Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
Yesterday was the Dots conference, part of the Brighton Digital Festival. I was there to do a little bit on Unthinkable but mostly just to sit and enjoy the conferences with the 200 or so other attendees. In terms of content, this was the conference's difficult second album, after a blinding debut last year including Russell… Continue reading One day, at a time
Did I mention I was speaking at Dots in Brighton? Neil (who is curating) has a look at the whole line up here. Even better, I can offer a few time-limited reduced price tickets if you are one of the first five to use the discount code 'Tom' when booking online. See you you there for… Continue reading Joining the dots
We constantly hear about how innovative musicians have become. The labels are wankers, dinosaurs, out of touch, unable to adapt their business model: their days are numbered. Well now it seems that the artists are wankers too. In this article from HBR, we find that the very darlings of the MySpace revolution, Linkin Park - a… Continue reading Linkened In
I'll be talking at the brilliant Brilliant Noise Dots conference in September. Tickets are available here. There are still some early bird tickets available if you're quick.
Reading Amanda's Dear John letter to Apple, expressing her disappointment over the Apple Watch, reminds me of an interesting dynamic of product launches. Not much more complex than the proverb 'success has many fathers, failure is an orphan', we know that the sound of a winning product is a constant stream of jubilant announcements and… Continue reading The physics of failure
When the whole web industry started out, it most closely resembled the wild west. Companies would end up with fifty different websites, as people throughout the organisation were all commissioning away. That didn't last for long. Eventually companies realised they were wasting money on a confusing mess. They decided they'd have one website, with everything… Continue reading MVP and the microsite
We all spend a lot of time in brainstorms, imagining the future. Often the excessively audacious ideas are shelved. Sometimes they’re kept but labelled “vision”. And then, every so often, one of those weird or audacious ideas will materialize. Whether that’s because you did it yourself, or someone else did it, it’s a very strange… Continue reading Picture perfect
Approximately 3 1/2 billion years ago, I studied Philosophy and Mathematics at Bristol University. My Logic Professor was the incredible Dr Mayberry. My abiding memory of him was a particular esoteric tutorial during which he explained the different possible meanings for the phrase 'every nice girl loves a sailor'. Is it: "For each nice girl, For each… Continue reading The Logic of corporate acquisitions
Buffet's annual letter to shareholders is famously both candid and amusing, with a particular brand of humility: "here are all the dumb things I did on my way to being a multi-billionaire". Obviously the force behind Berkshire Hathaway knows a few things about investing. This year Bill Gates particularly highlighted the section from page 23… Continue reading Decisions decisions
Fluxx will be holding a book launch for Unthinkable on 25 March at the Ice Tank in central London. More details about the evening here. If you'd like to come along and discuss the book, drop me a line.
Leading product 