Want wins

23, April, 2008 — Kristin

Need v want.

And the winner is …. want, most of the time:

  • Some people NEED to lose weight, but they WANT to eat chocolate
  • Alan Bollard NEEDS to reduce the OCR but WANTS to keep his job
  • Dr Cullen NEEDS to calm down but he WANTS to be re-elected

Maybe business needs wants to focus more on the want element?

Posted in Economics. 2 Comments »

Sshh, don’t tell anyone

21, April, 2008 — Kristin

Some thoughts on ideas:

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats” Howard Aiken

“Good ideas are not scarce - they’re a dime a dozen.” Rob Adams

“… In love with your idea? Get over it. Ideas are commodities.” Rob Adams from his book: a good hard kick in the ass

Here’s an interesting initiative for those wanting to have their idea stolen exposed.

Posted in Ideas. Tags: , , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Annoying to carry, and noisy

17, April, 2008 — Kristin

I’ve been getting increasingly impatient with my mobile phone. I’m sick of having it in my pocket. It’s become a must-carry and i’m sick of it. Bob Jones asks here about their actual worth in a business setting.

From a safety perspective, yesterday driving home from work, I saw a kid sailing along in the right-hand lane listening to his ipod via headphone, with his mobile in his hand texting. I thought that was dangerous and tooted so he awoke from his technological trance. I didn’t go as far as this guy.

It’s funny how loud cellphone use has become almost acceptable. Let’s start a revolution, where if someone nearby in public is yelling into a phone, tap them on the shoulder and give them a silent index finger to mouth ‘Sshhhhh’.

Here’s an interesting thread on the Bob Jones cellphone incident from Kiwiblog.

Posted in Health & Safety, Miscellaneous. No Comments »

Small talk

16, April, 2008 — Kristin

Roger Kerr recently wrote an article about the productivity statistics released for New Zealand.

It’s not looking great. Especially when viewing the graphs on page 4.

Small talk/cliches such as the following probably don’t help:

” Don’t work too hard”

“Take it easy”

“Whatever happens happens”

Here’s some popular blogs about productivity, as found on reddit, just in case you’ve got some …spare time.

Posted in Economics. 2 Comments »

More or less obvious

11, April, 2008 — Kristin

All the time I discover stuff added into things for what seems like no good reason. It screams OBVIOUS but it still gets printed/spoken.

Examples:

  • PO in front of a Box number.
  • Mob: in front of an 021/027/029 number. For those overseas the distinction between types of numbers isn’t necessary, and for those onshore, pretty soon the distinction won’t be necessary.

“Our goal is to be in a position to say ‘why bother with a landline?”

Hamish Sansom, Vodafone NZ

  • Dictating the .co.nz when giving an xtra email address, or similarly .com after gmail, .net after clear etc. (maybe mailer-daemon could be more informative and include the ending required, not just “i’m sorry it didn’t work out”).
  • Email: before the email address in a message footer. I can see it’s an email address.
  • The www. in front of a domain.
  • Amongst the babyboomers when quoting them an email address: “is that all lowercase?”

I’m trimming branding paraphernalia. It’ll be like clearing old clothes out, kinda difficult to make choices, but refreshing once it’s done.

PS. Upon finalising this post something related on the ‘put less’ theme came up.

Posted in Marketing. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Filtering

10, April, 2008 — Kristin

Being someone who constantly has ideas entering my mind, I need a filter.

A close friend of mine quoted a fellow start-up founder he’d been speaking with:

“I like to succeed quickly, and fail quickly, because it’s cheaper either way.”

With this in mind, I’m in the process of developing a semi-formal idea filter ready for when inspiration comes. It’ll help remove unnecessary head noise. I’m talking early idea conception, not so much the business planning stage, of which there are already helpful tools.

The filter currently includes:

  1. Is it an idea that will need to rely on a heavy sales pitch? If so it probably already has competition.
  2. Does it have a viable market? Unless it’s art or a hobby, it’ll need to be financially viable.
  3. Will new technology deem it obsolete when the sun sets? (sunset tech-industries have a closer horizon)
  4. Do I care enough about the space I’ll be getting into to get through the hard times?
  5. Will anyone join me? What resources will i need other than my own?
  6. Is the problem i’m solving real or just my obscure problem?

Of course there are hundreds more, this is a nice brief start.

I’ll be continually adding to the filter. On that note this helpful post just came along.

Please feel free to add suggestions yourself.

All ideas about ideas and idea filters aside, even if one gets through the filter, it’s a hard road executing.

Posted in Economics, Ideas, Miscellaneous. No Comments »

The Rugby Equation

1, April, 2008 — Kristin

Rugby Union - Complex Rules = Rugby League

This from the clever fella’s at ARC Rugby:

Posted in Miscellaneous. No Comments »