Experiment and live

Adapted from a piece by Tom Peters, business consultant and author of 'In Search of Excellence', that appeared in Giraffe Gazette No. 28 (POB 759, 197 Second Street, Langley, Whidbey Island, WA98260, USA, tel 0101 206 221 7989; fax 0101 206 221 7817) monitored for the Institute by Roger Knights.

(1) Try it. That's my plea to you and corporations alike. If you don't have a clue as to what's going on or why, you might as well do something and see how the world reacts.

The essence of science , after all, is not generating hypotheses (which, rhetoric to the contrary, are usually post hoc rationalisations), but empiricism - ie experiments. Business translation: Who knows why the world buys your nifty new products or sneers as it? The only way to up the odds even a teeny bit, of winning a race every now and then, is to enter as many contests as you can. If I could imprint that single idea in managers' heads, I'd be ecstatic.

(2) Lighten up. How I despise stuffed shirts! It's raw, unadulterated prejudice on my part. Fact is, I like and trust people who put their feet up on tables, who let loose a four-ketter word from time to time, who screw up and then laugh at themselves.

'So much of senior people's time is spent posturing, holding cards close to the vest. How sad. Live, I say. Live'

Free software for businesses

Based on an item entitled 'Freeware' in the Economist (Aug. 22nd '92).

Cygnus, a small Californian software company, gives its software away for nothing (it specialises in software tools for computer programmers), with no restrictions on copying. It makes its money by charging $300 an hour if customers want the software tailored to their specific needs. There is nothing to stop customers from making these modifications themselves - and the programs work fine without tailoring - but major companies are happy to pay Cygnus several millions dollars a year to do it for them. Rivals' products are far more difficult to tailor precisely because these companies hang on to their ideas so tightly. Cygnus can modify the programs fast and well, because they are familiar with the complexities of their own products.

Cygnus reserves the right to include any of the modifications it makes for customers in its free products. So it ends up with an improved and more valuable products and is now riding a virtuous circle.

Cygnus plan to expand into other sorts of free software.