We have, in the past, referred to KOYONO as a virtual company. From now on we will want to refer to our structure as Bedouin. We don’t have a central office where all our employees drive every morning. We are a collection of muiti-project entrepreneurs using an IP infrastructure to deliver real products to people all over the world. A recent and brilliant blog post by Greg Olsen, CTO of Coghead titled Going Bedouin | Coghead lays out a clear and concise vision of how we at KOYONO believe the future of companies and innovation look. Greg talks primarily about software companies, but for us, we think the same principles apply to most industries. Any one day, we have over 200 people doing KOYONO work. Other days we might have just a handful. You don’t need to construct a huge infrastructure to accomplish something. The infrastructure is already all around you if you look.
When I saw this on CNN today I thought about how little I know regarding the Middle East. We hear a lot on the media about what is going (e.g. Sunnis vs. Shi’as) and it just registers with me as two groups that don’t get along. As busy as we all are, we do not always take time to ask why or why not? Thank goodness for Wikipedia (yes cursory, but free and for the most part unbiased); it’s so awesome to be able to quickly and productively gain context and information. I have been doing it from my BlackBerry Pearl and using downtime to gain knowledge. I am also reading Tom Friedman’s “From Beruit to Jerusalem” – fascinating to say the least. A must read for those of you who have read the post this far.
Here is a start. Wiki away!
Iraq:
Iraq
Demographics of Iraq
Religions:
Demographics of Islam
Sunni Islam
Shi’a Islam
Map of Shi’as
Making all of these separatist elements in Iraq work in a unified manner will take a lot of work. Even Ghandi was not able to do it in India; that’s why Pakistan was created as a haven for Muslims (mostly Sunni I suppose) after the British left.
Also, understanding the demographics of Sunnis and Shi’as in the region really tells a story in and of itself (i.e. Iran is Shi’a but Syria and other more developed Arab countries are Sunni). Now look at the map of Iraq Demographics – very interesting. Which Islamic denomination was in control of Iraq? How does Lebanon fit in the picture; what Islamic denomination is Hezzbolah? Is Iraq destined to be another Lebanon? Are we arrogant and/or ignorant?
Yes, I know many of my friends would call me a bit of a whack job for posting this, but what they heck; I enjoy the paranormal and the scientifically inexplicable because I am a geek!
This is really fun stuff! The Mysterious Universe show’s creator, Benjamin Grundy, does a very professional job pulling this podcast together with spectacular sound quality and great ambient background mixes. This is not to mention really interesting stories ranging from ancient phenomenon, ghosts, the Big Bang (quantum physics), and UFOs (always involving the US DOD in some way) to Big Foot. He keeps a well balanced position (as far as the paranormal is concerned) and seems to do a reasonable amount of research to qualify his stories story.
If you are a curious person, open to something a little bit out of the mainstream, check out this podcast. At a minimum, it’s terribly refreshing to here news not covering war, corporate scandals and politics.
Got a long trip planned, download a few podcasts from the following for a mix of tech, science, creativity, the future and spirituality:
Mysterious Universe
KCRW’s Left, Right & Center
PodTech.net
TedTalks
The Accidental Creative
??????????
All available on iTunes.
It is uncertain what the future will bare, and some people don’t get it, but Social Networking seems all the buzz these days.
Whatever your opinion, it sure does have the attention of millions of people, VCs and search engine companies (i.e. Google) alike, so it will most likely have a future or lead to something even bigger. Here is an article from the Financial Times on Google being ‘among suitors pursuing YouTube.’ Reportedly they are offering $1.5bn to $1.6bn. This is facinating to say the least!
This is a business model with tens of millions of people (understated) providing constant content to Social Networks (e.g. MySpace, Flickr, Digg) on the web. The sheer volume of participants and global virality of the web suggests that this is a very real phenomenon. Will it become a perpetual “reality tv” like program open to the planet, with interactive qualities rather than just pushing content? Is this the permanent digital archiving of our lives that will be a lasting memory of what we did, liked and thought about and will somehow be repurposed? Only time will tell. For now, it has a critical mass of participants, financiers and new products and will be around for at least 2 years in its current form.
Just think what the obituaries might be like in 60 years?
“Bob was a pioneer in internet social networking anthropology with breakthrough research in understanding the evolution of man’s and woman’s cerebral need to be in the matrix. He is survived by his wife, two dogs and bookmarks on Digg and del.icio.us…”
LOL
Here is a podcast by Tom Mulready from CoolCleveland interviewing Guy Kawasaki about The Art of the Start”. There are many points I love about it. In particular, Guy suggests that regions should focus less on creating a $100 million venture fund and more on the basics – starting world class engineering schools. While I agree that engineering schools are vital for spawning disruptive technological business models (e.g. Google), there are several other Blue Ocean opportunities out there for would be entrepreneurs to get going on.
One example are laundromats in Italy. They are not conveniently available to the masses and people don’t start businesses (take risk) there like in America because failure is a life long social “black mark.” Can an entrepreneur be born or made; I don’t really know? Certainly, you have to have more than engineering skills to want to take risk in the face of being a social outcast. To this point, a good friend’s friend (bored American who wanted to live in in Europe) set up 10 laundromats in Italy and is now a millionaire (no engineering degree required)! An “A” grade does not require chutzpah and (stubborn) persistence to turn a vision into reality, as evidenced in the real world of business.
In addition to engineering schools, I have been tinkering with the idea of putting more emphasis on sending B-/C+ college students around the world to “make the grade” in a more non-traditional sense. The main point being that, since these types have a tendency to become entrepreneurs anyway, it might be a good idea to get them out of a rigid curriculum centered environment and challenged in different ways (i.e. surviving in a non-english speaking world). Just give them an automatic “C” and immerse them in something completely foreign. Make sure they obey the law, blog everyday (observe), and write a simple five page business plan to get going on. When they complete the program, give a few that are unproven, curious, and passionate their full tuition back to see if they can start a business! College students can beg, borrow and deal on practically nothing and are not prone to common sense around which corporate america tends to force people to conform (stifling creativity and innovation). Why not start with a group of 20, and see what happens…
“Yeah, but they might start an enterprise in another country that does not directly benefit the region?”
True in the short term. On the other hand, it’s about doing something reasonably different (and relatively low risk and low cost) to possibly produce a radically different result. If such a program does succeed, there can be many ways to localize it.
