Self-driving car

Take a ride inside Google’s self driving car.

 

YouTube – Inside A Google Auto-Driving Car.

Optional: Business plans and market research

Inc. has a great article concerning the differences in thought processes between big corporate leaders and entrepreneurs.

Corporate leaders, dealing with known markets, and incremental innovation – are much more plan-focused and step through more solid, mathematical, logical process. Innovative entrepreneurs – working with a lot of unknowns in customers, markets, designs – and seeking ground-breaking innovation – seek immediacy and flexibility. Less time is invested in academic exercises like market research and business plans – more time is invested in building stuff.

Sarasvathy likes to compare expert entrepreneurs to Iron Chefs: at their best when presented with an assortment of motley ingredients and challenged to whip up whatever dish expediency and imagination suggest. Corporate leaders, by contrast, decide they are going to make Swedish meatballs. They then proceed to shop, measure, mix, and cook Swedish meatballs in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible.

That is not to say entrepreneurs don’t have goals, only that those goals are broad and—like luggage—may shift during flight. Rather than meticulously segment customers according to potential return, they itch to get to market as quickly and cheaply as possible, a principle Sarasvathy calls affordable loss. Repeatedly, the entrepreneurs in her study expressed impatience with anything that smacked of extensive planning, particularly traditional market research. (Inc.’s own research backs this up. One survey of Inc. 500 CEOs found that 60 percent had not written business plans before launching their companies. Just 12 percent had done market research.)

How Great Entrepreneurs Think

4 Types of Entrepreneurship

Steve Blank has a good breakdown of the 4 types of entrepreneurship in one of his posts. It’s important to remember that there are several types of entrepreneurship. Many may think that “entrepreneurs” are only people that start venture funded, fast growing companies.

Below is the list:

1. Small Business Entrepreneurship
Today, the overwhelming number of entrepreneurs and startups in the United States are still small businesses. There are 5.7 million small businesses in the U.S. They make up 99.7% of all companies and employ 50% of all non-governmental workers.

2. Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship

Unlike small businesses, scalable startups are what Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and their venture investors do. These entrepreneurs start a company knowing from day one that their vision could change the world. They attract investment from equally crazy financial investors – venture capitalists.

3. Large Company Entrepreneurship

Large companies have finite life cycles. Most grow through sustaining innovation, offering new products that are variants around their core products. Changes in customer tastes, new technologies, legislation, new competitors, etc. can create pressure for moredisruptive innovation – requiring large companies to create entirely new products sold into new customers in new markets. Existing companies do this by either acquiring innovative companies or attempting to build a disruptive product inside. Ironically, large company size and culture make disruptive innovation extremely difficult to execute.

4. Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs are innovators who focus on creating products and services that solve social needs and problems.

Steve Blank

Real time visual translations

This a pretty cool looking app. You point it at a sign and it translates visually in real-time. You must see it- in the video.

YouTube – Introducing Word Lens.

Diminishing reality

Interesting video where they atually remove objects from a video…

via YouTube – The incredible world of Diminished Reality.

Random Thoughts Newsletter

I am going to try an experiment. I am launching a “Random Thoughts” email newsletter. I will use it to post random ideas for the blog concerning business, innovation, technology, etc. – and also read your thoughts and responses. Many ideas may not make it to the blog. You will get more than the blog offers, but will get more raw thoughts, I think. Not sure, this is just an experiment. But a lot of you may find the email newsletter interesting. This is not the Tomorrow’s Trends newsletter based on this blog with many subscribers – this newsletter will have more random thoughts.

Sign up here

The Startup Toolkit

This looks like a cool tool for startups. It says that is is for “for founders in search of a business model”. I like this visual business modeling tool. This is based on some solid startup customer development background. From the site:

Basically, a bunch of smart guys who have been kind enough to write down and share their learnings. The worksheets and questions are from Steve Blank’s book The 4 Steps to the Epiphany. The visual layout is based on the work done by Osterwalder, covered in great detail in the beautiful Business Model Generation book. Ash Maurya has also contributed his own twist on the canvas specifically for web startups. The risk dashboard is straight out of the pages of Komisar & Mullin’s Getting to Plan B.

The Startup Toolkit – for founders in search of a business model.

How Does Google Work?

Infographic by PPC Blog

NBC and Time Warner Staying with Adobe Flash

We have all heard about the Steve Jobs of Apple versus Adobe over Flash debate.  Apple is really pushing the HTML5 format as the choice that content providers should adopt.  Steve Jobs may in fact be correct that HTML5 will be how content is delivered in the future.  Currently Adobe Flash still dominates the desktop users.  Many content providers have already begun moving content over to HTML5.  According to the New York Post Time Warner and NBC Universal at this time has decided to continue using Flash.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Time Warner and NBC Universal content will not show up on your iPad or iPhone.  These companies could release a custom made app for this content.  Which ABC and Netflix has already done.  The battle between Flash and HTML5 is far from over.    

[New York Post]

Windows Not Allowed at Google

The employees at Google using Microsoft Windows will need to select “Shut Down” for the last time.  Google is no longer allowing Microsoft Windows to be used unless you get special approval from the CIO.  Google will give the employees the choice of OS X or Linux.

Google is transitioning away from Windows over security risks.  This could be an overreaction to the hacking incident that occurred in China.  The exploit was due to Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.  Google could just ban the use of Internet Explorer instead of the entire operating system.

This is certainly a blow to Microsoft and the license fees they would have received over time.   Not sure you will see other companies making such a dramatic change.  Most large companies do not even give employees a choice of operating systems.  Then again, Google is not your typical company.

[FT]