Archive for March, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 02 Mar 2005, 11:11 PM - Leave Comment
The following quote by Teddy Roosevelt is inspirational to say the least. Roosevelt asks us to be players rather than observers.
“Far better to dare mighty things, to
win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take
rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor
defeat.”
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 01 Mar 2005, 10:57 PM - Leave Comment
One of my gurus, Gary Hamel first wrote about this concept in his landmark book Leading the revolution.
Knowledge arbitrage can be as simple as applying what is working great
in one industry in another industry. In other words borrow concepts
from an unrelated industry.
A good example is a company my friend Steve founded called Bag Borrow or steal, Inc. Steve borrowed the inspiration from online video rental business Netflix.
Applied this concept to something new – renting luxury handbags online.
Check them out. It looks obvious now – not when Steve first
conceptualized it.
The business is booming. This is a classic case of knowledge arbitrage in action.
Here are some quick first steps towards taking advantage of knowledge arbitrage:
a) Read material outside of your domain expertise
b) Attend conferences and other events outside of your domain expertise
c) Develop curiosity on variety of topics and interests
d) Watch for trends across the board
e) Whenever you see something really intriguing in another industry,
stretch your imagination on how to apply this in your industry or
business.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 01 Mar 2005, 9:15 PM - 1 Comment
Have you ever been deeply hurt by someone telling you something or
talking something about you? We all have experienced that feeling some
time or the other. How do you handle these things?
One of my mentors suggested an approach that has worked well for me over the years. Here is the concept in a nutshell.
Whenver we feel bad because someone said something to us or something
about us, the important thing to remember is that the words themselves
have no power. They are a bunch of words nothing else. The power is
actually given to those words by our conscious choice. Suppose the same
words were spoken by a stranger or a lunatic, immediately we dismiss
what we heard and strip off all the power from those words. The problem
comes when we hear this from someone that is close to us. Instantly, we
load these words with more power than required. Worse, when we
misinterpret what we heard, we can make our life a mess as the person
who spoke may not even know the kind of impact he or she has caused in
our lives.
I am not saying that you should never get upset with anyone whatever they say. All I want to share is that we need to be aware of the fact that – at all times we choose to give the power to any words that we hear. Words themselves have no power.
Posted under Main Page.
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