Author Archive

Sith Lords & Mentors

By admin at 11 November, 2008, 12:25 pm

My 5 year old son is addicted to Star Wars. He and I have sat together for hours either watching the movies or endlessly playing Lego Star Wars. It may be bad parenting, but one of my current tools to get him to behave is to say “you can’t start your Jedi training unless you’re [...]

unknown, unknowns

By admin at 10 November, 2008, 9:58 pm

I’m currently reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb [pls link to ] . Its a fascinating book that discusses why the improbable seems to happen a lot more than people expect. There was a section in the book that talked about the military and how they talk about “Known, Unknowns” and “Unknown, Unknowns”. [...]

small stuff

By admin at 10 November, 2008, 9:57 pm

Over the last couple of weeks I have written about moving all my systems online, so that I could take advantage of a low cost light weight (linux based) netbook. This project had the added benefit of forcing me to be a better collaborator. In previous blogs, I’ve covered off all the major items, so [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

7 Secrets of Great Dinners

By admin at 10 June, 2008, 1:28 pm

I went to an interesting lunch the other day – a discussion on narrative as a tool for coaching, which is a more complex way of saying how stories have impact on people in the workplace. Lots of anecdotes about things that have happened inside companies that have had impact (both good and bad) for [...]

Don’t let IT people manage your IT

By admin at 28 May, 2008, 1:56 pm

A couple of years ago I accepted an offer to work in Advertising. Having a background in Information Technology (IT) and Accounting, it seemed like an odd career move, but it was a good one. The trade off was that I would learn a lot about mass marketing, and the agency would get me to [...]

The 5 Intangibles of Raising Funding

By admin at 21 May, 2008, 12:06 pm

In mid 1999, I had a multimedia business called Carradale Associates. Apart from building websites, we were starting to do some cool work in online animation and getting some fairly interesting insights into online business. One of those insights was that an online auction business would do well in Australia. At that stage, Ebay was [...]