b.cognosco

Poorly grounded, ill-conceived, unlikely, improbable ideas may well be easy to spew. But executing such ideas, no matter how well done, isn't going to lead anywhere. So yes, Krzysztof, ideas do matter. And the idea that Microsoft grew to be one of the world's most significant companies without innovation is untenable.

Great business without innovation. You don't need an ounce of innovation in order to have a very successful business. At least according to David Wheeler. I guess David's intention was just to show Microsoft in bad light but if you put 2 and 2 together, the inevitable conclusion is that you don't need any innovative ideas in order to have good business, sometimes even extremely good business. I guess many people (those hung up on "innovation") don't get, but it's just one of many examples that "innovation" per se is not equal to "good" or "profitable". Ideas are worthless, execution is what matters. [ Source: Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog]

Wheeler's point -- that Microsoft products are not innovative -- may or may not be accurate, but it is irrelevant. Gates is one of the most innovative businessmen since Rockefeller. He has steam rolled his competition. He has refined the concept of "good enough" to an art form. He has built a virtual religion on the Redmond campus with tens of thousands of converts. He has arguably created more millionaires than anyone in history. These are not the accomplishments of some mindless troglodyte executing flawlessly on the concept of ditch digging.

Frederick Taylor literally remade the industrial revolution because of his ideas about the nature of execution. Henry Ford remade the auto industry because of his ideas about the nature of manufacturing. Ideas matter. But good ones require development -- deeper thought, better questioning, perhaps even collaboration. Only then does execution matter.

John Nordstrom is credited with uttering the phrase, "Execute, don't innovate." But at the heart of Nordstrom's success is the idea that customer service matters, and Nordstrom's innovation was to find new ways of serving his customers.

Ideas are talent, execution is practice. In professional sports I'll place my money on the team with more talent over the team with more practice any day. Business is no different. All else being equal, execution is the determining factor. But if you're executing flawlessly on the wrong idea, you're doomed.

RAID-on

9:29:24 PM

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I have just one suggestion, Hugh. American Invisible has been down but not out due to a failed drive. To keep this hassle to a minimum next time invest in an inexpensive RAID card and an extra drive. Set it for mirror (RAID 1) and the next time you have a drive failure you won't miss a beat. And it takes less than an hour to rebuld a second drive.

At Last!

I can't believe how much time and trouble it takes to install a new C: drive, operating system, Office, drivers, firewall, anti-virus, then persuade Norton that we really did renew our subscription for a year, not just for the initial 90 days that Dell gave us, then restore all our data, then install my blogging software, then configure it, then....

Sorry, I'm ranting. I'll get back to work on Time, Please. I just hope this disk lasts longer than the first one did.
[ Source: American Invisible, Inc.]

Honey, I Shrunk the Conference

8:55:36 PM

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Some notes from the PDF Conference at the shrinking Seybold San Francisco. I didn't make it this year (for the first time in years) and the only thing I really regret not seeing was some of the web services sessions, including the one by Jake Savin. Maybe I can pick that up somewhere else.

It's been several years since I attended Seybold San Francisco and, given the economy and the somber time of year, I expected the conference to be scaled back. Still, it was a bit sad to see that the North Hall of Moscone was closed off, and the expo on the South Hall floor was pulled in from the walls, bracketed by black curtains. I remember when it was wall-to- wall in both halls and it would take a day and a half to properly explore all the booths. Had I been ambitious, I could have hit all the vendors on my "surgical strike" list in an hour and a half. So I paced myself by attending sessions, eating, walking around the block, eating, talking to vendors, eating, seeing industry friends, and eating. I did not lose weight on this trip.[more...][ Source: Claudia McCue's Radio Weblog]

If you're interested in how some big-time publishers are building their businesses around the PDF format this is worth a read.

IA-CMS Mailing List

8:31:51 PM

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The geek factor on this list is decidedly higher than on SIGIA-L, but the initial few posts look interesting. Much for me to learn. Some months back Jenny Levine at TSL introduced me SIGIA-L, which seems geared primarily to GUI designers. IA-CMS seems, at first glance, to be oriented more to database structure. Both are areas that need much discussion.

New mailing list. David Heller has just started up a new list, IA-CMS, devoted to the application of information architecture to content management... [ Source: Column Two]

More Info For weblogRecentPosts

11:44:23 AM

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This mod to weblogRecentPosts is a stellar improvement for those using Radio as a personal or professional KM tool. Now a quick glance at the Desktop Home Page shows you which posts are published, and to which Categories. Excellent!

Update to weblogRecentPosts.
Rapidly becoming one of my how did I live without it productivity tools for Radio blogging.

Bravo! weblogRecentPosts tells you if it's published or not..

Brian St. Pierre has modified my weblogRecentPosts hack to tell you which items haven't yet been published. His timing couldn't have been better -- I have three unpublished items at the moment, and to see them displayed as such is delightful.

I've incorporated Brian's changes to my copy also, so jump to either of our posts to download the code and read the instructions. :)
[Deadly Bloody Serious]
[ Source: McGee's Musings]

This required almost no effort to setup -- I had it working in less than two minutes -- and it is precisely the sort of thing that must be built if Radio is too work in a consultative/confidential environment. It isn't enough to take great care in clicking categories. The default Radio setting of sending everything to the Home page practically ensures that you will, at some point, erroneously publish a private post in public. Not good.

While this litle fix won't solve the bigger issue, it is a great interim step and works like a charm.