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The whole process of funding and developing startups has become more widespread because the cost of getting a product to market has dropped so precipitously in the past couple of decades from millions of dollars to typically anywhere from under $20,000 to $500,000.

Behavioral Economics is a method of economic analysis that applies psychological insights into human behavior to explain economic decision making.

To perform effectively in a job and advance to greater responsibilities requires developing a well rounded set of skills. Every job and every industry has its specifics but these skill sets are general and apply across all jobs. Skills are fundamental for turning a job into a career trajectory and this trajectory is part of our personal fulfillment in life.

In Praise of Reading Literature, Fiction, Biography, Autobiography and History

Negotiations have been carried out for as long as humans have existed. It could be argued that beating a fellow caveman with a club was simply negotiating by other means. Negotiations have become more nuanced, if not always more civil, over time and have produced treaties and trade agreements and have resolved myriad disputes.

Crush the entrepreneurial learning curve, reduce risk, and up the chances for success with these resources.

You already know all about business. And what you don’t carry, the experience of an expert, can help you be successful in an economy where all existing industries and business models are ripe for disruption. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.”

The job market is more than ever predicated on a marketplace of ideas. These ideas are commercialized into new business models and our job becomes figuring out where we want to fit into these ecosystems. In order to stay relevant and resilient in today’s workplace we need to focus on developing a collection of skills as well as, or maybe rather than, a particular profession.

We all keep hearing about the accelerating rate of technological change. The rate of change itself is accelerating. It’s an exponential phenomenon. Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel, codified it in a research paper published in 1965. He outlined that the amount of transistors on a silicon chip was doubling about every 18 months and that trend was going to continue. It has continued for 50 years.

Este libro está diseñado para ayudarlo a comenzar a pensar acerca de la negociación como una habilidad que puede aprender y desarrollar para resolver conflictos, establecer acuerdos y lograr consenso.

En este nuevo mundo donde las líneas directas de autoridad se han transformado en redes de colaboración, la negociación se ha convertido en la principal forma de toma de decisiones y una clave para la gestión y el liderazgo.

La idea detrás de Negociación de Principios es usar una metodología que elimine las emociones y los egos del proceso al aceptar trabajar juntos para abordar las preocupaciones en lugar de engañar, o superar a los demás para lograr el dominio. Incorpora estándares objetivos acordados para evaluar opciones y utiliza sesiones de intercambio de ideas colaborativas para encontrar esas opciones.

The idea of standing on the shoulders of giants didn’t originate with Newton and his famously humble quote.

We live like kids in a candy store. We have access to all the information of recorded history at our fingertips. Its the akashic records made real. We can listen to any song ever recorded or read any surviving book ever written. We can take free courses in any subject from world class universities and instructors. We have cheap tools to write, record, produce video, publish, share, and promote. Barriers to entry and traditional gatekeepers are gone.

Teaching is a big responsibility. I want to make sure that I am aware not to blunt or blight or truncate aspirations and ambitions by providing less that useful or outdated information.

Carrying too much inventory is risky and inefficient. The drawbacks of excessively high inventory levels are the high costs of carrying it and the risk that it won’t sell and then you are stuck moving it at a discount or end up eating the costs. There are benefits to carrying inventory that we will now explore. Inventory acts as a buffer against the vagaries of Demand. You want to design enough capacity to accommodate customers when there is a rush. The optimal capacity can be calculated by measuring flow rate and flow time and applying statistics. Inventory decouples supply from demand as you have a buffer which can also enhance your ability to accommodate a rush. Inventory protects against the variability of demand and process time (how long it takes to make a product). You can have operations that make to stock or make to order.

Let’s break the concept of graphing supply and demand down by thinking about any product that you buy in your daily life. How about pizza!

Internal Rate of Return is derived from Net Present Value. IRR restates NPV as a percentage rate. It is a measure with intuitive appeal. It provides a way of grasping the rate of return a project, or income-producing asset, is yielding.

I just recently heard about the ancient Greek myth of Procrustes who claimed he had a bed that could accommodate anyone of any height. I am surprised I haven’t heard of this before. Its such a fantastic metaphor and cautionary tale. Ilove having these kinds of stories in my arsenal as they act as shorthand to describe ranges of situations we find ourselves encountering.

This is a cool concept to be familiar with as a business person because it helps us calculate the best price for our product or service. By best price I mean the one that maximizes revenues.

Microeconomics is about the behavior, decisions and choices of individual actors. There are four main parts of microeconomics: Individual Behavior, Supply and Demand, Theory of the Firm, Competition.

It’s called your life, and it’s about getting, spending and saving; in business it’s called Revenues, Expenses and Retained Earnings.

Here is a list of interesting data driven properties that shed light on how our world works and how we operate.

Martin Luther King was assassinated on this day. Shots ring out in a Memphis sky. There are few people I can think of that lived as prophets in modern times. In the twentieth century Gandhi is the only other one that comes to mind. MLK and Gandhi have in common their adherence to non violent protest in the face of vicious opposition.

Taking on new projects opens doors to new opportunities. Those opportunities have a value that can be analyzed using option pricing models. When we are valuing new enterprises, startups, or projects, we may not be adequately capturing this in our valuations.

Here is a great quote from Smith’s 1759 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments where he lays out good reasons not to be discontent with not being rich and famous.

When we move into management and leadership roles, we tend to think we need to adjust our personality to be more hardcore and put on our game face. The best way to be comfortable in roles of increasing responsibility is to rely on the core of our authentic selves.

Now there’s something you don’t see everyday Wilbur. What’s that Jethro? A pig swimming with a bird on its head. That is pretty unique. One might say its sui generous.

Language is one of the keystone innovations of humanity. Perhaps the keystone innovation. Language is a power tool. It is our super power.

Buridan’s ass is a concept in philosophy used to illustrate a problem that arises in thinking about free will. It describes the balancing point between two equally desirable options.

Business schools teach ethics and companies have developed and instituted policies aimed at fostering an ethical workplace. If these efforts are more than lip service, why is unethical behavior and corporate corruption so prevalent?

Success is ultimately determined by your ability perform and deliver value in a variety of situations. This requires fulfilling your potential and becoming most fully who you are meant to be.

I have been spending a lot of time pondering what success means and what it looks like and I have just stumbled upon a Japanese concept that directly addresses this issue. Sometimes I am amazed about how I don’t hear about things sooner. This seems to be a common cultural concept in Japan and has gathered traction among the cognoscenti in the U.S. How come I didn’t get the memo sooner? Well I want to share it with you in case you haven’t stumbled on it yet.

Here is a list of some of the most influential thought leaders in management and leadership. I like to make reference lists like this so I can keep track of the constellation of important people and ideas. I hope you find it helpful too. If you have any I should add, please comment. Thanks!

A growth sequence that appears in remarkably manifestations in nature is described by a simple math function called the Fibonacci series. It is beautiful as it is simple.

Life is very much about managing and navigating the unseen and unintended crap we encounter. The obstacles may be the way but they sure taste foul in the moment.

There are lots of maxims and bromides circulating about going fast and breaking things. These are meant to get us over the inertia of inaction. Inaction is lame. Whether its fear, or analysis paralysis, procrastination, or just plain laziness that keeps us in check, inaction is lame.

I embrace them as a productivity hack. Deadlines and commitments make us productive by forcing us to focus and shelve all the really interesting distractions that keep us from completing our appointed tasks. If you want to get more done, commit to something with a deadline and consequences to not finishing. The consequences can be embarrassment, humiliation, monetary loss, a law suit, or anything else that feels uncomfortable.

The Goldilocks principle is named after the fairy tale The Three Bears. In this tale our hero Goldilocks while in the forest comes upon the domicile of the bears and checks it out while they are away. There are three bowls of porridge: too hot, too cold and just right, and three beds: too big, too small, and just right.

There is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from the ancients. In many ways they knew so much more than we do. One thing they had down was that they knew the power of persuasion and refined the arts of argumentation, oratory and negotiation.

When developing a startup, entrepreneurs should follow the lean startup methodology. Here is a list of some great resources to get you up to speed.

Metaphors are powerful language tools for helping us communicate and understand the world around us.

People that follow this pathological approach to management and career advancement can actually thrive in a bureaucracy or corporate culture. They can percolate up and advance by managing up with sycophancy and managing down with insults, sarcasm, humiliation, threats, shouting and other time worn techniques of the sociopath.

Ethical leaders have external reference points and guiding principles. They have a pole star that they navigate by and criteria against which they measure each and every decision and action.

A paid teacher of philosophy and rhetoric in ancient Greece, associated in popular thought with moral skepticism and specious reasoning. A person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments.

Strategic Leadership is the ability to influence others to engage their own decision-making abilities and agency in navigating wiser outcomes that reduce risk and enhance the prospects for an organization’s success, while maintaining financial sustainability.

The front-end activities of starting a business enterprise have gone through a radical rethinking in the past decade. In the previous century the thinking was to apply the tools and techniques of business administration in a scaled down version.

The Trimurti is a concept in Hinduism in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. These three deities are the Hindu Trinity and represent the different aspects of transformation.

One of the first steps out of the dark ages was the articulation of a heuristic technique for selecting between competing theories. It has served humanity well for the past seven hundred plus years and entrepreneurs should keep it in mind and apply it in developing startups.

I love finding out about cool antique ideas. This one is about extrapolation (which is also the name of a great album by John McLaughlin). Extrapolation is the estimating technique of concluding something by assuming that existing trends will continue or a current method will remain applicable.

I look around and you are all bright and clear eyed and engaged. I see way too many people get hammered down by life; be careful and cautious. Don’t fall into traps of poor habits that don’t serve you and negative thinking. You can see the effects of the soul-crusher in the bone weary fatigue borne of regret or any pair of sad tired defeated eyes. Be respectful of your future self and don’t go down paths that lead there.

Business and work are becoming automated in profound ways. Soon they will have to change the name of the department from HR to HRR: Human and Robot Resources.

I have made several large transitions in my working life. I started out working for companies and worked for some really great ones. But after many years, I began to tire of having the fruits of my efforts go to others and having others tell me what to do and what was important. I chafed at authority and the claustrophobic atmosphere. I just lost interest, patience and enthusiasm.

At the end of the day business boils down to numbers. Here is a quick summary of the big picture the numbers side of capitalist enterprise.

Sometimes I find myself wrestling with two modes of being: doing stuff and thinking about stuff. If I sit and read, or just stare and let things percolate for too long, I feel guilty. I should be doing something constructive. But it feels so good and I know that this is where ideas come from.

There is a powerful Network Effect in play.

The business world is based on innovative practices developed over the past 300 years since the mid 1700s and the first industrial revolution. Accounting is even older.

The purpose of this article is to set the stage and lay out the context for achieving those goals.

I am an engineer by trade and I have an Ivy League MBA. I have started and ran a number of companies. For quite a while now I have been teaching college and graduate level business courses. This trajectory of life experience, coupled with an increasing awareness of the potential power of new tools now available to each of us, is what has motivated me to write down my ideas of what the essential business knowledge and skill sets are to get going and be successful.

I have come to believe that a for-profit business model approach can be very useful to help solving large-scale global problems by providing sustainable platforms on which to operate and address them.

There is this really powerful idea that Tim Ferriss turned me on to called Via Negativa.

Look after the ounces and the pounds will take care of themselves. That is a phrase from backpacking. Backpackers need to be really careful about what they take along and how much it weighs because all the little extra things add up and pretty soon your lugging an uncomfortably heavy pack.

In life, business, and relationships we are routinely confronted with situations were how we have done it before no longer suits the circumstances we are now confronting. Being able to let go and escape old notions is a critical skill.

In learning and acquiring skills I have found two competing tendencies: my desire to learn things fast and my desire to learn something well.

The books I write are meant to be kept slim and to the point as overviews of the business administration landscape. I want to keep the length manageable. I am attempting to adhere to the adage of Joseph Needham that a volume should not be too big for someone to read comfortably in their bath.

An MBA degree is a professional Master’s degree in Business Administration. The MBA curriculum has developed over the past century in response to the demand of complex enterprises for professional managers. As the industrial revolution progressed, enterprises became bigger and more complex and the stock market separated owners from managers of companies. The need for a professional management class became necessary.

The barriers to creating, marketing and selling products and services have been drastically reduced in the past decade. Now small groups and even solo entrepreneurs can harness the power of computers and leverage communications networks and social media to do work and undertake projects that took many more people and resources in the past and, as such, where prohibitively expensive and difficult.

When I got my MBA, I decided to go to a top school so I would never feel like I missed out on some arcane or occult knowledge of success in business that only passed among the illuminati, cognoscenti and elites. It turns out that there isn’t such knowledge passed in secret ceremonies and venerated on stone tablets. It’s all common sense for the most part; and some math. Here is the basic premise: You create something that people need, You let them know about it and You make it for less than you sell it for. That is pretty much it. Now go forth and prosper!

In running a business you interact with people and have processes and money to deal with, getting and spending, just like in your everyday life.

It used to be that we had to settle for one-size fits all solutions in many of our large-scale social endeavors like medicine and education

Understanding Corporate Finance made it to the Best Corporate Finance Books of All Time

This is a great concept that has really stuck with me, probably because the name is so sticky.

Our understanding of strategy and tactics is rooted in prior experience. This limits our ability to address current situations. Prior experience isn’t necessarily applicable in solving current problems because of rapid change and progress.

Think about important decisions in you life: the ones that have the greatest impact on your performance at work and your satisfaction at home. How many of those can you make unilaterally & how many do you have to reach with others through negotiation?

Business ethics examines ethical principles and how to apply those principles when addressing moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and the behavior of individuals and entire organizations.

Triage is a medical term for assigning degrees of urgency to injuries and illnesses. Its a technique used in emergency rooms and battlefield hospitals to make sure the most in need get care the quickest. In many cases time can be of the essence.

A well-developed sense of ethics requires a well-developed personal philosophy. And that requires a basic understanding of philosophy.

I’m a big fan of schedules and routines and morning rituals and any structure that helps me get things done. I love to focus on long term big projects and feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from working on something day after day.

I like that saying better than the common one. It makes me feel less cynical and burdened with ennui. Bullocks to ennui.

This isn’t about the famous opera by Verdi. Its about Marketing.

Pause and breath. You can’t unring a bell. Don’t say things when you are hot that you will later regret.

Avoiding challenges in life is like trying to toast bread with a flashlight. It’s a bright idea, but it won’t get you far.

In the grand theater of the human experience, our minds are the insatiable directors, constantly scripting what our eyes cast upon the world’s stage.

The corporate structure has been one of the great developments of the industrial age and a significant driver of economic development for the past almost two centuries.

If you apply the 5 whys interrogative technique to pretty much anything we do, the bedrock reason will be that we want to be loved. But in many instances we have closed ourselves off to our ultimate goal in order to protect ourselves from being hurt. Again.

Alliterating Ps is a popular way to create a memorable acronym. There are the 5Ps of planning: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. This saying comes from the British army and is a shortcut of the original, cruder, 7Ps which mean Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss Poor Performance.

Size does matter. Small is beautiful. A key to management, leadership, and entrepreneurship is creating teams that are sized in the sweet spot. That number is five plus or minus two. That goes for boards, development teams, meetings, and decision making.

Define your mission statement. This is one sentence that summarizes what you are trying to do. It should be able to stand up on its own.

Amor Fati is Latin for “love of fate”. It is an attitude of acceptance of the events or situations that occur in one’s life.

Ethical principles are well known and drilled into us from toddler, through school, and on up. We all know the path, but sometimes its challenging to walk it. We are tempted to compromise our principles because we are scared of what we might lose.

There are times when we all need a little pick me up. When we lose momentum and get caught up bemoaning the past.

There is terminology specific to online marketing and apply to touchpoints along the Customer Journey.

Thoughts and ideas are ephemeral and flit by like butterflies rising and falling as the summer wind lives and dies. Its pleasant to watch them float by but we lose a source of our best selves if we don’t follow them.

Leadership starts with you. It starts with your values and how much you value them. You must have a strong ethical sense and moral compass that guide your decisions. And you must be willing to stand up and be counted when events or circumstances don’t match up to your values.

Aspirations are great. Dreaming and striving for more is what keeps us going and motivated. But there is a shadow side to aspirations that we need to be aware of and ensure we balance. If we are always dreaming and pushing forward, we can diminish the value of the moment and the work we are doing right now.

How do you get to the next level? How do you level up? Aspiring to take anything to the next level is a sign of leadership. Leaders ask questions in the pursuit of doing something better. They see something better and they go get it, they make it happen. Leaders push to create a reality that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide things into two groups, and those who don’t.

Bayesian inference is a method in statistics in which Bayes’ theorem is used to update the probability of a hypothesis as new evidence or information becomes available.

Do you ever recall hearing that you only use about ten percent of your brain? Well that is not true. You use all of your brain.

An orchestra has many different instruments filling many different roles. To make music, it takes a conductor.