This is day three of our start-up. Still no office, but at least we ordered 20 sets of the latest IBM Thinkpad Tablet, since we'll probably have a lot of doodling to do. Nice machine. I have been a Thinkpad fan for about 8 years. Keith is happy. Cheesan is happy. Scott will love it.
Everyone is asking us what our start-up is all about. I can only talk about it in general sense because of three reasons
1/ I still cannot precisely describe it
2/ it's going to change over time
3/ I don't know if I should be talking about it.
Those who are close to me knows it is a web 2.0 incubation company. Not sure if it says much about the company. This simply reminds me of the once highly secretive start-up called Intellectual Ventures. They raised $350 million from companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Sony and Nokia. I remember their office was filled with a big collection of antique microscopes, a collection that belongs to its polymath founder, Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technologist at Microsoft. The interesting part of that co. is that It doesn't actually make anything: it outsources, offshores and offloads, nearly every task performed by a typical corporation. It has no factories or development capacity. The firm's strategy was to create or buy new ideas, accumulate patents—exclusive rights to use the inventions—and rent those ideas to companies that need them to do the gritty work of producing real products. "Because today's businesses are constrained by their need to make money," Myhrvold says, "it is irresponsible for them to think wildly outside the box." He is right. He wants to fill that innovation gap—"We are thinking wilder, crazier thoughts than anyone else." There is a lot of similarity in what we are doing with our start-ups, except we don't buy patents or inventions. In fact, we are idea generating machines, supported by strong strategic and operation capabilities. So if you ask me what do we do, here's what I will tell you: innovation + interactions + incubation. These are the three big things that almost all large corporations can use some help.
Photo of an Idea Generator. Hey ever wish you could come up with the next big thing by just clicking? The Directors' Bureau's Idea Generator is designed for that. It's a Flash app that will tell you how to make a million dollars by randomly choosing a set of words that comprise a potential "idea." See, life is easy.
