Monday, October 1, 2012
Top Ten Reasons "Green" Entrepreneurs Fail
Startup Pro, an award winning blog run by Martin Zwilling, has published an interesting list of the top ten reasons first time entrepreneurs fail. I don't necessarily agree with everything Zwilling writes, but it's definitely a lot of food for thought!
The Power of Failure
Charles C. Manz is a professor at U Mass who focuses on the study of leadership. In 2002 Profesor Manz published a nice little book on The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks Into Success
- while the book is more of a motivational treatise and not an academic, research-based analysis of the subject, Manz emphasizes a lot of important and valuable lessons, as one would expect from a tenured U Mass prof.
Old world, old economy failure used to be all about not performing, falling short, being inept, forgetting, neglecting - "A bad, bad thing that should be avoided, mourned and punished."
How refreshing that failure in the new economy has come to mean something altogether different! Today failure is seen as "a stepping stone to success, an opportunity for learning and development, an opportunity for creative change and innovation."
Go forth and fail as in failure you will find the seedlings of your next successful venture!
- while the book is more of a motivational treatise and not an academic, research-based analysis of the subject, Manz emphasizes a lot of important and valuable lessons, as one would expect from a tenured U Mass prof.
Old world, old economy failure used to be all about not performing, falling short, being inept, forgetting, neglecting - "A bad, bad thing that should be avoided, mourned and punished."
How refreshing that failure in the new economy has come to mean something altogether different! Today failure is seen as "a stepping stone to success, an opportunity for learning and development, an opportunity for creative change and innovation."
Go forth and fail as in failure you will find the seedlings of your next successful venture!
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Why big companies fail to innovate...
This goes straight to an old argument my father and I always get into. He comes from a VERY BIG company backgroud (Emerson Electric, Norden, Rafael), and I'm an entrpreneur who has worked mostly with small, nimble, innovative companies. The argument - in case you're wondering - is about why large companies almost never come up with the really big innovations.
A nice new blog series from HBR, Why Big Companies Can't Innovate, provides some good rationale in my support.
A nice new blog series from HBR, Why Big Companies Can't Innovate, provides some good rationale in my support.
How frequent is bank failure?
Marketwatch reported on September 28th 2012 that First United Bank is the 43rd bank to fail in the US this year!!!
First United Bank is 43rd 2012 U.S. bank failure
However, if that sounds like a lot, turns out that on average 70 banks fail in the US annually... Problem Bank List does us all a favor and track all bank failure news.
One can pull practically any and all bank failure data from the FDIC database, as an example see this table displaying all US bank failures from 1990 to date.
The FDIC maintains and regularly updates a failed bank list
The St. Louis Fed issued an interesting report on bank failures, analyzing bank failures between 2007 and 2010 but providing extensive graphical analysis of bank failures more or less from the beginning of the 20th century to date. The report is titled The Geographic Distribution and Characteristics of US Bank Failure (download).
BigThink ran a nice piece on Why Banks Fail—And Why They Fail on Friday back in 2010.
First United Bank is 43rd 2012 U.S. bank failure
However, if that sounds like a lot, turns out that on average 70 banks fail in the US annually... Problem Bank List does us all a favor and track all bank failure news.
One can pull practically any and all bank failure data from the FDIC database, as an example see this table displaying all US bank failures from 1990 to date.
The FDIC maintains and regularly updates a failed bank list
The St. Louis Fed issued an interesting report on bank failures, analyzing bank failures between 2007 and 2010 but providing extensive graphical analysis of bank failures more or less from the beginning of the 20th century to date. The report is titled The Geographic Distribution and Characteristics of US Bank Failure (download).
BigThink ran a nice piece on Why Banks Fail—And Why They Fail on Friday back in 2010.
The Failure of Government Programs
If there is one entity that fails to learn consistently, it's government.
The crux of national policy for most if not all western governments over the past century has been to improve equality among their citizens (aka "voter base...").
Yet almost without fail... (pun intended...) - the result has been the exact opposite.
Paul Ormerod, in his terrific analysis of failure across all segments of government and industry, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
, provides some telling statistics on the progress - or lack thereof - of government policies worldwide:
The role of the government and direct involvement in the economy has grown considerably in every western country from 1950 to 2000
In 2000, Subsidies for the poor, welfare, tax breaks etc accounted for almost 20% of EU countries' national income
Even in the uber-capitalistic US of A approximately 10% were spent on such items
Overall, in the EU gov't spending accounted for as much as 48% of national income - 36% in the US
Yet equality in western nations is on the decline!
In other words, billions and trillions of dollars are being spent on programs that are failing.
Does it look like western governments are drawing the necessary conclusions from such failures? Are they LEARNING? Not that anyone can tell, as widely accepted economic equality indices such as the Gini coefficient continue to increase.
The crux of national policy for most if not all western governments over the past century has been to improve equality among their citizens (aka "voter base...").
Yet almost without fail... (pun intended...) - the result has been the exact opposite.
Paul Ormerod, in his terrific analysis of failure across all segments of government and industry, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
, provides some telling statistics on the progress - or lack thereof - of government policies worldwide:
Yet equality in western nations is on the decline!
In other words, billions and trillions of dollars are being spent on programs that are failing.
Does it look like western governments are drawing the necessary conclusions from such failures? Are they LEARNING? Not that anyone can tell, as widely accepted economic equality indices such as the Gini coefficient continue to increase.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Why Start-ups Fail
Back in mid-2000, as the first dot.com bubble was imploding, Philip J. Kaplan wrote a wonderful little book called F'd Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts
(highly recommended, and not just for the educational content, it's an amusing read!!)
In his introduction Kaplan delineates, sarcastically - as he does so well...a paragraph full of reasons why companies fail:
"Why'd They Fail?" too early...
too late...
too expensive...
too cheap...
too big...
too much competition...
to much supply...
not enough demand...
management...
I love Kaplan's description of management...pick up the book to find out more.
In the next few posts we'll be going more in depth into each of the reasons above. Would love to hear more from you.
Although fuckedcompany.com is history (why??), you can still follow Philip J. Kaplan masquerading as @pud on twitter.
(highly recommended, and not just for the educational content, it's an amusing read!!)
In his introduction Kaplan delineates, sarcastically - as he does so well...a paragraph full of reasons why companies fail:
"Why'd They Fail?"
I love Kaplan's description of management...pick up the book to find out more.
In the next few posts we'll be going more in depth into each of the reasons above. Would love to hear more from you.
Although fuckedcompany.com is history (why??), you can still follow Philip J. Kaplan masquerading as @pud on twitter.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
WSJ Reports on the top 50 startups - let's start tracking!!
WSJ has published its annual list of the top 50 start-ups, I believe for the third year running. Titled Looking for the 'Next Big Thing'? Ranking the Top 50 Start-Ups, the annual list is gaining quite a following, and is proving to be a good predictor of future success. Ten of last year's "top 50" have already managed impressive exits, six through IPO and four through acquisitions.
"Steiner on Failure" will be following the 2012 list to see how well this year's team fares, how many of these companies fail over time - and what we will be able to learn from their failures.
"Steiner on Failure" will be following the 2012 list to see how well this year's team fares, how many of these companies fail over time - and what we will be able to learn from their failures.
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