Collab.klog.km

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.

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.