Skip to main content

Have an Idea? Act on it!

Occasionally, I'm reminded of how things could have turned out. ("I cudda been a contendah!") If you know me in real life then you know that, while I'm not against taking risks, they are always calculated to the nth degree and weighed against the effort required to achieve whatever goal I am thinking about. And so I dream up a lot of ideas for products or services (some good and some not), realize that I would prefer to relax during my off-time, and then shelve the ideas.

Inevitably, at some point soon after shelving an idea I look at the entrepreneurs of the world or even some homegrown ones and wonder how they ended up being multi-millionaires when I am not. I even asked one how it happened. He said to me (paraphrased), "it's easy to take risks if you have nothing to lose." I suppose the problem is that I've always been mildly successful so I've never felt the need to reach for the proverbial brass ring.

Should I have? You be the judge:
  • In 1991, Jason Crawford and I were sent from IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center to IBM's Boca Raton facility to help out for a month on the OS/2 2.0 product launch. Jason, being frustrated that he couldn't check his work email, thought of the idea of logging in to his desktop remotely to do so. We both worked independently of each other, but both gave up because the speed (or lack thereof) of the networks made testing and debugging a nightmare.
  • In the late 1980's as I was finishing up my Computer Science degree, I thought of going after my Master's degree using an idiomatic programming language as my project and basis for my thesis. Drag and drop icons here and there on a white slate, draw some connections to represent program flow and branch logic, and anyone can write a computer program.
Do these sound familiar? They should. The first example is identical to pcAnywhere which was hugely popular during its heyday in the late 90's and generated a lot of money for Symantec. The second example is akin to HP's OpsWare, BMC's RealOps (now Atrium Orchestrator), or CA's Process Automation Manager products. OpWare was acquired by HP in 2007 for USD$1.6B in cash; I don't have figures for the other two products but I don't think that it matters after you've read one point six billion dollars.

Where would I be financially if I had acted? Risk is not without its rewards as the OpsWare payout demonstrates quite nicely. Do you have an idea? Let me quote Rudyard Kiping:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges -- Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

"The Ranges" can be anything that is blocking you from achieving your goals or desires. Don't let them get in your way or, worse, become something they aren't. We commonly hear this as "making a mountain out of a molehill," or put another way "it's only a problem if you let it become a problem."

Popular posts from this blog

So What is this IPaaS Stuff, Anyway?

 In my last post , I discussed how no-code/low-code platforms fulfill rapid development of business applications - addressing the needs of the Citizen Developer (a Gartner term  first used around 2009).  I also commented on how this specific objective limits their ability to provide true integration capabilities, which require the flexibility to adapt to the myriad variations of infrastructure.  This is a concern because companies often have acquired legacy systems via M&A activity while simultaneously investing in new technology solutions, resulting in a mishmash of systems with multiple ways of accessing them. In this post, I'd like to examine how the needs of the latter group are met by describing some key capabilities that are "must-haves" for any company looking to execute on a digital transformation strategy.  In order to do this, let's define who the target user base is for such a technology platform. Disclaimer:   I work for MuleSoft (a division...
Read more

It's Easier to Fail at DevOps than it is to Succeed

Slippery when wet Since the term DevOps was coined in Belgium back in 2009, it is impossible to avoid the term whether in discussions with colleagues or in professional trade magazines.  And during the years while this movement has gained momentum, many things have been written to describe what elements of a DevOps strategy are required for it to be successful. Yet in spite of this, there is an interesting data point worth noting: not many organizations feel there is a need for DevOps.  In a Gartner report entitled DevOps Adoption Survey Results (published in September 2015),  40%  of respondents said they had no plans to implement DevOps and 31% of respondents said they hadn't implemented it but planned to start in the 12 months after the survey was conducted. That left only 29% who had implemented DevOps in a pilot project or in production systems, which isn't a lot. "Maybe it's because there truly isn't a need for DevOps," you say.  While t...
Read more

COSMIC Insights

Consider the following scenario:  you're a mid-level manager and find out that a layoff is coming.  You're about too lose one of your best direct reports, but you have no ability to influence the decision to lay them off. Oy! My head hurts! What do you do? Oftentimes, I find that people - when presented with situations where they feel compelled to act but have no ability to change the outcome - enter a state of mental lethargy.  They don't know exactly what it is they should do but, "gosh darnit!", something has  to be done.  When they realize how helpless they actually are, they start lamenting about the situation, how they are backed into a corner, etc. In a very real sense, they go through the five stages of grief . I'd like to offer the following alternative way of approaching these and other situations:  I call it the COSMIC method, not only because it sounds cool but also because I like science fiction (" Lisan al Gaib! "). COSMIC is an acronym...
Read more