Some Rules for Entrepreneurs - IT

The garage where Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded HP had its own core set of rules. They apply equally to programming.

The garage in Palo Alto where HP was born was the workplace of only two employees, the founders. Yet, to keep their core beliefs front and center as they tinkered and toiled, they posted a sign that articulated the guiding principles they shared:

  • Believe you can change the world.
  • Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
  • Know when to work alone and when to work together.
  • Share tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.
  • No Politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage.)
  • The customer defines a job well done.
  • Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
  • Invent different ways of working.
  • Make a contribution every day. If it doesn't contribute, it doesn't leave the garage.
  • Believe that together we can do anything.
  • Invent.

Succinct and to the point, the overarching core beliefs were to work together, invent useful things, and let the customer be the final arbiter. These principles are just as applicable today for start-ups as they are for established companies.

They also bear more than a passing resemblance to the foundational tenets of the Agile movement, although I think HP's principles are far more positively and clearly stated than the Agile manifesto. But even putting Agile aside, I would expect to see the HP rules in any enlightened software development organization or on any programming project — even if it consists of just two people. 

http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/the-programming-rules-from-hps-garage/240007549?cid=DDJ_nl_mdev_2012-09-19_h&elq=7567bd99667046aca3852d4dbb560d5b

Agreed: hardware is dead (re-post)

http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/

"...I think this leads to an important conclusion: No one can make money selling hardware anymore. The only way to make money with hardware is to sell something else and get consumers to pay for the whole device and experience.

Obviously, Apple sells more than just hardware. It sells iOS. It sells the Apple Brand. It sells the ability to give someone over 60 an iPad and not require nightly IT support calls from that person. It sells a bit of magic. And people will pay $400+ for that.

Amazon is also clearly way ahead on this model. At the Kindle launch event last week, Jeff Bezos highlighted that Amazon does not make money on the Kindle, it makes money on the content it sells on top of the Kindle. There is a growing awareness of this model in the web..."

Medical AR, Part Two: A Google Maps for the body

Technology Review: The Authority on the Future of Technology
http://mobile.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37545/

Great post on the efforts to create a digital map of the body, readily available online. An idea may be to combine the concept from the prior post on Microsoft's efforts in the same space. That is, integrate the two to create a searchable body map, customized to one's individual characteristics. This latter concept holds greater promise, as it is the more platform free one, being available online and all. Perhaps tablets and mobile could play a huge role here in the near future. As Ballmer put it (and as Jobs well knows), 'Developers, developers, developers'

More later...