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Is a superstar more valuable than 100-non superstars? If you had the choice of either or, which would you go for?

Here is an article on the Harvard Business Review website that’s creating quite a stir on this subject. So much so that the author, Bill Taylor, felt compelled to publish a “part two” here.

With all discussions of talent and superstar behaviour, I feel people tend to miss the importance of context.

In different contexts (i.e. environments/cultures, plus general states of mind) individuals can excel or not. People need a opportunity and the platform / project / problem on which to demonstrate performance; either individually or within a team.

Individuals facing similar opportunities in difference contexts may not perform to the same level as before.

What I find particularly interesting is that someone who doesn’t perform exceptionally well at a lower level, can then surprise everyone by blossoming at a higher, in theory more challenging, level. One example I instantly think of from current Formula 1 motor racing is Kamui Kobayashi.

Environmental conditions are therefore significant in terms of empowering people to perform well; the talent, if there is any, is in recognising that argument and then having the guts to create an organisational structure where people can do what they are best at, appropriate to the task at hand.

This goes for every organisation you’re part of; business and social.

Well, that’s my view based on the research I did studing Talent development in some detail for my MBA dissertation. In the context of developing Formula 1 drivers, I found that there are distinctions to be made between “high-achievers” and others, however, invariably this was down them having massive opportunity to perform / practise their art (i.e. Gladwell’s 10,000 hours) and doing that within a cultural organisational structure that allowed them to fail.

Great topic … comments welcome.

Here is a link to my latest blog post on Prat Perch. It’s been an exciting few weeks so just sharing an update.

Nice article on the 100 year history of IBM. Particularly it focuses on an importance of strong relationships to sustaining market disruption; If people are happy you solved their problem with one technology, then if you have a good relationship with them and they feel you understand the problems their trying to solve, then they will be more willing to accept you providing them with new disruptive technology too.

Interesting perspective.

Team Lotus Formula 1 and GE get together

It looks like GE has decided to sponsor Team Lotus.

The nice thing appears to be that they are aiming to use F1 as a kind of technology showcase for the GE products.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this relationship as there is a lot of potential for both sides to gain much.

Being that it is GE, my anticipation would be this does have the potential to extend further than typical “partner” agreements, where one or either side sometimes pay lip-service to the agreement, people don’t really learn much from each other at all.

This relationship strikes me as potentially being something better, with my guess that in the future GE might even take a stake in Team Lotus if things work out well.

You read it here first folks! …

This is a good article by Elias Chelidonis. It tells the partial story of his internet start-up, although which one is not named. It seems like he had good success but in the end was a victim of that success. The lessons learnt and shared by people like Elias are really great. Each case is unique, each business unique but I try and learn from everyones story, and hope to give a little back to this community myself through my blog on the Prat Perch journey. Enjoy.

Read the article but his points are summarised below – yes there are 13 but you could argue some over lap …

1. Paid too much attention on web design – keep it simple
2. We had a solution for everyone, consumers, businesses, free users – be specific
3. We had very low prices. This was one of the most crucial mistakes.
4. Focused on growth and not profitability – focus on profit.
5. We did major changes in the user interface without asking our users first – don’t surprise customer. keep it simple.
6. Did not hire support team and did not have in place a good support platform – put support in place early.
7. Wasted time trying to be acquired – don’t bother.
8. Did not have a good backend system – be able to interrogate what’s happening in the business at all levels.
9. Did not keep in touch with our users – keep in touch via email.
10. Had too many features – keep to 4-5 core features

1. How fast your business can grow – Have option to scale instantly (i.e. per minute).
2. Be prepared for the unexpected – Backup
3. How service would be a year from launch date – be prepared to change

To follow on from my post on infographics, that happened to be about raising money through twitter, I had a little success with the service myself. Read my blog post over at Prat Perch to find out more.

Nicholas Bates, my inspiration to start blogging during my MBA, is trying to raise votes for a manifesto based on his book – Instant MBA.

Could you go to http://changethis.com/proposal/index and vote for ‘Instant MBA, The Manifesto’, you will need to register and log into the site to do it (at the top of the page), but it only takes a few seconds. Thank you.

It’s explained here: http://blog.strategicedge.co.uk/2011/06/i-need-your-vote.html

… if there’s anyone you can forward it on to who would vote??

Plus, what ever you decide to do, you now get to know about this amazingly inspiring blog, which you can read for free everyday!!

In four words: Nicholas Bates defines professionalism.

Enjoy!

Here is a booklist on the Prat Perch blog for those interested motorsport. It will evolve overtime but hopefully there are a couple of useful titles to get people going.

… this infographic helps you decide how to go about getting it made (or not!) … good humoured.

If you were wondering what Windows 8 is going to look like then have a look at this video from Microsoft. It takes it’s inspiration from the tiles approach they started with their phone operation system. I hope it works well because it certainly looks nice. The question I have about this is that its so minimalist, I’d be worried about getting “lost”.

Have a look and let me know what you think too?