Archive for July, 2008

On the subject of Advisory Boards

By brendan at 25 July, 2008, 3:42 pm

The other week I sat down with my technology advisory board and felt my self lucky. Here I was with a group of industry leaders that I barely knew, talking about great ideas for my business. The cost to me was close to zero but their ideas were invaluable.
But getting to the point were I [...]

Who can you trust?

By brendan at 7 July, 2008, 3:42 pm

The other week I caught up with one of my brothers for lunch, and as per usual we spent a while character assassinating members of the extended family, before moving on to the main topic of the day which was expert advice. My brothers position that was that business is simply too complex and you [...]

So What?

By brendan at 5 July, 2008, 4:14 pm

So I am laying in a ditch, in the rain, its two o’clock in the morning, I haven’t actually been to sleep yet and haven’t washed in a couple of days, there are practice mortar rounds being dropped around us, and someone’s yelling in my ear “SO WHAT?” I am miserable. The question is a [...]

5 reasons why commercialisation isn’t business

By admin at 3 July, 2008, 4:11 pm

I’m feeling a bit feisty, so I thought I might bring up the topic of commercialisation.
I have just finished up directing an interesting all day forum for the InnovationXchange on the intersection of food and pharmaceuticals. During the conference, I found out that we (Australian Scientists) now have the capability to treat a number of [...]

On the subject of goal alignment

By brendan at 3 July, 2008, 4:09 pm

I once sat next to and old general at a formal dinner. After chatting to him for an hour or so I decided he was a genuinely nice bloke that had a wealth of knowledge about all things military. Not history, but the esoteric stuff like “why does the handle of my cup have a [...]

On the subject of lifespan

By admin at 3 July, 2008, 4:08 pm

Last week I discussed one of the major problems I had with my IT services business Edion, the issue that the business wasn’t scalable. Another issue we had is that my concept of its lifespan was wrong. As anyone who goes into business for himself is aware, no business lasts for ever, in fact 95% [...]

On the subject of Scalability

By admin at 3 July, 2008, 4:07 pm

A number of years ago I had a business that offered IT professional services. We defined professional services as high level IT project skills such as designing networks and commissioning web server farms. Edion ran hard and fast from the beginning, clocking up over $1M in sales in year one, and around $3M in year [...]

Everyone can be in business

By admin at 3 July, 2008, 4:05 pm

About once a month I go to the movies with a mate of mine, a kind of very tame boys night out. Anyway, whilst we were having a beer after the movie he mentioned to me that he had run into a women who owns a couple of hair dressing salons in the UK. Apparently [...]