Book Review: The Art of the Start

The Art of The Start
by Guy Kawasaki

A great and inspiring book. I particularly appreciated the no nonsense advice and strong focus on fundamentals. My bias towards the latter has always made me feel like a "pseudo-MBA" so Guy's advice increased my confidence in holding similar opinions.

I particularly enjoyed the material on bootstrapping. I have always found exciting the kind of action-based, goal-oriented bootstrapping that Guy describes which likely explains why I have spent the majority of my career in small, advanced development teams building prototypes of new technologies and products.

In summary, a great book that I highly recommend to anyone involved in starting new ventures, internal or external.

Daily routines...

By way of Hacker News, I discovered this delightful website, Daily Routines, that documents the daily routines of various people, many famous. Simply fascinating to read. For instance who knew that Winston Churchill didn't get out of bed until 11:00AM!

A daily routine is something that I've always desired but found difficult to maintain. Perhaps this website will inspire me to finally settle on a daily routine of my own.

A New Kind of Science

I must admit that before all of the recent WolframAlpha excitement I didn't know much about Stephen Wolfram. By all accounts he is an impressive person so I decided to watch a talk he gave on his book A New Kind of Science. 

In general, I find the kinds of cellular automata and computability theory that Wolfram discusses to be very interesting. However, I'm in no position to judge the quality or validity of his conclusions.  To that end a quick google search uncovered this commentary by Cosma Shalizi which appears to question at least the originality of Wolfram's work. It sounds like an unfortunate situation for all involved.

Someday I may pick up a copy of A New Kind of Science but in the meantime I may read some of Wolfram's papers as the topic does interest me. Based on the commentary linked above, I ordered a copy of The Recursive Universe and look forward to reading it.  

Analysis of Cramer's stock advice..

I was listening to episode #48 of the PlanetMoney podcast on the way into work this morning and was surprised to hear that my MBA M&A Professor, Emery Trahan, together with another NEU professor did a study on Cramer’s investment advice. They found that during the period from mid-2005 to 2007 following Cramer’s advice yielded an annualized return of 12 percent compared to an S&P return of 7.4 percent during the same period. However, they further concluded that when adjusted for risk, Cramer’s performance was in-line with the market’s thus making him neither a materially good or bad stock picker. 

It’s important to note that their study doesn’t include the recent downturn so it’s possible that their conclusions would be much different if the study was carried forward. The podcast suggested that they are in the process of analyzing Cramer’s performance during the downturn.

Interesting, I look forward to reading the full paper.

Links:

• NPR Story
• Paper

Being a generalist

Although I have a degree of expertise in a handful of areas, on balance I'm a generalist with a wide range of interests. I'm also an avid reader which, together, has allowed me to become familiar with a variety of fields. While I find these varied interests intellectually  stimulating, I also find them quite useful.

For a long time I have been a strong believer of the Medici Effect, the combination of concepts from disparate fields to generate creative new solutions. As any fan of James Burke's "Connections" series knows, much of mankind's progress is due to seemingly haphazard interactions. 

In my own efforts to solve complicated problems, I often draw analogies between different subjects. In some cases,these analogies help me to better visualize or comprehend the system under study. In other cases, the analogies help identify potential solutions. In either case, I frequently find that already having a catalog of general knowledge greatly accelerates the process by avoiding the need for exhaustive research. Instead, once the connections are made I can usually proceed directly to reviewing or learning the technical details needed to refine and implement a solution. 

As alluded to above, I am not alone in my generalist approach.  One of my favorite quotes is Louis Pasteur's "fortune favors the prepared mind" which I think indicates that he felt the same way. More recently, Eric Drexler summarized the benefit of "understanding everything" as follows:

It takes far less knowledge to recognize a problem than to solve it, yet in key respects, that bit of knowledge is more important: With recognition, a problem may be avoided, or solved, or an idea abandoned. Without recognition, a hidden problem may invalidate the labor of an hour, or a lifetime. Lack of a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Indeed, well said Eric.

Hello world!

This is the first of hopefully a long series of blog posts on a variety of topics including computers, programming, technology, innovation, and business to name but a few. I don't expect to stray too far from these topics but the occasional personal post will likely appear from time to time. At no time will I discuss topics relevant to my day-job, this blog is a personal forum for my extracurricular interests and activities.  

Unlike those of a younger generation, blogging does not come to me naturally. However, for years I have pestered a close circle of friends with emails containing links, and commentary on a wide variety of subjects. I'm not sure these friends have always enjoyed these emails so by switching to a blog they now have the freedom to chose what to read and when. A blog also offers the opportunity to make new connections and friendships. 

So, onward and forward!