Thanks. You make some great points! Jim Collins is goes to great lengths to promote the fact that many great companies start without a plan (i.e. Sony, Hewlett Packard, etc.) and failed with their first products.

Yes, feel free to share.

Thanks again.

- Greg

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

- Greg

2. I love what you say about guts. In my experience, I am yet to see the forecast and business intelligence figures that have hit the bulls-eye. Don’t get me wrong, I am one for conducting research and ensuring that there is potential in any business venture. But I have also learnt that sometimes, if your passion is strong enough, you can swim against the tide and guarantee success. Just make sure you are listening and responding to the dynamics of your market.

Again, I ask for your permission to ‘retweet’ this in my blog (www.ubigen.org).

Thanks. Have a nice weekend as well.

- Greg

Part of your post brought back memories of my read on Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers. Gladwell argues that success, in part, may be due to… LUCK.

He cites any number of examples; the most instructive of which is Bill Gates. Gates grew up near the University of Washington, and regularly walked pass a building that contained a computer lab — very rudimentary early examples of mainframes. If I remember correctly, the UW had a relationship with Gates’ high school, and he was able to access the lab. Purely being at the right place at the right time. Luck. But for Gates’ proximity to UW’s computer lab, we likely would not have a Microsoft.

Notwithstanding the above, Gates became obsessed with programing –especially as a teenager. During those times he would devote up to 24 hours a day to his programming passion. In the current issue of Wired Magazine, Gates recants those times.

Thanks for the article. Play hard this weekend.

Thanks for the great references. I did not see the movie (it’s a bit tough to get out here) and did not read the book. I read another, but can’t remember the name. It was some years ago and the book is still in another country (I recently moved).

I’ll try to pick up broadbandits.

Thanks again!

- Greg

Rourke is probably the most interesting actor since Brando. There’s an hour long interview with him on YT by that Brit whose name I can never remember. (Pers Morgan? Piers Morgan? Something like that.) It worth listening to. Very inspirational.

The opening chapter of Om Malik’s Broadbandits contains a superb account of what led Worldcom to blow up. It was partly due to Bernie falling for the lie that Internet users were doubling every 100 days. Bernie also suffered from an integrity deficit.

Regarding Jeff Skilling, have you seen “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”? When it first opened, I made a 150 mile round trip to see it. Since then I have bought a copy and seen it another six or seven times. It’s one of the best business documentaries ever produced and focuses on Skilling and Lay.

With regards to Bukowski, I am reminded of a favorite quote:

“If I had listened to the critics, I’d have died drunk in the gutter” – Chekov

Nice summary of what has made some people successful or unsuccessful. I can add some others like being in the right place at the right time, playing on your key strengths, chance, etc. but I would agree there is no certain recipe for success. Moreover – success has different faces, and what is failure from one perspective may be success from another…

- Greg