Ideas Archives - Page 2 of 30

What to teach your kids (& yourself) – My TED talk

Posted on November 22, 2018November 23, 2018 by Steve Sammartino

The most common question I’m asked in my work is this: “What do you teach your kids? How do you prepare them for an unknown future?” It really is the question. It’s also the topic of a TED talk I did this year in Melbourne.

In the talk I tell the story of how society shapes children, and systematically removes their entrepreneurial spirit – something all humans are born with.

In a world where our future is super unknown – there are some things we do know: We’ll need to be economically independent, manage our own careers, constantly upgrade our skills and embrace inevitable technologies like robotics. You will need to Outgrow Your Job – the title of the talk.

Rather than writing about it – please invest the time to watch it here. It’s a 14 minute video which will change how you see the world. And it might give some cool ideas on how to make your kids future proof.

Oh, and remember to share it with someone whose future you care about!

thanks, Steve.

What your garage & spare room can teach you about the future

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

There’s a pretty good chance your spare room and garage is full of yesterday. The equipment, events, life stages, projects and stuff, but mostly ideas of what mattered then. Unless you clean it out (and I know you’ve been planing too for some time) it will be pretty hard to fit anything else in there. In fact, you might have been planning to clean it out to make space for that new project…. some clean floor space to get that idea underway…. some space to let the new come into.

Garage full of junk

Our brains are like that too. They need a spring clean. I’ll go even further and say we need to unlearn some of our outdated ideas from our past. Make room for the new truths of the world we are about to enter. The future will arrive regardless, best we make room for it mentally.

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Entrepreneurs, it's ok to copy

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

DNA

There’s a tension in our connected world about being the originator. Apparently those who invented it first always win. It is said that the best entrepreneurs are those who change things. It turns out though, those that win reinterpret that which is already here.

Here are a few examples of things that weren’t invented by who you think:

Some break dancing way before it ever appeared in the Bronx.

A graphical user interface & mouse way before Apple.

The first automobile from China in 1672, way before Carl and Henry.

So the next time you get accused of copying someone, just tell them they copied their DNA from their parents. They copied their language from their community and they should also start copying their ideas from the giants who came before them. We first must copy before we can create. Go forth and copy.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

It's already been done, or has it?

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

As soon as we think of an amazing startup idea the first thing we often do is trawl the internet to see if someone has already built the app, the service ,the hardware device. We want to know if it has already been done. Oft times, we are deflated to find out it has been. But if we have to search, has it really been done? If no one knows about a concept in market it raises a lot of interesting questions:

Did they execute well against the idea?

Is their product good, but the distribution poor?

If the distribution is poor, does that mean the product is actually bad?

If the distribution is poor, does that mean it’s not solving a real problem?

If the distribution and product are both good, are the switching costs too high?

Did the team have the right funding?

If they had the funding is the timing too soon – is the market ready?

The truth is we’ll never be able to answer these and other questions. And so it brings us back to the very first moment of inspiration. We thought it was a great concept and maybe that is enough. We know most things change their shape in the development process anyway. Maybe we should build it regardless of what is out there. Build our version of how things could be. Remembering of course that most fortunes are made with old ideas done better. Property is the oldest business in the world and still to this day creates the most millionaires. Even Youtube, a new kinda business, arrived when there were already over 400 video sharing websites (that we know of).

It’s another reminder our world is big on ideas and small on execution.

NEW BOOK – THE GREAT FRAGMENTATION – ORDER HERE!

The truth about the home town

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

There is a phrase which comes from a best selling book*

I tell all of you with certainty, a prophet is not accepted in his hometown.

The economics of this statement are simple. If we want to get paid for you knowledge & skill, then we ought travel to a location where we are the unknown quantity.

*No, I haven’t read the book in question.

the end of Monday

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

I’m pretty convinced that a sign of us living a good life is when all days seem to be created equally. When a Friday is equal to a Tuesday is equal to a Sunday is equal to a Monday. Entrepreneurship is about a lot of things; achieving something, recognition or maybe even wealth accumulation. But surely it’s about what the actual days feels like. Does it feel good in itself, or is it only serving those achievement type things mentioned above? When generating our next startup idea maybe we need to add another criterion to the expected market demand and business model considerations:

Would we be happy spending the 300 Mondays doing this?

If the answer to this is yes, then maybe the other factors don’t matter as much as we thought.

Forging ahead

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

When we are forging our own path in life and in business, doubt is the key enemy. It’s even bigger than fear. The reason it is a serious enemy is because doubt always happens before fear does. So when we sense self doubt, we need to fight it and forge ahead, or fear might just take hold. We must ensure we don’t stop what we are doing. We need to keep writing, keep coding, keep building, keep creating and just keep doing whatever it is we ought be doing.

Even when we are not sure of the next steps. Even when we can’t see where we are going – we must continue to move ahead. It’s a bit like walking in the fog – the path only reveals itself if we continue walking. If we instead stand still, nothing is revealed