know how to write good thought leadership on Marketing, Innovation, Economic Studies, and Technology. Most articles are free, but some articles require a McKinsey subscription (which is still well worth it).
The Dawn of the Enterprise Nomadic Workforce - Work from wherever, whenever
"The leaner you are, the easier it is to change. The more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. It's as true in the business world as it is in the physical world." - 37 Signals
“Competitive Advantage will shift to companies that can master the art of breaking down and recomposing tasks” – McKinsey Quarterly, 8 Business Trends to Watch, Dec 2007
Some buzzwords....
Video conferencing, Telecommuting, Teleconferencing, Virtual Worlds, Social Networking, Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks, Micro blogging, Locational Awareness, Web 2.0, Crowd Sourcing, Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Friend Feed, Content Syndication and RSS Feeds, Visual Application Development, Open Standards Based APIs, Cloud Computing, Facebook Applications. The list goes on.
The list of recently hyped up innovations is long, wide and converging at an increasing rate. But what do they all mean? Where are they taking us?
Web-based business plan software - Planhq.com
Today I stumbled on a great find: planhq.com. Planhq promised to help you build a complete and successful business plan, and Turn your ideas into a startup.
So, if you are having a little trouble putting together a business plan, and need a web based wizard interface to finish the job -- Planhq seems to be a great tool. They also have a 30 day trial, which is more than an adequate amount of time to get in, collaborate, and see if the tool can fulfill its value proposition.
