Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it.
(Source: New York Times, The Creative Monopoly)
At our last Work From Home meeting, we were talking about this very topic. Instead of the term ‘monopoly’, we talked more about becoming an ‘expert’ or a ‘trusted source’.
Touting efficiency, news-readers give users the opportunity to scan hundreds of articles in a few moments and immediately delve deeper into the most interesting content. News-reading services do all the heavy lifting by aggregating the stories that match your interests, giving you more time to spend reading the news you care about rather than searching for it.
Beyond increasing efficiency, news-readers also allow for easy sharing of any stories of interest with your community of colleagues or friends. … Tablet apps make sharing simple, while still driving traffic back to the original source.
(Source: TechCrunch, How Tablets Are Transforming Business Intelligence)
I would throw Instapaper, Spool, etc. into this bunch. While aggregating and presenting the data is important, the ability to read and react to the news is equally important.
The Daily Scrum, Episode 3 is now available for download in iTunes.
In this episode we continue talking with Mike Maheu, a noted Agile trainer and evangelist. Mike talks us through the Agile process as it relates to teams working in the same physical location versus those teams who are distributed in different locations throughout the world.
I had a fun day yesterday, attending a meeting at Columbia University during lunch then heading down later in the day to Charlie O’Donnell’s Not A Pitch meeting.
Both of these were terrific (hence the fun day) and I learned a lot. And, in loose conversations, it’s always fun to say “I’m heading up to Columbia” and “I’m meeting with a VC”.
But the really great thing about these events was their accessibility. The Columbia meeting was something specific and the Not A Pitch meeting was an idea-generating, information-gathering session. Both were free, were easy to get to, and they provided terrific feedback about people’s ideas.
Have an idea but not sure if it’s any good? Here are two places you can get some direct, free feedback.
But one surprising lesson I’ve learned from my years of experience in the appointment setting industry is that some of the best sales people don’t act at all like the stereotypical “good sales person.”
(Source: Small Business Trends, 4 Surprising Things Great Sales People Say)