Is There a Business Model for Open Source?
A New York Times article questioning the business model for open source. MySQL, RedHat, SpringSource are some of the company names mentioned in the article.
There’s only one company making real money out of open source, and that’s Red Hat
— Simon Crosby, CTO Citrix Systems
Makes you think twice in case you were planning to go with the open source business model.
Creating a Real Brand
Brands are wonderful assets when they capture the essence of a product, service, or event succinctly, meaningfully, and with endurance over time.[…] But when branding becomes a fad, it can reduce communication.
[…]
Branding should start with an authenticity test. (nb avoid putting “lipstick on a pig”)
— The Downsides of Branding by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Discover your brand by pinpointing your unique service and identity.
— Build Your Brand by M.J. Ryan
How many companies can you name that do not live up to their brand? Or would it be easier to count those that live up to their brand?
So how can businesses enter an environment where people are predominantly looking to socialize?
Kathy Bloomgarden:
we’ve identified intent as the key driver of social media. To use these tools more effectively, companies need to step back and look at why consumers are going online. Traditional notions of demographics no longer apply in the online space, where it doesn’t matter where you live or what you make or how old or young you are. Intents have become the new demographics. And better understanding online intent will help in aligning business objectives with what consumers want.
How to Grow the Local Hackers’ Community
From VentureBeat:
A group of entrepreneurs have created a new community center for hackers in the heart of Silicon Valley called Hacker Dojo, where coders can come together and work on projects any time of the day or week.
I think this is purely a brilliant idea! And a good answer for one of the problems my friend Vladimir was mentioning about the Romanian tech stage (n.b. my translation from the article):
You can count the Romanian teams that have built “huge” sites on the fingers of a single hand. Tech faculties are a joke and they are not able to address this issue.
But before fabulating about a Hacker Dojo, we’ll need to understand that:
- you need to invest before making profit
- sharing your knowledge is great
- you might be good or smart, but you are definitely not the best or the smartest
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Good products create value. Good biz models capture value. Good companies have both
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What Does It Take to Run a Virtual Team?
Business Book of the Year
The list of books participating in the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year:
- Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A Akerlof, Robert J Shiller
- Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee, Gareth Jones
- Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson
- Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World by Stephen Green
- House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D Cohan (author of The Last Tycoons)
- How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give in by Jim Collins
- Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation by Nandan Nilekani
- In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic by David Wessel
- Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
- The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy
- The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street by Justin Fox
- Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
- This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff
- Why Your World Is about to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin
— Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year – The Longlist
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to visualize the business plan?Ouke Arts and Sellaband thought so and here is what they’ve got.
“Inch by Inch”: When you add up all those inches that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and loosing. (Al Pacino - Any Given Sunday)
Turning Out The Lights
Learning from others’ failures: a continuously updated list of businesses that initially got VC funding and then closed their doors
