Super Secret Start-Up

I can yak about business as a powerful integrative force. But it's time to walk the talk. In fact, I was glacing at the Metro (Silicon Valley's weekly) horoscope for amusement:

This is Walk Your Talk Week for you Geminis. More than any other time this year, you will have everything going for you when you concentrate on translating your highest ideals into practical actions. Live up to your hype, you beautiful dreamer. Fulfill your promises. Call on all your ingenuity to create effects that are in harmony with your intentions. You are now capable of being as free of hypocrisy as it's possible for a human being to be.

Well then by golly! What fortuitous coincidence that the stars are aligned! A new category on this blog is Super Secret Start-Up (and if you don't know already, I'm being entirely facetious about the super-secret part...and the astrology). The concept squarely ties into global innovation networks. (BTW, I'll be at the KM Cluster's Innovation Networks event this Friday in LA.)

A lot of companies are already geared up around being Idea Companies (via Don the Idea Guy). Saatchi and Saatchi has staked their future in it. This isn't an idea company.

Companies don't innovate; people do. - Jeff Hawkins, creator of Palm Pilot and Handspring PDAs

It's a people company. A team company.

The most important thing about Kevin Robert's, Worldwide CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, strategy that's frequently overlooked is the mission:

I think the role of business is to make the world a better place for everyone. We're going to do that by giving people choices, giving them self-esteem. But fundamentally, we'll do this by including the 2.3 billion people who exist on less than $2 a day, and turning them into active participants in a free, capitalistic, choice-driven, self-esteem-driven market.

There really is a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

Among the many reasons I have no problem revealing intellectual "property" are these two: As Ricardo Semler points out in his book, Seven Day Weekend, and in countless press interviews, hundreds, maybe thousands, of companies visit Semco to study its success and corporate culture. They all reel back and object: But we can't do that. I spent an afternoon with a foreign Internet portal on Google's innovation and product management practices. They were eager to hear all about it. At the end of the meeting: But we can't do that.

And, the next reason: Anyone that reads this blog is truly a collaborator, partner and co-creator in this endeavor not a competitor.

Comments

[laurent bervas]

> Anyone that reads this blog is truly a collaborator,
> partner and co-creator in this endeavor not
> a competitor.

A blog is an open source project.
I share my spirite on the net.
I'm "hyper" linked to others.
Everyday I improve my own code.

The spirite goa is turning around the earth.
I'm taking hands of others through my browser.

PS : thanks. Good post :)

[hugh macleod]

"And, the next reason: Anyone that reads this blog is truly a collaborator, partner and co-creator in this endeavor not a competitor."

Beautiful!

=)

[fouro]

Nice point about Semler, Evelyn.

Kentucky Windage: Always aim ahead of your target, not where it is today. If you truly embrace the idea of exploration and innovation, by the time someone DOES actually replicate your IP, you'll have moved 5 rungs further up the ladder. They're merely replicating old ideas.

[Don The Idea Guy]

Actually, I don't worry much about sharing ideas either -- I learned long ago that if the idea is any good at all, you won't have to worry about someone STEALING it -- you'll have to shove it down their throat!

((See? I actually stole that quote from someone else.))