Principle of Universal Options

Whatever the challenge, field or situation, there are options to invest in to hedge risk and unceirtainty.



This is a rather bold assertion, but I believe it to be very true. Some examples:

Stock market: Options and other derivatives.
Commodity and currency markets: Hedging or futures.
Business and personal economy: Insurance, portfolio management,
Personal health: Excercise, healthy food, vacations
Personal Career: Education, training, parallell ventures
Project Management: Real Options, Risk and change management
Engineering: Modularity, flexibility
Medicine and psychology: Alternative treatment forms

My note to self? Whatever the challenge, there will be heging possibilities that for a limited cost will reduce the risk we are facing.

Hype Cycles

The technology maturity hype cycles of 2009 from Gartner were just released. Since working as a consultant during the boom years around Y2K the hype cycle model has fascinated.

It is such a simple way to chart a very complex phenomena and convey a smart insight at the same time.

Highlights this year is that cloud computing and e-book readers are at inflated exceptions and are about to crash. Another assertion is that microblogging services like Twitter/Facebook are about to crashing this instant due to spam and noise. Wikis on the other hand are on the return.

Gartner might be right about their predictions and they are probably wrong on several as well, but that is not the only point. Thanks to this model, discussions start and new ideas pop up. Sit down and design your own hype cycle it in your business area, and its almost magical how the pieces fall into place and insights start to flow.

Access to more info at: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1124212

90-9-1 Community!

As described here before [1], power laws are very potent at describing many type of phenomena. Latest principle is the 90-9-1 principle of online communities [2].

The concept is simple. In an online community, 1 percent are creators of content, 9 percent are editors of content and the remaining 90 percent are just the curious audience watching. The phenomenal thing is that this rule seems to be proportional, so that getting more creators to a site, increases the editors and the audience.


My bet is that many users act in different roles depending on the site they use, but that there is a small minority of heroes out there that generates most of the community content - and hence drives the traffic.


[1] The Vital Few or the Trivial Many?
[2] 90-9-1 Principle