May 2010
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Archives

Archive for May, 2010

One-Sigma Business Processes

( 25 Steps to Business Success and Customer Service and Differentiated Value and Entrepreneur Skill Set and Goal Setting and Productivity and User Experience and Value Proposition and Why Businesses Fail and Writing, Research and Experimentation )

It is the aim of many great manufacturing companies (starting with Motorola in the 1980s) to remove substantially all error from both their fabrication and business processes—their goal is to achieve six sigmas; that is, an error or defect rate that is equal to or less than: (1 – 99.99966%). Looked at another way, this [...]

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A Humorous, Yet Apt Description of What a Human Being Actually Is

( Jokes (General Audiences) and Marketing and Political Economy and Sell and Thought Experiment and Work/Life Balance )

Here is a description (by author Neal Stephenson from his novel, Cyrptonomicon, pp. 315/316) of what the corpus erectus of a human being is actually made of. It is one of my favorite, laugh-out-loud paragraphs from that WWII adventure story (which has a contemporary theme mixed in as well).
Next time you are in [...]

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2017 Celebration—National Boardwalk

( City Planning and Design Economics and Development Economics and Entrepreneurship and Future Vision and Technology and Political Economy and Urban Design )

A Proposal
Canada will celebrate its 150th Anniversary in 2017. As part of the celebration of that historic event, Canada could construct a National Boardwalk to link together the marvelous institutions that dot the shoreline of the Ottawa River such as the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Parliamentary Precinct, the Royal Canadian [...]

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Data Backup and Storage—Paper Based Storage the Answer?

( Data Storage and Future Vision and Technology and Gadgets and Gizmos and Intellectual Property and Political Economy and Thought Experiment and Writing, Research and Experimentation )

Bokodes from MIT Media Labs Might Help
Introduction
Many people think that the late 20th Century and perhaps all of the 21st Century will be known some day in the future as the big void—because this era will leave the fewest records of any humans to live on the planet in the last 10,000 years of (mostly) [...]

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Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship in the Not-For-Profit Sector

( 25 Steps to Business Success and Business Models and Not-For-Profits and Political Economy and Rules? There are no rules in entrepreneurship. and Value Proposition )

(Speech to the Canadian Society of Association Executives, Ottawa, Canada. January 2008.)
I have been teaching Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship, first at the Sprott School of Business and now at the Telfer School of Management for eight years. I have also helped over 72 businesses get started in that time of which 66 are still operating.
[...]

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Authenticity in Core Values

( 25 Steps to Business Success and Creativity and Value and Customer Service and Entrepreneur Skill Set and Political Economy and Product Management and Rules? There are no rules in entrepreneurship. and User Experience and Value Proposition and Why Businesses Fail )

I found Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ insights (which he shares with us on YouTube) about their recent acquisition of online shoe store Zappos.com to be highly valuable advice for new enterprises.
In fact, I found his five points to be more authentic and perhaps more important than the ten core values of the company he was [...]

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Go Green! Live Closer to Where You Work!

( Affordable Housing and City Planning and Design Economics and Environmentalism and Future Vision and Technology and Goal Setting and Home Building and Livable Cities and Neo-Urbanism and Political Economy and Productivity and Sprawl and Thought Experiment and Traffic and Transportation and Urban Design and Work/Life Balance )

A while ago, I was watching TV with my eldest daughter, Rachel, and we caught a Rick Mercer commercial called the “One Tonne Challenge”. Rachel turned to me after the commercial and asked: “How do I personally go about reducing my carbon footprint, Dad?”
That is one of the problems with well-meaning initiatives like this—they get [...]

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