Category Archives: Personality
Signs of Creeping Entrepreneurship
Since the 90’s there has been a tsunami of studies and treatises and papers about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs; the field has been burgeoning as a subject of research – in other words, as the term gains currency and academics ….»
Persistence
A number of Edgeware presenters, and writers on entrepreneurship generally, emphasise the value of persistence, of constant striving and application to your business goals. But if you feel you’re not strongly inclined this way, how might you develop this core ….»
Nouns & verbs
Things are fast and getting faster. Whole industry groups, whole professions, are disappearing from view. Who would have thought 10 years ago that General Motors and Chrysler would go broke? What’s missing, and where’s the opportunity? It’s not a ….»
Cash flow
If I’m a business educator and I’m trying to convince you that an MBA is worth two years of your life and AUD60,000, it’s in my interest for you to understand business as complex, difficult and arcane, isn’t it? The ….»
Your business as your baby
Starting up, emerging entrepreneurs need mentors, coaches and critical friends. We can think of these as the uncles and aunts to the growing baby. (Edgies so often claim they feel that their *business is their baby*, with all the ….»
Happiness comes from experiences, not things
From the blog Neuronarrative Not only are people happier experiencing than possessing, but they are also happier having the experience of thinking about possessing something than actually getting it. Understanding that bit of knowledge about ourselves goes a long ….»
Thinking/doing good
“Doing good makes us feel good. Altruism enhances our self-esteem. It gets our eyes off ourselves, makes us less self-preoccupied, gets us closer to the unself-consciousness that characterizes the flow state” (1). In other words, caring for others creates a ….»
How trees grow
It sounds counter-intuitive that, while a tree is rooted in the ground, it actually feeds on what it extracts from the air. I think this is a compelling metaphor for business (and life, if it comes to it): we ….»
Love signals real
In this Age of Metaphor, love will be the signal of real. One of the ways we will know when a thing has passed from “as-if” to “is” is when it earns unalloyed love from humans. Kevin Kelly, As ….»
3D business plans
At Edgeware’s first Upload Young Entrepreneurs Camp (Jan 12-16, 2009) we tried out our first 3D Business Plan. Everyone selected materials and objects which represented elements of their plan, then arranged and connected these to indicate the dynamics of ….»
After a certain point, money is
meaningless
Just for fun, here are some thoughts from much better heads than ours … A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business. Henry Ford After a certain point money is meaningless. It ceases to ….»
Failures are inveitable! Brave failures are necessary!
Some formulae … High Self-Efficacy: Failure = lack of effort Low Self-Efficacy: Failure = lack of ability A Brave Failure = learning + spur to greater effort or effect A Brave Failure builds resilience Effort & ….»
Positive psychology
Positive Psychology has three central concerns: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Understanding positive emotions entails the study of contentment with the past, happiness in the present, and hope for the future. Understanding positive individual traits ….»
Edgeware’s Build Your Business
Edgeware’s Build Your Business program is an alternative to business education for new entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs who want to re-imagine or grow their businesses. Each time it runs, it changes, because the needs of participants and the dynamics ….»
Speaking at the Hive
I was asked to give a short talk at a Brisbane networking function called The Hive on 30 June 09, on the topic of ‘entrepreneurship’. The talk was filmed, and video is now on Youtube, but to save the bother ….»
6 Word Memoirs
Smith Magazine invites us to summarise our lives in six words – ‘Six Word Memoirs’. I thought, ‘Easy! I have the Edgeware motto, near enough to six words: make money, have fun, change the world. I could lose the article ….»
Coach as Cartographer
Everyone is coaching or being coached; there are life coaches, career coaches, personal coaches, fitness coaches, executive coaches, coaches for getting out of bed in the morning and coaches for getting to sleep at night. Why do we need coaches ….»
Speaking at the Brisbane Ideas Festival
I was invited to convene a session at the Brisbane Ideas Festival in March 2009, a panel on the topic of Creative Entrepreneurs: The Artists of Commerce. I selected a group of Edgies from a variety of businesses and a ….»
Intentionality and Creative Leadership
I’m fascinated by the emerging field of ‘experimental philosophy‘, where it seems that philosophers are stepping away from their armchairs and using research methods from psychology to tackle philosophical questions. Like intentionality. This is interesting enough in itself, but just ….»
What a Coach Does
I think a coach does four things: 1. Mentoring – a coach should have the capacity to empathise, and to relate the coaching experience to his or her own mind-set, world view and direct experience of analogous situations and contexts. ….»
360 Degrees
I’ve noticed that I’ll often use optical illusions or some kind of perceptual trick in my presentations, to indicate not only how easy it is to trick the eye or the brain, but that the way see the world is ….»
Generosity
I can think of four things to say about generosity. It’s a quality of behaviour which requires very little in the way of resources but which has enormous power to influence and change things, beginning with yourself. Firstly, generosity is ….»
Universal Placebos
A side project, and a source of considerable joy – Universal Placebos. The idea came originally from a class I was teaching at QUT. The discussion was on branding, and moved our thinking to the value of untraded intangibles. Pet ….»
Hard Wired for Stories
We are social animals We are hard wired for stories We use stories to sing the world: Body as Land, Land as Story Discourses arrive after the singing, as both agents and actors We make category errors all the time, ….»
Dancing About Architecture
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Laurie Anderson In 1994 we stayed for a couple of nights with our friend Klaus Maier, Director of Theater von Menschen für Menschen in Nürnberg. Not a terribly gloomy place – I ….»
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