A Perspective on Entrepreneurship, Technology & Locative Dynamics

Simplicity

The KISS principle. “Keep it simple, stupid.” or “Less is More” point out the importance of simplicity. Over-engineering and complexity have often no advantages and shall be avoided, especially in startups. Ignore features that are unimportant for most of your users and create a slick and simple designed interface.

The Dalai Lama once said that simplicity is the key to all happiness.

“Say No by Default”

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, “Does it do [x]?”, “Do you plan to add [y]?”. Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait — put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.” — by Derek Sivers “Say NO by default”, president and programmer, CD Baby

Conversation

“Feedback is a Gift.” Try to get as much feedback as you can, it will shape your product to something with higher value and makes it unique, the two ultimate goals.

“Good Science is Conversation.” This citation goes in the same direction as the one mentioned before, try to have a conversation about your startup or your product to bring up new ideas and to get valuable feedback. In science you want to create something valuable out of many ideas, so there are some parallels to entrepreneurship.

Strategy

“Think Big, Start Small and Scale Fast is a Winning Approach.” An advice by Accenture for successful E-Government initiatives, see slide 9 of the presentation eGovernment - Lessons For Leaders and Followers. Starting small is often a good idea if you want to see progress quickly but to succeed you have to scale fast and think global at one point. It is also known of the strategy of the “Small Steps”.

I think I will use this style of posting more often to keep track of smaller things that are not worth a full blog post. What do you think, interesting or not?