46 CEOConfidential
tipoffs Compiled by Salome Anyasodo
SECRETS OF LONGETIVITY
Bug off with lemongrass
Commercial insect repellents will save you from mosquito bites, but many may contain dangerous chemicals. Studies show that some ingredients can combine with other compounds, including prescription drugs in your system, to cause brain drain cell death and other neurotoxic reactions including seizures. A natural substance, lemongrass oil, also called Indian oil of verbena, is a better choice for keeping bugs at bay. Look for products in healthy food stores that use lemongrass oil to protect you from biting insects.
BOOKMARK
What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know Brian S. Cohen, John Kador Publisher:McGraw-Hill Education, 2013
As head of the New York Angels investment group, Brian Cohen has evaluated his share of start-ups. In “What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know,” Cohen puts the reader inside the mind of an angel evaluating a start-up. He enters a deal not just as an investor but as an adviser, mentor, and rich source of contacts. He wants to get to know company leaders intimately and share their dreams of success. The advice is both inspirational and educational, ranging from helping to develop the right outlook on seeking investors to how to conduct due diligence.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
$300,000,000 Estimated amount Dubia holding company is diversifying its portfolio by investing into Dangote Cement
2,296
Estimated rise in death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history, according to World Health Organisation(WHO)
Why you should always bet on dreamers, not experts Experts are generally terrible at predicting the future. If you are an expert rolling your eyes, I offer these quotes as evidence: “There is not the slightest possibility of such journeys.” -American astronomer F.R. Moulston on humans going to the moon (1935). “The [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” -U.S. Admiral William D. Leahy to President Truman (1945). “There is no reason for any individuals to have a computer in their home,” -Ken Olsen, founder of DEC computer company (1977). These bold (and completely wrong) predictions, as well as many, many similar examples, prove that while experts excel at incrementally improving technology, disruptive ideas come from non-experts. Why? The more one knows, the more barriers one sees and the quicker one is to spot why crazy ideas will not work. Instead, it is dreamers like the Wright Brothers, or in contemporary times, Elon Musk with his vision of taking humans to Mars, who make the great leaps in tech and business.
but personally I believe that there is a better way to approach the limitations of experts. Do not try to think outside the box--Instead, think in another box. Most people are scared about doing something in an industry with which they are not totally familiar. When one is starting a new business, one does not need to know much about it. A lot of the work is blocking and tackling--it is the same type of stuff no matter what sector one is in. If one does not know much about the field, you’re able to ask a set of questions that an expert would never ask, and that allows you a very different thought process and a fresh approach.
Thinking in another box But what if one is an expert or industry veteran rather than a newcomer full of outlandish dreams--is it hopeless that you could help create true innovation? There are lots of ideas about how to get around the problems with expertise and help experts think outside the box,
How to be a productive nonexpert The idea is to apply the common knowledge of one industry in another where it is completely novel. That can mean having the courage to start a business in a niche that is unfamiliar, but it does not have to
involve starting up in a whole new sector. The principle can be applied within existing teams too. People who are experts in one field often prefer not to talk to those with different expertise. The truth is that non-experts will ask very basic questions that will often make the experts think on a more fundamental and productive level than those with similar training. As a leader, one can put this ability of nonexperts to spur the creativity of experts to use. If one is hosting (or attending) a lunch, for instance, never sit all the experts in similar fields together. Instead, ensure experts sit near someone who knows little about their work.That person may ask, ‘why are you doing it this way?’ An expert’s first response might be, ‘Thats stupid.’ But the second response will be, ‘but wait, that’s not a bad idea!’ Experts have their uses Of course, experts are not useless-far from it. Execution demands expertise, but leadership does not-it demands dreams (the crazier the better). Why are wild dreams so valuable? My mother once told me, ‘Go do what you want because the sky is the limit. ‘As I later learned working in the space industry there is no such physical thing as the sky-it is just a product of our imagination. Which means that, in reality, our imagination and the scale of our dreams are really the only limiting factors. Do not be fooled by expertise and begin to see false boundaries or underestimating those with wild dreams. Do that and one might end up being remembered for a spectacularly wrong prediction like the ones at the beginning of this post! Wouldn’t you rather be famous for an incredible, world-changing innovation instead? If so, bet on dreamers, not experts.
CAPITALISM Assume the worst about people, get the worst What they tell you Adam Smith said famously: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ The market beautifully harnesses the energy of selfish individuals thinking only of themselves (and at most, their families) to produce social harmony. Communism failed
because it denied this human, or at least, largely altruistic. We have to assume the worst about people (that is, they only think about themselves), if we are to construct a durable economic system. What they dont’t tell you Self-interest is a most powerful trait in most human beings. However, it’s not our only drive. It is very often not even our
primary motivation. Indeed, if the world were full of the self-seeking individuals found in Economics textbooks, it would grind to a halt because we would be spending most of our times cheating, trying to catch the cheaters and punish the caught. The world works as it does only because people are not the totally self-seeking agents that free-market economy believes them to be.