Tweets for Tweets: My Favorite Bird Photos of 2019

A Great Horned Owl.  Top of the food chain.  Good for
marketing blog posts.

In February 2016, our book club read The Big Year. It's the story of three men who, in 1998, competed to establish a North American birding record.  One succeeded, counting 748 species.*

Until that book settled in my Kindle, I had no idea that there was a thing called "birding," or that there was an entire world of hikers, world travelers, citizen scientists, ornithologists, and conservationists who spent much of their waking time watching and studying birds.

For me, this activity was an epiphany--who else knew?  It turns out, 50 million Americans plan an outing to observe birds every year.

But if birding was epiphany, it would also turn out to be escape.  In early 2016, I needed to get away from my screens in the worst way, far from our new administration and the damage it was inflicting on the American democratic experiment.  My Facebook feed was turning toxic, and Twitter went from being noise to a black hole of contempt sucking energy and goodwill out of our nation.

In the process, I traded tweets for tweets, heading into the woods with my Sibley bird book, camera, ebird app, and binoculars, sometimes with an experienced guide from Mass Audubon. It was like stepping inside a huge video game (with fresh air) where I needed to focus, observe, and, in the words of Monty Python, prepare for something completely different.

Flash ahead to December 2019.  I now have 286 species on my life list.  (There are people who count nearly that many different birds every few months, but I persist.)  More to the point, I now know what a life list is.  The Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary and Plum Island have become second homes and places of refuge.  And every so often, by being patient and lucky, I'll take a picture I like of a bird I like.

Here, then, in an ongoing trade of tweets for tweets, are my favorites photos from 2019:

This is an Egret that I photographed early in the morning with my friend Rebecca
for one of her excellent "running with" birding articles.

These two Pileated Woodpeckers met me on our driveway as I returned home from a run.  They were nice enough to
stick around while I dashed inside to get my camera.

Sometimes Entrepreneurs Are Just Liberal Arts Majors Making Money

The room where it happened, my fate thus sealed

First, my credentials: I am the son of a mechanical engineer, spouse of an aeronautical engineer, and father of an environmental engineer. I not only support STEM, I adore STEM.

But I hail from a different tribe, that of the liberal arts majors.  I cast my lot long ago in a diner on the East Side of Providence, announcing to my college friends that I would major in history. “Oh, so you want to teach history,” one of my buddies asked, before adding, “could you pass the maple syrup?”

My fate thus sealed, I spent the rest of my undergraduate days having a particular set of skills drilled into my noggin: Sift through a mountain of information by reading quickly and critically, ask good questions, separate signal from noise, and use the results to craft a concise, compelling narrative. That is, take a feral world and tame it into a cracking good story.

After graduation, I took my history degree to Wall Street for a couple of years, returned home to earn my MBA (squeaking through Managerial Economics), and soon found myself working on the launch of a new company.

“We need a business plan,” my STEM boss said, looking at me. 

“What would you like me to do?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, dropping two binders and a box of material on my desk, “you need to quickly read through this mountain of information, ask good questions, and separate signal from noise. Then you need to draft a compelling narrative. After that,” he added, “we can go raise some money.”

Rethinking Innovation: An Updated, Practical List of Where to Look

 "Innovation on Tap" is available in hardcover,
Kindle, and audio versions.  It can be ordered
from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, 
Greenleaf Book Group, and Indiebound. 

While writing Innovation on Tap, I reacquainted myself with the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter and consultant Peter Drucker, two of innovation's most influential thinkers.

Using their formats, I have constructed an updated list of questions designed to help entrepreneurs identify their next innovation.

Combined, Schumpeter and Drucker offer four lessons:

1. Successful innovation is the result of structured and purposeful work.

2. The best sources of innovation are usually existing and obvious opportunities.

3. The most powerful innovations tend to involve new combinations of knowledge, process, and people, not technology.

4. The test of innovation is not its novelty, but its success in the marketplace.

Innovation and Nostalgia: The Passing of a Rock Generation

Rockers Eddie Money and Ric Ocasek died recently.  One was 70, the other 75.

It seems funny, rock musicians in their 70s.  But hold on to your hat.  “Just about every rock legend you can think of,” Damon Linker writes, “is going to die within the next decade or so.” Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Carol King, and Brian Wilson are 77.  Mike Jagger is 76.  Joni Mitchell, Ray Davies, Roger Waters, Keith Richards, and Jimmy Page are 75.  Peter Townshend, Rod Stewart, and Eric Clapton are 74, Van Morrison, Bryan Ferry, and David Gilmour are 73.  Elton John and Don Henley?  72.  And that leaves youngsters James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen all north of 70.

The fact that a list of living rock icons is this long is a testament to genetics, chemicals, or luck—since Vegas might not have given any of them favorable odds of reaching 35 when they were in their 20s.  The paragraph above is strewn with hard living and near-misses.  Some of the rockers listed may make it to 2030 or beyond--and I certainly hope they do—but don’t bet against the odds this time.

The Kings, Jaggers, and Stewarts of the world were born in the 1940s, developed their craft in the 1960s, and began to create music and innovate the sounds of our world in the early 1970s.  

It was a moment in time that reminds me of New Orleans in 1900 and the birth of jazz.  Detroit in 1920 and the auto industry.  Silicon Valley just after the Netscape IPO in 1995, when a collection of people gathered to do things that had never been done before, offering ideas now so pervasive that we take their innovations for granted. “I used to get up in the morning,” the recording engineer for Led Zeppelin said in 1971, "thinking, ‘Today I have another chance to do something that’s never been done before.’” 

Innovation on Tap #6: Brent Grinna: Quietly Building an Amazing Network

This is the sixth excerpt from Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway's "Hamilton" © Eric B. Schultz, available now for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in quantity from Baker & Taylor or Greenleaf Book Group at 800-932-5420.

Excerpt #1, about Buddy Bolden and the birth of jazz, is here.  Excerpt #2, about Jason Jacobs and the growth of Runkeeper, is here.  Excerpt #3, about Jean Brownhill and Sweeten, is here.  Excerpt #4, about Elizabeth Arden and "the right to be beautiful," is here.  Excerpt #5, about GM's Alfred Sloan (the most successful American entrepreneur ever?), is here.

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Author's note: Sometimes, stuff happens to entrepreneurs and they just have to be ready.  Such is the case with Brent Grinna as he prepared to launch a technology company designed to bring educational fundraising into the 21st century.  Today, EverTrue has more than 300 education partners and is the leading advancement automation platform.  And Brent remains one of the best networkers and community-builders I have ever met.  But, not so long ago, EverTrue was just an idea and Brent was just figuring it all out.  I appreciate him letting me include this story in the book; it says great things about the Boston venture community, and it made me laugh out loud when I interviewed him. Read on: 

At this point Grinna had an idea, a mock-up, interest, an apartment, and a skeptical but supportive wife. That’s when he heard about an event called the Venture Summit East, a very large gathering of leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. “I’m living across the Charles River at the time,” he says, “and I see that the ticket is going to be $2,000 to go to that event. There’s no way I’m paying $2,000, but I reach out to the organizer, explain my situation—I’m an aspiring entrepreneur, just graduated from Harvard, I’m living right across the river—and asked if he needed any volunteers. He said sure, come work the registration desk.” 

By helping with registration, Grinna could attend some of the sessions and the luncheon presentation. He found as he handed out name tags that he knew almost nobody except for local venture capitalist Jeff Bussgang (HBS ’95) from Flybridge Capital Partners. “He’d been an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School during my time there, and I’d been bouncing ideas off him along the way. So I see Jeff at lunch and I go and sit down. And Jeff says, ‘Brent, I’m so glad that you’re here. I’ve got to introduce you to these guys. This is Walt Doyle; he’s got a very cool company called WHERE doing some interesting work around mobile. You guys should definitely meet. I want you to hear his story and tell him your story. And I want you to meet Scott here, as well.’” 

Grinna explains, “Walt is this super-high-energy guy, and he says, ‘Tell me about what you’re doing! What’s your story?’ I start telling him about the Brown experience and the reunion, and he says, ‘I totally get it. I’m really involved with Middlesex, which is where I went to high school. I see the challenges. Where are you working out of?’ I tell him my apartment in Cambridge (and my wife is questioning that!)—but that’s where I am.” Doyle tells Grinna that he’s just moved into new space and invites him to visit.   

As Grinna and Doyle are talking, Brent notices that Scott is taking notes. Grinna decides, “That’s probably OK; we’re at a conference, and I guess you take notes. So I shoot these guys thank-you emails that night, and Scott writes back with this whole set of questions. It seemed cool he was so interested in my business, so I replied with all these answers. I wake up the next day, and I find out that Scott [Kirsner] is the technology reporter for The Boston Globe. And he writes an article, ‘New Start-up EverTrue Revolutionizing Alumni Development.’ And he has all these quotes. I don’t think I even knew he was a reporter—and I’m so oblivious I’m confirming comments and quotes in an email exchange. So this article hits,” Grinna adds. “It’s got screen shots, it’s got my story, and all of a sudden, all day, I’m getting emails from people wanting jobs—my inbox is flooded. EverTrue is not a real company, but now The Boston Globe thinks it’s a real company. So, it’s a real company.”

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Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway’s “Hamilton” is the story of 300 years of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs--living and departed--who have gathered to "talk shop" in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. 

From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, Hamilton, their stories capture the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlight the rules for success, and celebrate the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.

Innovation on Tap # 5: Alfred Sloan: America's Most Successful Entrepreneur?

This is the fifth excerpt from Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway's "Hamilton" © Eric B. Schultz, available now for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in quantity from Baker & Taylor or Greenleaf Book Group at 800-932-5420.

Excerpt #1, about Buddy Bolden and the birth of jazz, is here.  Excerpt #2, about Jason Jacobs and the growth of Runkeeper, is here.  Excerpt #3, about Jean Brownhill and Sweeten, is here.  Excerpt #4, about Elizabeth Arden and "the right to be beautiful," is here.

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Author's note: Dimaggio or Williams, Aaron or Ruth?  Beethoven or Mozart--or Bach? Coke or Pepsi? How 'bout Moxie?!  Who was America's most successful entrepreneur ever?  It's an impossible question, of course, perfect for a barroom argument.  Which is why I took my shot at it in "Innovation on Tap."  My vote goes to Alfred Sloan, who seems (in baseball terms) like Stan Musial--faded more than he should be.  And, for those of you who are introverts--the brilliant "Silent Sloan" once wrote, "Asking favors and pushing myself into places where I am a stranger always did go against my grain."  It's a good reminder that there is no prototypical entrepreneur, only lots of articles on the web saying there is.  Read on: 

Alfred Sloan built the largest, most innovative, and arguably most important company in the world—one that fundamentally transformed the twentieth century. In 1918, he joined a General Motors that was disjointed and nearly bankrupt, with just 12.7 percent market share behind Ford’s 55 percent. He faced America’s greatest industrialist at the top of his game in a fluid and hypercompetitive market.

By 1929, when nearly 4.6 million vehicles were sold, GM’s 32.3 percent share topped Ford’s 31.3 percent. When Sloan retired as chairman in 1956, GM held a 52 percent market share and was one of the world’s most profitable, admired, and best-run companies. Its annual revenues surpassed the GNP of half the world’s countries.

Alfred Sloan (public domain)

Sloan is credited with not just saving General Motors, but with being the father of the modern corporation, a genius of consumer marketing, and the most effective CEO ever. An internal memo he wrote became a sought-after best seller in the 1920s, and his book, My Years with General Motors (1963), was the bible for a generation of managers who aspired to lead like America’s most famous CEO.

Sloan is known for creating effective public relations, implementing long-term forecasting, hiring professional designers to spearhead GM’s parade of annual models, and funding both a series of technological breakthroughs and long-term, visionary research and development. Historian Daniel Boorstin writes that when Sloan asked his staff to look out five years into the future to envision something new and better, he helped invent the modern world.

Sloan is known for other accomplishments as well. He encouraged his best friend, Walter P. Chrysler, to launch his own company when Ford was failing in the 1920s. “GM, in its own interest,” Sloan believed (unlike many of America’s most famous entrepreneurs bent on monopoly), “needed a strong competitor”. . . .

Above all, Alfred Sloan innovated in two essential areas: the effective organization of a complex institution (what he would call “centralized administration with decentralized operations”), and the brilliant segmentation of consumer brands designed to create endless demand. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) wrote that talent achieves what others cannot achieve, a fitting tribute to the legendary work of Henry Ford. But, Schopenhauer added, genius achieves what others cannot imagine. That was the contribution of Alfred Sloan.

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Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway’s “Hamilton” is the story of 300 years of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs--living and departed--who have gathered to "talk shop" in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. 

From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, Hamilton, their stories capture the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlight the rules for success, and celebrate the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.

Innovation on Tap # 4: Elizabeth Arden: A Right To Be Beautiful

This is the fourth excerpt from Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway's "Hamilton" © Eric B. Schultz, available now for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in quantity from Baker & Taylor or Greenleaf Book Group at 800-932-5420.

Excerpt #1, about Buddy Bolden and the birth of jazz, is here.  Excerpt #2, about Jason Jacobs and the growth of Runkeeper, is here.  Excerpt #3, about Jean Brownhill and Sweeten, is here.

Author's note: Elizabeth Arden, whose real name was Florence Nightingale Graham, immigrated to the United States from Canada in 1908 and made her fortune, riding (and guiding) a fundamental transformation in how Americans thought about beauty.  Although this brilliant entrepreneur was slender and stood just a little over 5 feet tall, one reporter noted, “she was about as fragile as a football tackle; and anyone who mistook her wispiness for indecision quickly discovered that she had a will of steel and the power to execute it.” Arden might remind modern readers of Steve Jobs: gifted, driven, and just a wee bit scary.  Read on: 

. . . Her business grossed a phenomenal $2 million a week in 1925. Arden rejected a $15 million offer to sell at the start of the Depression and continued her expansion . . .  

Elizabeth Arden
Source: New York World-Telegram and the
Sun staff photographer:
Fisher, Alan, photographer.
[Public domain]

If loyal and generous with good performers, Arden was also a tough and demanding boss, saying, “I only want people around me who can do the impossible.” With employees, she could be mercurial, as journalist Margaret Case Harriman wrote: "She is tyrannical and exacting or affectionate and lavish, by turns. Her employees, seldom knowing from one hour to the next whether to expect a calling down or a champagne party, have learned to take what comes with a good deal of serenity" . . .  

A true innovator, Arden launched a steady stream of new products. When told that production of a “fluffy” face cream was impossible, she vehemently disagreed until she found a chemist who would create Cream Amoretta. She launched the “Vienna Youth Mask” of papier-mâché and tinfoil, which applied heat via an electric current. She created cosmetics to complement clothing, not just skin color, and encouraged the everyday use of mascara and eye shadow. In her first twenty-five years, Arden developed more than a hundred items. She tried each new cosmetic on herself—and often on her staff—and had the final say on all product development decisions, brand names, and advertising . . .  

Arden retained a lifelong passion for improving women’s looks, sometimes noting the flaws of a visitor to her company and recommending lotions and creams on the spot.

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Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway’s “Hamilton” is the story of 300 years of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs--living and departed--who have gathered to "talk shop" in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. 

From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, Hamilton, their stories capture the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlight the rules for success, and celebrate the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.

“Innovation on Tap" # 3: Jean Brownhill: A Community of Trust

This is the third excerpt from Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway's "Hamilton" © Eric B. Schultz, available now for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in quantity from Baker & Taylor or Greenleaf Book Group at 800-932-5420.

Excerpt #1, about Buddy Bolden and the birth of jazz, is here.  Excerpt #2, about Jason Jacobs and the growth of Runkeeper, is here.

Author's note: Jean Brownhill, a trained architect, founder and CEO of Sweeten, is one of the few African-American female entrepreneurs in the US to raise more than $1 million in venture capital and has been named “The Contractor Whisperer” by New York Magazine.  Jean’s amazing entrepreneurial story includes several moments of "epiphany" when she suddenly saw the world in an entirely new way.  Jean has a neat shorthand for these moments, saying her “brain rewired."  Read on:

Then came the terrorist attack on 9/11. “It really freaked me out, which is the understatement of my life. It was another moment when my brain rewired,” Brownhill recalls. “I was coming across the Manhattan Bridge on the train, and we could see the first building on fire. Then we watched the second plane hit. And we just sat there on the bridge. Someone had a beeper. They said, ‘I think it’s a terrorist attack.’ And I’m sitting in a steel tube that I can’t get out of, on a bridge. It was so frightening.” 

At a loss for what to do, Brownhill went through the motions of going to work, sitting at her desk, and then having the surreal experience of walking home over the bridge, alongside people covered in ash.

“Over the course of the next few months,” she says, “I started thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, you just spent five years of your life completely focused on learning how to build buildings. You have no idea why anybody would want to take them down. You have no idea the kind of economics or political conditions that brought this attack about.’ And so, I decided that I needed to understand about money and power.” This quest would mean reading every book she could find about money, trying to understand economic and social drivers. It was a self-education that would eventually lead her away from a traditional career path in architecture . . . 

The next year, as part of her ongoing self-education in economics, Brownhill read Roger Lowenstein’s Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. “I was so inspired by Warren Buffett and the example he set that I wrote him a letter,” she says. “When I got a response from him, that was the next moment my brain rewired again. Impossible things might be possible. This incredibly important person wrote me back.” She adds, “The letter back from Warren Buffett was the moment that ignited the belief in my entrepreneurial vision, that I could shape my own life. It all clicked in.”

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Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway’s “Hamilton” is the story of 300 years of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs--living and departed--who have gathered to "talk shop" in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. 

From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, Hamilton, their stories capture the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlight the rules for success, and celebrate the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.

"Innovation on Tap" #2: Jason Jacobs: A Cheerleader For Community

This is the second excerpt from Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway's "Hamilton" © Eric B. Schultz, available now for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in quantity from Baker & Taylor or Greenleaf Book Group at 800-932-5420.

Excerpt #1, about Buddy Bolden, is here.

Author's note: Jason Jacobs launched Runkeeper in August 2008, making it one of the first apps in the Apple Store. Three years later, Runkeeper had six million users, a close-knit and enthusiastic running community, and $1.5 million tucked away in a rainy-day fund.  What could go wrong?  Read on: 

Your author is a long-time user.

By 2011, the venture capital world had emerged from the Great Recession of 2008 and markets were frenzied. The entrepreneurial ecosystem had also become infatuated with scale and pedigree. “The tech media really cared about sizes of [funding] rounds,” Jacobs says, “and who they were from. If you wanted to get the credibility and the megaphone of the media—when it came to things like hiring the best people or getting strategic partners interested—there was no better way to do it than to raise a big round. Whoever raised the biggest round was perceived as winning.”

Such a plan required a big idea, and in 2011, Runkeeper launched the Health Graph. It was a strategic direction that would nearly sink the company. 

Runkeeper’s Health Graph began by integrating third-party devices, such as sleep monitors and Fitbits. It seemed an impressive idea; there were so many health and fitness devices coming to market, and nobody was emerging as a hub. Google Health had just shut down, Microsoft HealthVault was struggling, and bottom-up, direct-to-consumer relationships were the future. “There was a moment in time when nobody owned this space,” Jacobs says, “and here we were with the biggest audience. We had momentum and a passionate community. Why not us?” 

When Jacobs went out to raise his big round, however, there was pushback. “How big could running really be?” investors asked. He was determined to prove the doubters wrong. “If you take some narcissistic twenty-something with a megaphone, all hopped-up on energy drinks, with a big audience, and the press talking about him all day long,” Jacobs says, smiling, “in this emergent field that nobody knows anything about, but everyone thinks is the next big wave, and he just lays it out there with fervor—in that moment of heat maybe you can make a lot of things happen that couldn’t otherwise. . . .”

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I just love that quote, which perfectly captures the crazy excesses of the startup world of 2011.  Jason would push Runkeeper to the brink and then--spoiler alert--pull it back, exiting successfully and moving on to chapter 2.  You can read more about Jason's next chapter here and here; it turns out that not only is @jjacobs22 a great interview, but he's also an excellent interviewer.

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Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway’s “Hamilton” is the story of 300 years of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs--living and departed--who have gathered to "talk shop" in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. 

From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, Hamilton, their stories capture the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlight the rules for success, and celebrate the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.

“Innovation on Tap" # 1: Charles "Buddy" Bolden: The Sound of Innovation

The following is an excerpt from Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship from the Cotton Gin to Broadway's "Hamilton" available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and from Baker & Taylor or Greenleaf Book Group at 800-932-5420.

Note: "King" Buddy Bolden was credited by many of his contemporaries in early 20th-century New Orleans for being the first to play an innovative musical style that would sweep the world and be given its own name in 1912: "jazz."

For a black musician in 1900, the musical community of New Orleans was as powerful and nurturing a force as the machine tool community in New England was for a mechanic in 1800, or the software development community in Silicon Valley was for a developer in 2000.

Buddy Bolden grew up in a world where musicianship was a collegial and competitive sport driven by black, white, and Creole men who competed intensely for crowds, status, money, and the affections of the fairer sex. New Orleans welcomed the poor and disenfranchised from every race, not just to participate but to lead the creative and commercial development of something brand new. As an innovation community, the city was able to attract and nurture talent that would surely have been lost in almost any other setting . . .

 A short clip from the movie "Bolden" shows

Buddy being challenged by a young upstart.

No recording of Bolden survives, so both riffs were 

created by Wynton Marsalis from the first-hand 

descriptions of Buddy's work.

Day after day, entrepreneurs combined the raw material of note and tempo to create new music, tested their creations on live audiences, and readjusted to meet the pressing demands of commerce. The competition for ears and dollars was fierce, though older musicians could often be found teaching the young and mentoring protégés. Kings were anointed and dethroned. Talent was fluid, moving from band to band, carrying new ideas throughout the community. Back rooms, attics, and front stoops became places of constant musical invention, which soared on the breeze, available to any aspiring talent. Musical entrepreneurs ate, drank, and slept their craft. 

Bolden w/cornet in back row. Anonymous [Public domain]

Competition for audiences was relentless and often colorful. Brass bands paraded through the streets by day, sometimes in step with a funeral and sometimes simply to advertise a dance where they would play that evening. It was not uncommon for two bands advertising different events to meet at an intersection and engage in a “cutting” or “bucking” contest. Winners received bragging rights and a larger paying crowd that evening. As one participant noted about the rough-and-tumble matches, “If you couldn’t blow a man down with your horn, at least you could use it to hit him alongside the head.”

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Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship From the Cotton Gin to Broadway’s “Hamilton” is the story of 300 years of innovation in America told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs--living and departed--who have gathered to "talk shop" in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. 

From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, "Hamilton," Innovation on Tap captures the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlights the rules for success, and celebrates the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.

In Praise of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr: Birding the Visible Hand

Some of my go-to business books, The Visible Hand
being among the most important 

One of the business history books I most admire is Alfred D.Chandler Jr.’s The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. It is impressive in every way, and an important touchstone for my research on Innovation on Tap.

The Visible Hand won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978, doing for business history what Jared Diamond did for our understanding of civilizations and Yuval Harari for evolution: Professor Chandler presented a unifying theory that explained the growth of modern capitalism.

“Almost single-handedly,” The Economist wrote, “Alfred Chandler (1918-2007) invented the study of business history.”  In his obituary, the New York Times described Chandler as “shunning the old debate about whether tycoons are good or bad, and instead arguing persuasively in almost two dozen books that it was the emergence of professional management that propelled modern capitalism.”  

Hacking the Ruminant: Innovation and the Mysteries of the Human Palate

During summers in high school I worked in a fish market, a little square box of a building set on a wharf in a beautiful beach community on Buzzards Bay.  The northerly side of the market sold fresh fish, the southerly side fried.  In the fresh fish case, we offered haddock and bluefish, lemon and grey sole, crabs and swordfish, cod and scrod. 

I direct your attention to those last two items.  While there is no agreement on the definition of scrod, we marketed it as young cod and told people it was more tender and sweet.  And expensive.

In the back cooler, at the start of each day, we made a genuine effort to separate the big cod fillets from the small because any number of our customers absolutely insisted on scrod.  Occasionally we would run out of the little guys, however, both in the case and in the cooler.

At those times, for those insistent customers, we were instructed to take a big cod fillet (behind the scenes, of course) and shape it into smaller scrod fillets.  Like seafood alchemy, cod to scrod.

Never once did a customer complain.  Not once.  As long as we called it scrod, it was the most tender, sweetest fillet that ever cleaved the Seven Seas.

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My dad had a friend who used to stop by on an occasional Saturday night to play cards.  This friend could only drink Narragansett beer.  (No kidding.)  Any other beer, he told my father, and he would get an instant headache.

One evening, over a hand of bridge, my father went to the kitchen to refill drinks and discovered he had run out of Narragansett.  It would be an understatement to say that my dad was a boy scout, but on this occasion, his trustworthy and loyal gave way to necessity.  Dad took a bottle of Bud and poured it into his friend’s Narragansett bottle.

Disaster averted.  No headache. 

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April 1985.  New Coke.

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Source: Footnote 1

Beyond Meat went public on May 1, gaining almost 250% in its first month.[1]

It’s a company that manufactures plant-based meats that enable “consumers to experience the taste, texture and other sensory attributes of popular animal-based meat products while enjoying the nutritional benefits of eating our plant-based meat products.”[2]  Among Beyond Meat’s most popular products is the Beyond Burger, a plant-based patty that looks and tastes like the real thing.  “THESE ARE CRAZY,” one diner wrote. “THE BURGERS TASTED SO MUCH LIKE MEAT THAT I HAD TO GO BACK AND DOUBLE-CHECK THE BOX TO MAKE SURE THESE WERE, IN FACT, VEGAN."[3]

The company’s IPO has trounced those of Uber and Lyft.  Beyond Meat’s product is already selling in 33,000 grocery stores, restaurants, and other eating establishments.  Ambassadors for the brand include Chris Paul, Kyrie Irving, and Charity Morgan, while early investors numbered Bill Gates, Biz Stones, and Tyson Foods.  Diners report that Beyond Meat is delicious and often indistinguishable from the “real thing.”

Which means, of course, now comes the tricky part.

From Hollywood to Silicon Valley, Nobody Knows Anything

When screenwriter William Goldman, whose successes included Butch Cassidy and All the President’s Men, surveyed nearly a century of film history, legions of talented executives and movie stars, and reams of audience research data, he concluded that “Nobody knows anything.”  Producing a new movie, Goldman said, involved as much luck today as it had in 1910, and anyone who believed he could pick the next hit was delusional.

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By my second year of business school at Harvard, I was broke and decided to take a job with the Admissions Department.  My role was to meet with potential MBA candidates for an “informational interview” to help them understand the business school experience.

I was not supposed to give advice, except around process and due dates, which made me uniquely unable to answer the one question every potential candidate wanted to know: How do I get in?

The fact is, I didn’t have a clue.  I had stats about the age, education, and work experience of the incoming class.  Otherwise, I knew that I had been accepted through some administrative bungle, so couldn’t be counted on much to guide a stranger.

Every so often I would be asked to interview a student in high school, always accompanied by his parents.  Inevitably, the father wanted to know: What should his child be doing now to improve his chances of getting into HBS?

Really?  I knew not to roll my eyes, and I also knew to ask the student what he liked to do.  Inevitably, whatever he said—baseball, playing in a rock band, computers—would be exactly the right thing to do to get into Harvard.  It was my sole revenge on a father who would probably be drilling his high school sophomore over dinner that evening about the role of tariffs in the nineteenth-century global economy.

The smidgen of info that I did know was that HBS could build three complete, equally competitive and promising classes of 800 students from the applications it received each year.  It turned out that even the blessed had a two-in-three chance of failing.

In other words, nobody knows anything.

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Novel Combinations: Making the Most of Too Much

Credit: the author went shopping

Charles Sanna died recently at 101 years old.  His family’s company, Sanna Dairy Engineers (sold to Beatrice Foods in 1967 and now a part of Conagra), delivered powered coffee creamer to the U.S. Army during the Korean War. 

Fearful of missing deliveries to the military, Sanna Dairy regularly overproduced, leaving the company with a perishable product destined for disposal.

Sanna took to the family kitchen in Wisconsin.  By combining water, cocoa, and the excess powdered creamer, he created what would become the Swiss Miss brand of instant hot cocoa.  It was a novel combination, a stroke of genius, and a windfall for Sanna’s company.

Constraint is often described as a key to innovation.  Not having enough of something can lead to all sorts of interesting ideas.  In the case of Charles Sanna, however, his motivation was excess.

History Hacks for STEM Majors

(No STEM majors were harmed in the writing of this post.)

History is in a bad way. 

A poll conducted in 2018 revealed that only one in three Americans could pass a U.S. Citizenship Test.  A similar percentage believed Ben Franklin invented the lightbulb.  Twelve percent thought Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War.

Put People First: In Praise of Steve Dodge

A tribute to Steve appeared in the WSJ here.

Let's say you open a small retail store, one where you get to know all of your customers by name.  Things go so well that you open another store, and another, and pretty soon you not only don't know all of your customers, you don't even know all of your employees.

That's what happened to Harry Gordon Selfridge (1857-1947), the founder of London's Selfridges department store.  Selfridge had so much success that he decided he needed a simple rule to serve the customers he could no longer meet each day and the employees he could no longer mentor.  His rule: The customer is always right.