Blog Yes & Know

Solving Tough Problems

That big-ass problem that’s been keeping you up from 2-4:00 am? It hasn’t been solved for a while right?  Perhaps it’s been a month, a year, or seemingly forever … …

Swiss Army Knife of XYZ

Because of a twitter exchange, a CEO of a company sent me their website link and asked me to check it out. After a minute of arriving, I left. I …

I Will Survive – Signed, Corporations

It is in the classic words of Gloria Gaynor’s song, “I will survive”, corporations will “learn how to get along…” A great deal of my community has given up on …

Why FaceBook is so Powerful

We live in a creative age. John Hagel says so in the Big Shift. Gary Hamel says so, in the Future of Management. Seth Godin clearly articulates how each of …

Competing With Adobe, Apple

When a company like Apple launches a sexy new product (iPad), one can react (Amazon) or get caught flat-footed (Adobe). It’s easy to look at today’s market situation and say …

Lessons: PayPal Dev Conference

PayPal’s developer conference in early November, the company’s first such event, gave some good lessons for tech companies that want to create their own developer communities. Since that seems to …

Growth In A Down Economy

Can your business grow in a down economy? According to a VARBusiness survey of 117 solution providers (“7 Ways to Grow in a Down Economy, VARBusiness, February 2009), fully half are expecting to grow in 2009. Does this seems crazy? It didn’t seem so to me until after I read the list of top strategies that the VARs had for achieving this growth. Any business that helps customers do more with less should do very well; something to which the booming SaaS / on-demand software market can attest. But, unless you are in a hot growth market, the same-old, same-old will not produce results in 2009. And, if you are in a hot-growth market like enterprise SaaS solutions, doing the right things during a down market will act like a competitive force multiplier.

Open Letter to Carol Bartz, Yahoo

Congrats on your new role. For many of us in the tech industry, Yahoo is more than a company, it’s a Silicon Valley icon. By putting in the kind of strong management you represent, I hope the board is signaling the company’s intent to reinvent itself and thrive once again. Your opportunities speak to opportunities for every tech firm, so we’re going to make this an Open Letter in the hope that everyone can learn from the experience you’re about to have.

Community As Social Media Strategy

The passage of California’s Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban) has created a nasty problem for Yelp and other online reviews sites. The situation is a good example of the …