Last September, eating a peach with chocolate peanut butter ice cream in my kitchen a little after midnight, I realized I was happy. Not in the way you realize you’ve forgotten your keys – more the way you notice your breathing only after it’s slowed. Nothing special about the combination: cold peach from the fridge,…
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The most profound changes seem to require us to pull away from the very people who could support us through them. Counterintuitive, even cruel – yet this pattern appears everywhere we look – in nature, in personal growth, in creative breakthroughs. The more I’ve explored this paradox, the more I’ve come to see it not…
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The essay “Building Something New” maps the territory of company creation with all its contradictions – patterns that usually hold, except when they don’t. Principles that often apply, except when violating them works better. Mathematics that generally governs, except when exceptions prove more instructive than rules. That essay reveals the fundamental uncertainty at the heart…
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What happens when you build something from nothing? I’ve lived this question and been with many others who have – the companies that succeeded and the many more that failed. Certain patterns surface. Not the glossy narratives we tell at conferences, but uncomfortable realities that aren’t particularly inspiring. About ninety percent of attempts fail, but…
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