Hi Scott,

You have a beautiful daughter on your home page. I love that dalmation pic too! :)

A friend of mine who I used to share an office with told me, too, that becoming a dad brought new meaning into his life....

> ...Independence? It's a fact that everyone
> has to play the game, even the homeless :).
> But it seems to me that those that have
> truly risen above the crowd played the game
> but set their own rules.

I think there's some creative rule-breaking going on.... Sometimes they move dangerously close to the edge of the law (like.... hmm.... big recent case.... Earth's most profitable company.... oh yeah, Microsoft!)

I think it's best to play by the rules, but often there are "moves" within the "rules" that others don't think of.

For example, if I'm not mistaken, Amazon.com were the ones to pioneer the online affiliate program.... That was also available to everyone else at the time (if they had thought of it), but by being the first to do it really helped to put Amazon.com on the internet map!

In contrast, Edison's ideas for cement pianos never took off. But I guess he more than made up for it with his other great inventions. :)

Sometimes innovations are ahead of their time. Like Edison's own version of "talking movies" (talking peephole-type movies), which he created in 1895, but which nobody was interested in.

Some "rules" really aren't true "rules" at all, just conventions.... But when they break the convention, they discover some incredible success.

For example, the supposed "rule" (really, a convention) in the 1980s was for companies to cut costs as much as possible, including firing lots of their staff if they thought they could get away with it.

But recently, I read an article which said that in the decade since, the companies which behaved like this grew more SLOWLY than the companies which showed loyalty to their staff.

What seems to have happened is that when a company showed loyalty to their staff, this brought staff loyalty to the company too. While on the other hand, companies that got rid of their staff just to cut costs, found that their remaining staff had less loyalty to them, and didn't have as much dedication.

And so this "rule" from the 1980s turned out to be a bad one! These companies may have made short-term increases in profits by cutting their staff to save on costs, but in the long term these companies ended up growing more slowly than their competitors....

As some say, in any company, good people are the most valuable resource they have....

Cheers,

Dien




The Edison cement piano