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Your business as your baby

January 25, 2012Posted By Michael Doneman

 

Starting up, emerging entrepreneurs need mentors, coaches and critical friends. We can think of these as the uncles and aunts to the growing baby. (Edgies so often claim they feel that their *business is their baby*, with all the frustration and heartache and untrammelled joy that infers.) 

 
Babies can get different parenting. Some parents want their baby to grow up faster, smarter, richer than the other kids, some want them to grow up to be loving, compassionate, generous, maybe even happy, some want all of those things. 
 
We're interested in the mummies and daddies who want their...

Decisions on intangibles

January 06, 2012Posted By Michael Doneman

 

Intangible values (e.g. brands, data bases, expert knowledge, leadership, productivity) are increasingly important in markets – at least if we use the instrument of stock market valuations rather than the those of accountants. How might we consider them in our planning? Tamara Plakalo suggests we can categorize intangibles in three ways – as ‘structural capital’, ‘relational capital’ and ‘human capital’. To download her whole article, ‘Untangling Intangibles’, go here.

How trees grow

January 01, 2012Posted By Michael Doneman

 

It sounds counter-intuitive that, while a tree is rooted in the ground, it actually feeds on what it extracts from the air. I think this is a compelling metaphor for business (and life, if it comes to it): we need to be grounded, based, authentic, and at the same time we have to be aware of our environment, of the threats and opportunities borne along by capricious breezes (or cyclones)

Love signals real

December 28, 2011Posted By Michael Doneman

 

 In this Age of Metaphor, love will be the signal of real. One of the ways we will know when a thing has passed from “as-if” to “is” is when it earns unalloyed love from humans. Kevin Kelly, As If

In the developed world we are increasingly trading in intangibles. Think of love marks


What do accountants count?

December 24, 2011Posted By Michael Doneman

 

 

We think we make rational economic decisions. We don’t. Our decisions are driven by intangible values of which we may not be aware, or about which we may not care.

‘Radical accountant’ Baruch Lev, along with others, is proposing that accepted GAAP accounting has to evolve to evaluate and incorporate intangibles in a company’s accounts.

Can accountants...


3D business plans

December 21, 2011Posted By Michael Doneman

 

At Edgeware's first Upload Young Entrepreneurs Camp (Jan 12-16, 2009) we tried out our first 3D Business Plan. Everyone selected materials and objects which represented elements of their plan, then arranged and connected these to indicate the dynamics of the business and the interplay of its various functions.

 
We use them all the time now. 3D business plans are cool. They engage visual and tactile ways of processing and reflecting; they lay out a business concept for the consideration of others; they create the possibility for outside-the-square feedback loops (like comments from visitors at a 'gallery...

Failures are inveitable! Brave failures are necessary!

May 09, 2011Posted By Michael Doneman

Some formulae ...

High Self-Efficacy:

Failure = lack of effort
 
Low Self-Efficacy:
 
Failure = lack of ability
 
A Brave Failure = learning + spur to greater effort or effect
A Brave Failure builds resilience
 
Effort & effect: break the vision into do-able bits
Effort & effect + small successes = greater self-efficacy

Education-zen

January 27, 2010Posted By Michael Doneman

"The problem of the steady change of ideas (or the perpetual need to imagine new ideas) also demolishes the notion that the essence of education consists in mastering certain contents or materials. You are not little birdies sitting in the nest with your mouths open to receive half-digested worms of knowledge regurgitated by the faculty. Education is not about content. It is not even about skills. It is a habit or stance of mind. It is not something you have. It is something you are." So says educator Andrew Abbott. To work towards...


Podcast on Ethical Entrepreneurship

August 26, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman

 

I'm pretty new to the world of podcasting, but I found this interview refreshing in that Cameron Reilly, the owner-operator of the G'Day World Podcasting Network, allowed time to really explore and flesh out ideas in a way that other forms don't tend to allow, in favour of more clipped and sound-grabby formats. I found this particularly useful in trying to discuss the 'bigger picture' context for my practice and the Edgeware business generally. People have been telling me for a while that short audio clips are useful ways...


Speaking at the Hive

July 17, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman

 I was asked to give a short talk at a Brisbane networking function called The Hive on 30 June 09, on the topic of 'entrepreneurship'. The talk was filmed, and video is now on Youtube, but to save the bother of looking it up, here's the talk, in three sections.



Business Ethics

July 12, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman

Business ethics is an important field for Edgeware because it’s in the ‘change the world’ bit of our DNA.

You don’t ‘adopt’ ethical practices; you can’t operate without ethics, even if you couldn’t name them and you don’t have a code. We make moral judgements all the time and they’re the basis of our actions a lot of the time whether we recognise it or not. The question is: are these good ethics or not so good ethics, is this action which is good or action which is not so good? And this ‘good’ concept, that’s...


Speaking at the Brisbane Ideas Festival

May 14, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman

 I was invited to convene a session at the Brisbane Ideas Festival in March 2009, a panel on the topic of Creative Entrepreneurs: The Artists of Commerce. I selected a group of Edgies from a variety of businesses and a variety of demographics, reinforcing the concept that creative entrepreneurship is a matter of psychographics, not demographics, as in Ian Plowman's proposition that Edgies are essentially 'weird', and that Edgeware is a platform for 'validating weirdness'. More on the video itself, also accessible through Youtube (and thanks to Edgie Sarah Moran for this).

 


Edgeware's Build Your Business

September 11, 2008Posted By Michael Doneman

 

Edgeware's Build Your Business program is an alternative to business education for new entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs who want to re-imagine or grow their businesses. Each time it runs, it changes, because the needs of participants and the dynamics of the group make changes necessary. Edgeware aims to provide more than just a course, because there is no single pathway to success in business. Each participant comes to Edgeware with a different mix of expectations, ideals, capabilities and needs.

So Edgeware aims to provide practical skills and competencies, but also the kinds of...


Competence and Capability

August 28, 2008Posted By Michael Doneman

Having thought about this idea of phronesis  for a while it didn't come as a surprise to learn that the three 'R's' - usually taken to mean reading, writing and 'rithmatic - were originally conceived as

Reading and writing
Reckoning and figuring
Wrighting and wroughting

... where the third 'R' refers to the knowledge of action, of making and undertaking, of phronetic knowledge.

... and brings to mind, again, the distinction between competence and capability, a foundation of skills and competencies which are not ends in...