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There are only two ways to catch up a “market leader”:

1. the leader makes very bad decisions that eventually comes back to haunt him and leaves him vulnerable.

or

2. you buy a startup or small company that has the innovation, but lacks the resources, giving you a better possibility of catching up.

Either is very hard, just look at Microsoft. Vista really sucked, but still they are the “market leader” operating systems. Or see at Google, they bought Android and see where they are today, still on the hunt for iPhone and trying to be the dominant mobile platform.

So, what to do? Stop playing the game of others and play your own. The catch game is like gambling in a Vegas casino, you will win enough to continue betting, but will never win against the house or break even. Do something different, which makes you the leader since you are the first to come up with it.

For example, Asus and the netbooks (eventually everybody was able to catch up). More interesting, instead of trying to play catch-up, Apple did something different, the iPad, which is a device that is between the tablet, eBook reader and netbook.

Another example is the Puma Phone, just freaking cool stuff.

At the end of the day is like convincing people to not follow the conventional patch and follow, therefore making you the leader.

On the first week of march, I started to listen to a recompilation of Antonio Vivaldi’s work on Spotify. My curiosity for Vivaldi was triggered when Google changed their logo to commemorate his birth date (on the 4th of March). I didn’t remember much about him so, I thought it could be interesting.

While enjoying the music and working I suddenly felt goose pumps when I started to listen to Winter 1st Movement of The Four Seasons.

Maybe is because I’m a big fan of the violin and maybe is why I felt how I felt. When I saw which piece was, I decided to go through the other four season pieces. I started from spring to winter, while I was trying to map my memories of the seasons. At this moment I had understood the four seasons. Before I had the knowledge about them. I had read what they represent the four seasons of a year: what people do and climatic events during each season. Each piece reflects this through the melody, tempo and a rhythm.

Because, I had experience them more than once, so they stuck to me, which lead to understanding them. To know is different from understand, therefore once we feel it and experience that feeling more than once, we will understand.

Since, I lived most of my life in Honduras where there is no clear manifestations of the the four seasons, I did not understand them. Until now, that I’m in my third winter in Sweden, I had the experience them, therefore I understand why Vivaldi’s four season sound as they do.

You can know that being a father is difficult, however until you experience it you will understand it.

You heard countless times and read even more, how hard is to have a business, but until you run your own, you will understand.

You might know or have an idea of what your customers want, however until you are your customer, you will understand them. Why do you think (37 signals’ book), “Getting Real”, recommends that you solve your own problems and therefore you will have great web applications? Because, you will become the customer, feel the pain and there understand what it is really needed. However this is sometimes difficult to do. Sometimes we just need to solve other people problems. That is why, in addition, developers that build the web applications should receive the tech support emails. Not as a punishment for writing buggy software, but because they will never be the customer. So, they need (somehow) feel the pain of the customer. That way they will understand what it is really needed.

Once we feel something we will understand it, other than that is knowledge. just theory.

This mismatch in science and business is the idea that is worth spreading, so enjoy this TED talk by Dan Pink. Also, at the end of the post, you will find the written wrap-up of the presentation.

(Video via wi-fi-de-do)

Here is the Wrap-up of the presentation:

The new OS to run our business revolves around three elements:

• Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives.
• Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters.
• Purpose: Purpose, the yearning to what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

• One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are a natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances.
• Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity.
• Three: the secret to high performance, isn’t rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.

Resources from the presentation:

Here is a link to the Duncker’s Candle Problem.

Article by Business Week on the ROWE (or Results-Only Work Environment)

I get a call around 6:00 pm on Friday. I’m at work and is a friend, he wanted to know if I’m interested in going with him to a Romanian Rock Concert. He had a extra ticket (so for me is for free), even if I felt tiered and had just 2 hours to get there, I thought: “why not”.

My friend, called me twice to see where I was, he wanted me to be there on time. I found it odd, since its a rock concert, who cares if I’m late, there is always a opening band. When I got there quarter past 8 pm, I see him dressed nicely, making a big fuss of not making any noise and that they had started. At this point I’m lost, thinking “what is the deal here?”. Then we enter the balcony, and while taking a glimpse at the stage and the people in their seats (of the Sodra Teatern in Stockholm) : I see four persons on stage, three with Violins and one with a Cello. I had misunderstood, it was a Romanian Quartet Concert, not Romanian Rock Concert.

Let me tell you, that the experience was mind blowing. First my favorite instrument to listen too, is the violin. In addition, I recently got the album of Yo Yo Ma’s playing Bach Suites (1 to 6) on the Cello. Finally, it was interpretation of folk music, occasionally adding some visual elements on the screen. It was great stuff, I couldn’t ask for more.

All this got me to thinking, that be best experiences come when you don’t have any expectations. In my case, I didn’t expect nothing, I didn’t have any time to even get the wrong expectations ( me thinking it was a Rock Concert). And there I was delighted, thankful and with a experience to remember.

We will always have expectations of things to come or people that we will meet. We have expectations when you take a trip, go abroad to study, go to watch a movie movies, buy a new laptop or when we go for a date. We know something is coming, we can’t resist the uncertainty of not knowing nothing, so we start to research and form ideas on the head of what the experience will be (comparing to previous ones). In some cases we might live experience before the event has happened.

Expectations are like a ball with holes. When we start to have them, the ball starts to form, however it can NOT be completed because to be filled, we have to live the event or use the product we bought. So, there we are with a ball with holes, waiting for them to be filled when we reach that moment. Sometimes we get what we expected, sometimes they exceeded or all wholes are not filled, so we need more time. In other occasion we are disappointed . Our disappointments come when we are presented with something different, that doesn’t meet or fit the ball we created. It actually could be because it sucked, however (especially with people and places) we forget to see the big picture or form a new ball, which permits us to have a different experience.

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Expectations are part of our life and are difficult not to have them. However managing expectations is key aspect, not just in how we experience life but in business and management. Everybody has expectations of the products we launch, the service we provide or how our employees perform. Sometimes those expectations are linked to money, meaning that for X amount of money we EXPECT a return equivalent to X. And then is when things get more complicated, because how do you measure a return, when expectations may blur the way you see things.

As a consumer or a producer, as a manager or a employee, most of the time we don’t have the option of having no expectations, instead we have to manage them and align them in a way that everybody understand what is coming and what is not. However in life that is another story as The Ink Spots say in one of their songs: “The best things in life are free”. Should I expect everything that is free to be the best?