So, what he's suggesting is . . . you take your larger goals, and then you break them up into a sequence of smaller subgoals?
Sort of like a hierarchy?
Well... kinda. As pyite wrote above, the main idea behind Allens framework is that you should not have to think about a project or thing you want accomplished more than necessary. By making sure that your subgoals are actual physical actions that you need to do to move the project further along you dont have to "rethink" this step every time you read your todo-list, instead you just "do".
Say for instance that you have a ToDo-list with an item such as "plan new-years party", with the first subgoal being "find location". This is not a physical action, and everytime you see the list you now need to rethink how you are going to decide on one. Instead, Allen wants you to write something like "Call Bob to get ideas for party locations". Now when you look at your list (sorted under @phone so that you can do all phone-related stuff at the same time) you know exactly what to do next. Think hard once is the general idea.
The same reasoning holds for North Korea. Morals have never been their strong point, so send forth some peasant to collect berries or whatever. Watch him get questioned(shot?) by a large stationary device and then back off. One.50 cal sniper round through those big nice expensive sensors and whops, you now have a large hole in your security net. Do this at a couple of places at the same time for added fun. Much as the "million rounds per second"-gun this one has serious tactical weaknesses.
In Sweden it is often not the fear of either competition or loss of assets that turn people away from creating new startups, but rather the social stigma associated with failure. The general attitude is one of "If you've failed, you have not helped us build a better society" and it can be really hard to get a second chance if you try to restart a career or have any business with a bank. To have been responsible for a bankruptcy is often seen as a telling sign that there is something seriously wrong about the way you do business.
However, that view is not shared by those who actively engage in startup activities such as VCs or "serial entreprenours" where a startup that crashed can be as a really valuble lesson for those involved. It does limit the pool of people who will consider starting their own company though, which in some ways explain the relatively low number of startups.
By increasing the capacity of copper to (best case) 100Mps they are only prolonging the inevitable. Fiberoptics has an upper limit that is immensely higher...
The success or failure of technology based companies is very hard to predict, which is ultimatley the reason for these insane M&A costs. What the VC-managers and larger companies know is that the distribution of these successes/failures is, in statistical terms, highly skewed. A very small number of investments(a few percent) yeild the return necessary to cover the cost of all other investments and a decent profit.
With a skewed distribution the Law of Large Numbers does not work, and trying to use portfolio management to spread the risks does not result in a convergence to a normal distribution of the number of successes. The rare find of an investment that seems to be one of these "successes" is thus highly valuable for the buying firm. It just might be worth a couple of billions to secure the next Google...
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See this Economist article for a more wider perspective on 3d printing and the impact it will have on the manufacturing industry
So, what he's suggesting is . . . you take your larger goals, and then you break them up into a sequence of smaller subgoals?
Sort of like a hierarchy?
Well... kinda. As pyite wrote above, the main idea behind Allens framework is that you should not have to think about a project or thing you want accomplished more than necessary. By making sure that your subgoals are actual physical actions that you need to do to move the project further along you dont have to "rethink" this step every time you read your todo-list, instead you just "do".
Say for instance that you have a ToDo-list with an item such as "plan new-years party", with the first subgoal being "find location". This is not a physical action, and everytime you see the list you now need to rethink how you are going to decide on one. Instead, Allen wants you to write something like "Call Bob to get ideas for party locations". Now when you look at your list (sorted under @phone so that you can do all phone-related stuff at the same time) you know exactly what to do next. Think hard once is the general idea.
In Sweden it is often not the fear of either competition or loss of assets that turn people away from creating new startups, but rather the social stigma associated with failure. The general attitude is one of "If you've failed, you have not helped us build a better society" and it can be really hard to get a second chance if you try to restart a career or have any business with a bank. To have been responsible for a bankruptcy is often seen as a telling sign that there is something seriously wrong about the way you do business.
However, that view is not shared by those who actively engage in startup activities such as VCs or "serial entreprenours" where a startup that crashed can be as a really valuble lesson for those involved. It does limit the pool of people who will consider starting their own company though, which in some ways explain the relatively low number of startups.
By increasing the capacity of copper to (best case) 100Mps they are only prolonging the inevitable. Fiberoptics has an upper limit that is immensely higher...
The success or failure of technology based companies is very hard to predict, which is ultimatley the reason for these insane M&A costs. What the VC-managers and larger companies know is that the distribution of these successes/failures is, in statistical terms, highly skewed. A very small number of investments(a few percent) yeild the return necessary to cover the cost of all other investments and a decent profit.
With a skewed distribution the Law of Large Numbers does not work, and trying to use portfolio management to spread the risks does not result in a convergence to a normal distribution of the number of successes. The rare find of an investment that seems to be one of these "successes" is thus highly valuable for the buying firm. It just might be worth a couple of billions to secure the next Google...