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Recently finished Peter Thiel's Zero to One . Found it very useful for examples of massive US-centric growth companies, but not very useful for business growth in Africa.  However, it did highlight for me the problem I've been facing with Lateral Labs - there is a really difficult area in between Day 1 of a Sole Proprietorship and Day X of a Limited Company with investors. That is, growing a company to a level where it can consistently sustain itself (people and everything else) as well as turn a profit.  Not all Sole Proprietorships make money, but even fewer make enough money to stop relying on the founder.

Are habit-formulation and disruption mutually exclusive? I read a lot about how successful people (Pending: Definition of "success") attribute much of their success to well-formulated habits; things they do day in, day out that are fixed in a schedule bound by time. Yet, I also read about unconventional activities that lead to changes in the way our world works that were previously unprecedented. So, in a world where "habit" implies consistency and "disruption" breaks it, what's a 3-year old to choose?

I have generally considered any non-profit organization I come across as being part of the public sector. However, if I register a non-profit, and use my own capital to run things, regardless of the work that I am doing, is the organization still part of the public sector? What if we did consider the work I was doing; would my organization be classified differently if I was running a neighborhood charity to fix neighborhood walls? Should the public-private classification be based on start-up funds, or content, or both, or something else?

Two recent observations: First, it makes sense to me that a manager should hire/work with staff that have better skills than the manager him/herself. Otherwise, if the manager was better-skilled, then managing would be an unproductive use of time (as opposed to operating). Second, the hiring tradition in TZ seems to cultivate an opposite scenario, one in which managers are often better-skilled than their supervisees. Getting things done, therefore, is commonly a function of the manager's direct input in operations. 

I return, about 6 months later. No, I didn't forget about my blog, nor the people that may (read: may never) read it. Oh no. What I may have forgotten is how valuable an activity blogging can be.  Where I work now , time is of the essence. Here's an Edward Said nightmare: We are trying to sell to people who have very little to spend; they need to be in many places at once, and are not as mobile as society may think they are. They are sensitive to change, but are demanding about their aspirations. So when it comes to our products, services and sales routes, we are constantly moving, shifting, trying.  That leaves me with little time to think and do the things I write about here.  I used to think this situation was a binary choice and, therefore, a problem. However, I have come to think of the "binary" in a different way: It isn't about time; it's about ideas.  A friend once told me that I would either spend the rest of my life building someone...

Corporate Social Responsibility seems like the reinvented wheel of economic activity itself. That is, products and services ought to be useful to peoples' lives, otherwise one would wonder why they last the sight of day. (OK, I know there are reasons why some products proliferate even though they diminish life's value, but that discussion is for another post). Following this, CSR should be thought of as business as usual. Your primary product or service should be socially responsible. CSR should not be an afterthought, or charity. 

The thing about contingencies (in budgeting, planning, etc.) is that you cannot anticipate them. Likewise, you cannot anticipate their value (positive or negative). Yet, they are everywhere. Some markets have more pervasive contingencies than others. In an atmosphere where contingencies - such as delayed dues, or corruption - are inevitable, what kind of plan or strategy works?

Human development is not just about what people need , but what you can do for them. 

Thanks to a reading club that happens once a week in Khane (thanks SL!), I've been getting into Marshall Hodgon's The Venture of Islam   (Book 1). The section titled "Muhammad's Challenge 570-624" has made me think about history unlike I did back at the IIS. Particularly, one question: In any instance when a new way of transacting goods and services was introduced, was force necessary? We could discuss market entry , but that would imply an assumption that there is a market in which people transact based on known and accepted methods. Today that means that cash and credit can buy you a good or a service. Barter could also do, but you may have to try extra hard. But that assumption did not exist in 570 AD. Barter was a viable option, and so were other forms of currency which came from different lands. So in order for Muhammad to introduce a way of being - including a way of doing business that was based on a philosophy of why business should be d...

Today I observed a discussed on Facebook prompted by one of my friends on whether or not books should be delivered to Tanzanians' doorsteps. On one hand, my friend and his supporters (myself included) contended that not all books can be delivered to one's doorstep given scarcity, and following this logic, the people who will come to view a book at a store in person are most deserving of the purchase. On the other hand, people argued that we live in an age where home delivery is a premium service, and only those service providers who will deliver will survive. The rest, those who demand a customer to come to them, will lose out in the long run. OK, so let's assume that every product and service was brought home to you. In this state of affairs, you need to be prepared to make wise choices, otherwise one of two things will happen, assuming that our need for stuff is never satiated: Either you will run out of money and into debt, or you will have too much shit lying aro...

There's a bunch of works on investing that I've spent minimal time and attention on. But today I clicked on a post referred by a friend , and found some simple but fantastic words from Li Ka-Shing (who I only found out about through this post). Here is an extract: " Life can be designed. Career can be planned. Happiness can be prepared. You should start planning now. When you are poor, spend less time at home and more time outside. When you are rich, stay at home more and less outside. This is the art of living. When you are poor, spend money on others. When you’re rich, spend money on yourself. Many people are doing the opposite. " This puts a lot in perspective for me, compared to the other works I've seen. Thanks, LKS and NM!

To volunteer is to step outside the belief that immediate material returns on investment are the only reason to work. It is to believe in something larger than oneself, in a different kind of return to a different kind of investment. Contrary to popular discussion, volunteering is indeed an investment. (Thanks Femima HIP!)

Two more Economist articles. This one suggests that academic journals are likely to lock down their clients' sharing tendencies (including asking their clients' to remove published content from their own websites). One journal, Elsevier, has already started asking people to take stuff that belongs to their journal down. I appreciated this quote from Thomas Hickerson, chief librarian at the University of Calgary: “Requesting such removals…seems at odds with the nature of an academic enterprise, in which the sharing of research information is an essential element.” Another article discusses the skew of research itself; that it is mostly based on the US, where there is an abundance of data available. It's a sad situation for the world's poor, who ironically need the implementation of all the cool things that academia finds out: "The world’s poorest countries are effectively ignored by the profession. From 1985 to 2005 Burundi was the subject of just four ...

Do you ever get the feeling that disposable cash in your hand is more risky than buying something that will last long? Some economists are suggesting that reasoning may be sound (original paper here ). Since cows will earn the cow herder money through milk, dung and eventually meat, it's no surprise they are seen as assets. But what makes the above articles special is that this is continued even though cows have negative returns for the herders after accounting for the cost of labor in herding, caring and maintaining the space of the cow. So why do they continue buying cows? Well, as the Economist article also suggests, it's because immediate desires outweigh the prospect of future benefits. It seems  as though the cow will earn the herder good money later, so they put in the labor to buy, herd, care and maintain the cow. Cow-caring can become easier, or the cost of cow-caring can be reduced, but the human/emotional pull of immediete desires will remain. So perhaps ...

Niel to Vincent ( Heat , 1995): A guy told me one time, "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner."

Historically, we have settled with our tastes. At least we used to settle down with our tastes/demand for goods and services for longer periods. Not sure if that is still the case today. But if that still stands in our everyday behavior, then how do we explain changes related to development? That is, in all the behavior change efforts transpiring today, what changes are likely to last more than others?

Who demands education and who supplies it? In this post, I refer to "education" as formal education, that is the learning that takes place in school classrooms. There is a consistent tendency among people and institutions today to assume that education is demanded by students and their parents or guardians and supplied by teachers and schools. So, when anything happens to go well in education - a certain year showing exceptionally good results, or a surge in engineering professionals - schools are rewarded. Similarly, when anything devastating happens in education - a year of terrible results, or an increase in exam-time suicides - schools are blamed.  But this assumption begs a question: Where is the students' and parents' or guardians' demand for education rooted? Is it an esoteric demand that comes from within the household at any given inspirational moment? Or is it an exoteric demand that comes from outside the household, nudging the household itself ...

I was intrigued by this blog post at the Economist titled On "bullshit jobs" . It explores how administrative work today compares to assembly line jobs in the past. One part of this blog post reads: "The issue is that too little of the recent gains from technological advance and economic growth have gone toward giving people the time and resources to enjoy their lives outside work. Early in the industrial era real wages soared and hours worked declined. In the past generation, by contrast, real wages have grown slowly and workweeks haven't grown shorter." It is easy to see that time and resources are both in shortage across anyone you meet, anywhere in the world. So as this author frames the argument, I think jobs or any kind of work is always about using one's time and resources in the most efficient possible way. The problem for me is in definitions. How do each of us define "efficient"? It is likely to be very diverse: For one person, e...

While real estate concerns space on land, virtual estates concern spaces in the media. "Media" here refers to broadcast media (radio, print, TV, etc.) as well as digital media (the Internet, mobile networks, satellite, etc.). Spaces in the media are not as scarce as spaces on land, particularly because more space can be created in the media than on land. Yet, because human beings have limited attention spans - much like we have limited needs for space on land - the media cannot possibly be consumed in its entirety by any one human being. Therefore, securing virtual estates could mean that you secure your content for future generations to observe. How well these estates are secured could foretell how long they will last before they are taken over. And how long they will last could foretell how many future generations could observe this content. 

In this article from The Economist , some key concerns about the business of education are raised. Given the increasing use of massive open online courses, some have begun speculating on MOOC income streams and how they could affect the business of traditional universities. Two main concerns intrigued me: 1) The possibility of advertising within education is raised, as a means to have degrees sponsored for people. One commentator says: "Ads propelled radio and TV, why not education? There is a lot of misplaced snobbery in education about advertising." At first thought, brands being infused within lectures sounds disastrous. But on second thought, can this be avoided if we want to provide free education that is not backed by Governments? Also, are there no brands in our current curriculum, such as inventors, popular designs and particular texts? 2) Several companies seem to have offered longer-term pay offs to students by betting on their learning systems now. One way i...