Marc Sirkin's Mindnumbing Thoughts

I was pointed to a great little article by a colleague " The Challenge of Spreading A New Idea " on Fastcompany.com (they are still around?). I love this framework and applied it to what I'm working on at Microsoft... To spread a new idea, connect it to a familiar one, then give it a twist. Here are four examples. Success: Cloverfield Breakthrough: Blockbuster event movie shot in digital video Message: Godzilla meets Blair Witch Upshot: The film has grossed about $168 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. (Read More examples) Here's the CIO Network through this lens... Jury's Out: The CIO Network Breakthrough: An invitation only, private online network for CIOs to build peer relationships, talk about issues and get connected to Microsoft execs and product developers. Message: Unique opportunity to connect with like minded strategic CIOs and get behind the scenes at Microsoft. Upshot: Will CIOs actually participate in such a forum?

Just finished reading Wikinomics while on vacation in Vancouver and I wanted to dump out some book notes before I get too far into my next book and forget it all. This was a good book, and one that actually reinforced a lot of what I already think and know about mass collaboration. The case studies in books like these usually never disappoint, and this book was no exception with great examples in Goldcorp , Dell and Innocentive . Late in the book, the authors drop an incredible quote from Internet Pioneer Vint Cerf that really says it all. Paraphrased, "The 3 golden rules of the Internet are that nobody owns it, everybody users it and anyone can add services to it." It's obvious I know, but these rules mean fundamentally that the Internet is a totally new beast, something different than any preceding communications channel in history. Obvious I know, but still great stuff! The 4 principles that the authors (Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams) outline are openness, peer

I keep coming back to this idea about how people recover from career mistakes and how they move on. I recently blogged about Gerald Levin , who moved on from a pretty big error he made while with AOL and I obsessed over J.K. Rowlings Harvard commencement speech about failure . I guess it's on my mind lately! The latest installment of this story is a new article from Julie Wainwright, the former CEO from Pets.com. Yep, she was the sock puppet lady. It's fascinating to get an inside look at her thoughts and the aftermath which included a deep depression. I really love this article and the 5 mistakes. My favorite mistake is #3 "I stopped believing in myself." I can speeak from direct experience on this one and while fear was a part of my mistake, it isn't the entire story. I got caught in an odd circumstance at a past job and simply couldn't/wouldn't continue to believe in myself. The honesty and authenticty in this article is like a breath of fresh air to me