Entrepreneurs

My recommended reading list for this summer includes 10 books with very different approaches to innovation. In some cases, these books take you inside the thought process of a top innovator, whether it’s a Silicon Valley entrepreneur (Elon Musk), a Hollywood filmmaker (Brian Grazer) or...

One of the hardest challenges facing leaders is making decisions in the face of uncertainties. To deal with the discomfort of uncertainty, some leaders turn their assumptions and beliefs into “facts” in their mind. That’s unfortunate. Stick blindly to ill-informed thinking, as some prominent...

Not being totally honest with yourself about this might be the biggest mistake you will ever make. "The freedom to make my own mistakes is all I ever wanted." - Mance Rayder, Game of Thrones I have an eminently simple philosophy when it comes to business and...

Is Wisconsin producing enough startup companies? No, especially when all startups are counted… whether those young companies are bakeries, burger joints, beauty salons or biotechnology firms. What often matters more than the sheer number of startups is the survivability and “scale up” stages for young companies,...

California Governor Jerry Brown recently imposed mandatory water restrictions to combat severe drought that “demands unprecedented action.” Many investors have grown familiar with the global trends changing in the way water is supplied, transported, treated and used. Those mega-trends, however, have not translated into much...

A New Science is showing us how staying in-the-flow may be the most important part of building extraordinary teams. "I will never consider defeat, and I will remove from my vocabulary such words as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, failure, and retreat, for these are the words...

High-impact entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Most venture-backed businesses don’t achieve the levels of success their founders and investors hoped for. Indeed, a significant number will fail. Having worked as legal counsel for dozens of venture-backed startups over the years, what frustrates me...

Many goal words only describe a desirable side effect, while being opaque as to what behaviors might yield that result: • Lose weight. • Get rich. • Innovate. In response to any of these, what is step one? Yes, these words describe measurable outcomes: they qualify as “objectives.”...