Jan Bosch
There’s an insightful quote from Upton Sinclair: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” In the interview study we’re in the midst of as I’m writing this, I’ve frequently thought of this quote. It seems that people simply don’t understand that their job, or … Read more
Over the last decades, the interest in software ecosystems and business ecosystems has been increasingly strong. Many companies have observed the outsized success of the Apple app store for iPhone and are interested in achieving a similar situation for themselves with a large set of complementors building extensions to one product and having it act … Read more
Normally I try to be very careful with predictions. As Yogi Berra so eloquently said, prediction is hard; especially about the future. When looking at the folks predicting the stock market, the data shows that their accuracy is about as good as random, or even worse. For example, at the end of 2022, many predicted … Read more
Similar to living creatures in a biological ecosystem, companies live in a business ecosystem. According to James Moore, a business ecosystem is an economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals – the organisms of the business world. A business ecosystem is characterized by three aspects. First, there’s a symbiotic relationship between … Read more
The last posts have taken us through 15 rules that I believe are important to ensure we’re the protagonist of our own lives. As I wrote in the introduction to this series, I believe that those who read my content have in common that we take a proactive approach to life and view ourselves as … Read more
The baseball player, Yogi Berra, famously said “Prediction is hard. Especially about the future.” That is of course entirely correct. Who of us predicted the COVID pandemic or the way the stock market tanked in 2022? Of course, there are always doomsayers who continuously predict these things, but they are right in the way a … Read more
There’s a beautiful saying in American English: build it and they will come. The idea is that simply building something and making it available will cause customers to beat a path to your door. To throw their money at you simply to get access to the amazing thing you created. Of course, we know that … Read more
Many of the companies I work with aspire to build an ecosystem around their product portfolio. The idea of having others complement your offering and increasing its stickiness while taking a cut of the revenue generated by these complementors is, of course, incredibly appealing. As with most things in life, if something sounds too good … Read more
Western civilization is built on the notion of the sovereign individual: each person is unique with his or her rights, responsibilities, dreams and fears standing separate from others. Buddhist dogma takes the exact opposite perspective: the notion of self is an illusion and the goal of meditation and other religious practices is to free yourself … Read more
After decades in the industry, I have yet to meet the first company that doesn’t claim they’re customer centric. There remains a widely held belief that if we focus all our energy on the customer and build what the customer tells us to build, we’re going to continue to be successful. Still, the quote from … Read more
