The Knowledge Funnel is a concept introduced by Roger Martin in Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (2009). The book is excellent and worth a read. There are mysteries at the top of the funnel. Mysteries are the unknown. They’re the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. It’s knowledge that the organization doesn’t have. In the centre of the funnel, you have heuristics. These are rules of thumb. They aren’t quite always precise, and aren’t always quite reliable. Heuristics are just predictive enough to be useful. It’s knowledge that is known to the firm. At the bottom of the funnel you have algorithms. This is knowledge that is standardized and optimized enough to be run[…]
Category: Business
On the walk in, I thought of Livy, of networks, and of hierarchies. I thought of Samuel Doe, the Liberian that brought an end to the brutal True Whig Party and brought in his own brutal regime, and of Emperor Bokassa, who once spent a third of his nations budget on his coronation. They each grew up physically, yet never had a chance to develop fully as whole people. And because they were leaders, the societies they led never got the chance to develop either. Are systems really that sensitive to leadership? Can it really be that institutions are that sensitive to the development of their leaders? The thought rocked me for a few minutes, and then subsided into an[…]
Suppose the following scenario: Series A or B; A data science firm (narrow machine intelligence, applied machine intelligence, general machine intelligence, predictive or prescriptive analytics, software or hardware); Technical CEO / Co-Founder; Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) just hired; What might the CEO-CMO relationship look like? The relationship could be great. If there’s one stereotype about data science CEO’s, it’s that they like incentives to be aligned. The CMO would likely be brought on to focus on growth. If revenue grows, valuation grows, and collective comp would grow. There might be points of friction. From the CMO’s Perspective: Why is the CEO constantly at me about metrics all the time? Why is the CEO always on about non-working dollars? (Why don’t[…]
This is post is the fifth in a five part series on Capital, and You. Previously, I defined capital as potential power, and argued that the primary optimization objective of the venture capitalist is to acquire more capital. Further, the board is the embodiment of the Corporation, it is made up of people who represent the Venture Capitalist, the Founder(s), other shareholders, and by proxy, Capital, and it is obligated to behave in a manner that increases capital accumulation. If the Board and the Founder are aligned in the pursuit of increasing capital, great capital may be accumulated. If they are not, doom. This fifth and final post expands on the relationship between Capital and the Citizen. Should citizens of[…]
This is post is the fourth in a five part series on Capital, and You. Previously, I defined capital as potential power, and argued that the primary optimization objective of the venture capitalist is to acquire more capital. Further, the board is the embodiment of the Corporation, it is made up of people who represent the Venture Capitalist, the Founder(s), other shareholders, and by proxy, Capital, and it is obligated to behave in a manner that increases capital accumulation. This fourth post expands on the relationship between the Board and the Founder. Noam Wasserman, in his book, The Founder’s Dilemmas, makes the case that a Founder has one of two optimization objectives: to be a king or to be rich.[…]
This is post is the third in a five part series on Capital, and You. Previously, I defined capital as potential power, and argued that the primary optimization objective of the venture capitalist is to acquire more capital. This third post explains the relationship between the Board and the Venture Capitalist. The Board is the embodiment of the corporation. Put a bit more strongly, the board is the corporation. It’s the Board that discharges the power of capital. It exercises oversight. It is the body that all the employees are accountable to. It can fire anybody it wants – including the CEO. It can hire anybody it wants, including the CEO. They approve or disallow compensation plans. They approve or[…]
This is post is the second in a five part series on Capital, and You. Previously, I defined capital as potential power. This second post attempts to explains the relationship between Capital and the Venture Capitalist. Capital and The Venture Capitalist The Venture Capitalist has one primary optimization objective and a handful of secondary, often self-imposed, constraints. The primary optimization objective of the Venture Capitalist to accumulate more capital. They may self-impose a constraint, like only accumulating capital in the financial services sector, or only by working with women entrepreneurs or by some other criteria. But their primary objective is accumulate more capital. Venture Capitalists engage in a set of activities in the quest to accumulate more capital. If a[…]
This is post is the first in a five part series on Capital, and You.It’s written for people who turn data into product and who may have some questions about why they’re seeing what they’re seeing and why they’re feeling what they’re feeling at a startup. The first post explains what is Capital. The second post attempts to explains the relationship between Capital and the Venture Capitalist. The third post explains the relationship between the Board and the Venture Capitalist. The fourth post expands the relationship between the Board and the Founder. And fifth post expands on the relationship between Capital and the Citizen. Capital And You: What Is Capital Capital is potential power. In order for capital to make[…]
Previously, I asked what kind of leader you wanted to be. In it, I struggled with the question of the tradeoffs of misrepresenting ground truth. Suppose you work at the WWE and you need to make a business decision. Somebody literally believes that it’s all real. You need to make a business decision about a contract renewal. What kind of harm are you doing to them, and to yourself, in going along with their belief, something that you know yourself not to be true? Absurd? Yes. Beliefs are absurd things. Later that month, I was asked why I was so sure that WWE wasn’t real? Why was my version of ground truth any more legitimate than somebody else’s ground truth?[…]
What causes conversion? Demand. It’s a simple answer and worthy of unpacking. You could thank Claude C. Hopkins for the simple answer. Hopkins wrote two books towards the end of his life – Scientific Advertising and My Life In Advertising. He seemed to regret his experiences as an agency president, and left some direct advice on how master marketers should think of their choices. In his last decade of life, Hopkins marketed his marketing expertise. Instead of continuing to take on all the risk of marketing product on behalf of somebody else (and maybe getting paid if the product sold), he set up a system where products would be pitched to him. If the product was good, he’d take a[…]