The Art of Innovation – Guy Kawasaki
The 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo is nearing, and I’ve still got unpublished notes from the 2007 conference! In a way, its a good thing – too much was published during conference time, its hard to keep track. Here comes my notes from a superb keynote by Guy Kawasaki, titled The Art of Innovation, presented at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2007.
… on Apple
– “Back then, sexual harassment was a good thing”
– Apple allowed first class travel as long as you worked for Steve back in the day :-)
… on being a/pitching to a VC
A good test for entrepreneurs is: “Are you using MySQL”. Guy’s a VC, he likes you to use cheap, highly available tools.
Make meaning – don’t go to a VC and say you want to make money. It means you’ve attracted the wrong kind of person. Besides, making money, is obvious.
Make mantra – Mission statements are too long, they’re not memorable, they’re useless.
“If you ever hear MySQL is having an offsite at the Ritz Half Moon Bay, that is when you need to abandon the platform.” First day is team building exercises, to build cross-functional teams. Learn communication and trust. Second day is in a smaller room, each will then contribute to the creation of the mission statement.
Jump to the next curve – do things 10x better. Make your parameters correct.
Niche thyself – provide a unique product or service and value to the customer
Follow the 10/20/30 rule – his slide talk.
“Life is a pitch”
“Don’t let the bozos grind you down.”
(Especially the successful ones. Because they are less likely to appreciate or know what the next curve is going to be like)
Technorati Tags: mysql, mysqlconf, mysqlconf07, guy kawasaki, the art of innovation
That was really an exceptionally good presentation by guy kawasaki.
Very practical and inspiring stuff. I would recomend it to anyone