A few thoughts:
1) Property ownership is one of the central tenets of capitalism.
2) At work, I am involved in a special assignment. Throughout the initiative, I’ve caused a lot of friction with various groups because it was perceived that I was infringing on their “territory”.
3) Myspace allows users to customise their profile however they want. And people do.
4) My two-year old niece is going though a stage where everything is “hers”.
5) Capitalism works better than any other economic system; my firm is very successful as an organisation; Myspace is a run-away hit; my niece is a happy baby.
Notice a trend? The only difference between you and a toddler is that you don’t say “mine” every time someone takes your toy. Want to get peoples’ support or to buy your product? Then remember this: property and giving people a sense of ownership is how us humans work. We take comfort in what we can control.
When I was in Prague two years ago, I met a bloke from Bristol (UK) that very convincingly explained how patents as a concept, are stupid. Because alcohol was involved, I can’t recall his actual argument, but it has since made me question: do you really need a patent to protect your business idea?
Narendra Rocherolle, an experienced entrepreneur, has written a good little article explaining when you should, and shouldn’t, spend money to protect your IP. Racherolle offers a good analysis, but I am going to extend it by stating that a patent can be dangerous for your business, and not just because of the monetary cost. Radar Networks is my case-study - a stealth-mode “Semantic web” company, that has received a lot of press lately because apparently they are doing something big but they are not going to tell us until later this year.
Continue reading ‘Patents: more harm than good’
One of the highlights at Bar camp Sydney, held on March 3rd 2007, was a presentation by Martin Wells and Mike Cannon-Brookes on “How to Start a company”. Both men have a lot of wisdom to share, which was worth every penny (no pun on the fact the event was free). However despite an awesome presentation that covered a lot of ground, there was one slide that in particular annoyed me. It bothered me so much that I wanted to say so, but I thought it might be better to let it be because the guys were doing an otherwise great job.
My problem was slide number two. It listed four companies as ‘ideal’ start-up businesses for all those in the room. Those companies were Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, and MyBlogLog. Why I had a problem with that, was because if that is what web entrepreneurs are being told to look up to, then we have a bit of a problem.
Continue reading ‘Building a (sustainable) business’
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