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In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

scottlocklin.wordpress.com

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Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#11

Post by eru »

noonespecial wrote: post #6
shrikant wrote: post #2

Jesus what a nay-sayer. I wonder if in early 1999 he would have dismissed Google saying, "A website to search the Internet? Why? I can just go directly to what I want!". Sheesh.

Thanks to the participatory nature of technology these days, its become fiendishly difficult to predict what's going to produce wealth[1]. It used to be easy, wealth was made by growing something and eating it or digging something up and banging it into a shape. It got a bit more subtle when people realized that dragging stuff places (where said stuff was likely eaten or banged into a shape) could create wealth too.…

Wealth and money have always gone in slightly different ways. Every positive externality is wealth by your definition, but I unless its internalized I don't get paid for it. (And negative externality are basically stealing or looting.)

To give less abstract examples: I don't get paid for being a good citizen, voting, reading the newspaper to be informed. And I do not pay for being angry, putting a lot of strange gases in the atmosphere with my care (yet), congesting the streets. Or putting systemic risk on the financial world.

There is something to be said for connecting externalities with incentives. Giving the right incentives makes people's choices more compatible with the outcomes.

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#12

Post by lisper »

DirtyAndy wrote: post #10
ars wrote: post #5

entrepreneur == someone who makes money by running their own business entrepreneur != someone who invents something revolutionary The vast vast majority of the people in the world will never invent anything new. This is a list of people who found a less-than-common way of making money. This is NOT a list of people with revolutionary ideas.

Whilst I agree with your logic, I think there is still a difference between being an entrepreneur and running a fairly standard business. Your definition would say that someone who buys a franchise or setups up a basic shop is an entrepreneur - I think few people would see it that way. An entrepreneur need not be trying to be revolutionary but they should be shooting for the stars and trying to at least improve on th…

The dictionary definition of entrepreneur is simply "a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture." So innovation can be helpful, especially in achieving a competitive advantage, it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) for successful entrepreneurship.

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#13

Post by vitaminj »

While I agree that most of the entrepreneurs don't have brilliant ideas, I thought there were two clear standouts:

1) The guy that developed carbon nanotube probes for microscopy applications (www.cnprobes.com)

2) The guy that hacked away in his basement and created new higher performance heavy duty machine lubricants (www.greasewarehouse.com)

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#15

Post by ericlavigne »

patio11 wrote: post #9
a-priori wrote: post #3

Seriously, he needs to get rid of that "snapshots" tooltip. Why do people put those things on their sites?

It has been a few years since my blog was on *.wordpress.com, but my recollection is that they opted me in when they introduced the feature and it took me a while to figure out how to turn it off. (Settings -> General, as I recall.)

Appearance -> Extras -> Enable mShots site previews

I am on wordpress now, and just turned mShots off a few minutes ago. I had no idea this feature was causing anyone problems. Open in new tab still worked fine for me.

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#16

Post by rbanffy »

lisper wrote: post #12
DirtyAndy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I agree with your logic, I think there is still a difference between being an entrepreneur and running a fairly standard business. Your definition would say that someone who buys a franchise or setups up a basic shop is an entrepreneur - I think few people would see it that way. An entrepreneur need not be trying to be revolutionary but they should be shooting for the stars and trying to at least improve on th…

The dictionary definition of entrepreneur is simply "a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture." So innovation can be helpful, especially in achieving a competitive advantage, it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) for successful entrepreneurship.

If, however, you do exactly what your competition is doing, the only risk you are taking is the one derived from being less competent than them.

The article's point is that if average is the best this generation can offer then it's doomed.

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#17

Post by Luc »

ericlavigne wrote: post #15
patio11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been a few years since my blog was on *.wordpress.com, but my recollection is that they opted me in when they introduced the feature and it took me a while to figure out how to turn it off. (Settings -> General, as I recall.)

Appearance -> Extras -> Enable mShots site previews I am on wordpress now, and just turned mShots off a few minutes ago. I had no idea this feature was causing anyone problems. Open in new tab still worked fine for me.

It's more of an annoyance when you use your cursor to indicate where in the text you are while reading. Or when you just park the cursor somewhere and it happens to be on a link. Quite annoying on articles with a lot of links like this one.

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#18

Post by rbanffy »

groaner wrote: post #7

Quite a bit of vitriol in there, but it seems it would more appropriately be directed at lousy journalism rather than bemoaning the state of entrepreneurship. While the BusinessWeek article claims to evaluate on "potential for growth," the projected revenue figures sound like PR fluff. I was left wondering which of the 10 were selected just so they have a nice round number for their list.

I think this illustrates why fluffy press-release-transcribing journalism is so prevalent these days better than a whole collection of BusinessWeek ever could:

http://twitpic.com/ds64u

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#19

Post by lisper »

rbanffy wrote: post #16
lisper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dictionary definition of entrepreneur is simply "a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture." So innovation can be helpful, especially in achieving a competitive advantage, it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) for successful entrepreneurship.

If, however, you do exactly what your competition is doing, the only risk you are taking is the one derived from being less competent than them. The article's point is that if average is the best this generation can offer then it's doomed.

I think Scott (and you) are confusing average with boring. It's true that you can't be better without being different. But you can be different (and even be better) without being (at least overtly) innovative. You might just, for example, provide better customer service than the competition. Or lower prices. Or greater selection. My point is that to succeed, all you have to be is better. Being cool is not a requirement. (And being too focused on being cool can therefore actually be detrimental to success.)

Re: In which I stomp on some of our glorious “green shoots”

#20

Post by lisper »

lisper wrote: post #19
rbanffy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, however, you do exactly what your competition is doing, the only risk you are taking is the one derived from being less competent than them. The article's point is that if average is the best this generation can offer then it's doomed.

I think Scott (and you) are confusing average with boring . It's true that you can't be better without being different. But you can be different (and even be better ) without being (at least overtly) innovative . You might just, for example, provide better customer service than the competition. Or lower prices. Or greater selection. My point is that to succeed, all you have to be is better . Being cool is not a requi…

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881032
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