Before we begin, there’s something you should know about me. I love cheese and Branston sandwiches. This love of Branston pickle — a delicious, dark, unctuous, tangy turnip marmalade, means that I like to buy big jars of it. Really big jars. I even started my own business just so I could join Costco to buy their […]
Value for the customer — the shared history of lean and design thinking Read More »
If you can’t sell it, don’t build it If you can’t build it, don’t sell it The single necessary and sufficient condition for a business, says MIT’s Bill Aulet, is a paying customer. But that’s not a sufficient requirement for a good business; instead, to use IDEO’s Tim Brown as a guide, we need to
The two laws of building products Read More »
Nanga Parbat, by Ahmed Sajjad Zaidi The origins of Alpine climbing Over the last weekend, I helped move 250 people across London to a shining, state of the art new office. The one we left was old, tired, and still full of things we didn’t need after we left. Being responsible for getting the new office ready
The Fast & Light Company Read More »
I interviewed someone for a job for the first time in 1998. The interviewee had a slightly unnerving habit of pecking with his whole body like an absent-minded pigeon whilst answering questions. He was clearly ill-at-ease, but I think a casual observer would have been hard pressed to tell who was more nervous. I’d had
Focus on the basics — the four needs of high performance team members Read More »
Every so often I sit down to write an article, taking some time to imagine how today’s magical technology might unfurl into one of many possible near-futures. In part, this a challenge to think creatively about the application of technology. In equal part though, it’s so I can look back in five years and laugh
Fast moving molecular goods — the future of shopping in an augmented world Read More »
Journeymen (journeypersons?) in traditional garb by Sigismund von Dobschütz CC BY SA 3.0 Imagine, if you will, a world with no CVs or resumés. Forget for a moment the gloomy predictions of job loss and declining productivity and spend a moment to imagine instead a future where the interview — a deluded, hour long industry standard with little
The Future of Work — The Challenge Economy Read More »
Inside AirBnB’s Dublin offices — a startup that knows how to scale I love working with startups. Startup founders are dreamers, visionaries, rebels and artists. I am, however, reliably informed by someone who has met actual rock stars that founders are, in fact, not rock stars. Founders tend to be unconstrained by physics and unconcerned with reality. They’ve
How to scale your (startup) team Read More »
In software development, or cooking barbecue, when we estimate our small errors will net out – more often than not it will take longer than planned, sometimes less. I rarely remember anyone’s estimate really improving materially the more time they spent on it. But spending time working on estimation will ALWAYS cause a project to
On estimates and guesswork. Read More »
Or, the time five people from five continents pitched a sex toy at MIT (read Part 1) I had a shirt laundered and bought razors specially for this. They, like my hotel room on Thursday night, went completely unused. As my teachers at school would have told you, I’ve never been much of a note-taker.
The MIT Global Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp – Afterword Read More »
Or, the time five people from five continents pitched a sex toy at MIT (read Part 6) This is my beautiful bed at the Kendall Hotel in Cambridge. Sadly, this is also how it looked at 7am on Friday morning Friday 12th August Notes from last night: “Powerpoint is a pile of shit.” Previously, at the MIT
The MIT Global Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp — Part 7 Read More »