50 Famous Leadership Quotes from Successful Entrepreneurs

Below are the list of 50 quotes taken from successful entrepreneurs. 

1. “If there is such a thing as good leadership, it is to give a good example. I have to do so for all the IKEA employees.” – Ingvar Kamprad

2. “The speed of the leader determines the speed of the gang.” – Mary Kay Ash

3. “People problems must sometimes be dealt with harshly. When you make an example of someone, make sure everyone knows what the lesson is. Punish one, teach a hundred.” – The Mafia Manager

4. “Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don’t act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.” – Bill Gates

5. “Kindness is more powerful than compulsion.” – Charles Schwab

6. “There are no working hours for leaders.” – James Cardinal Gibbons

7. “Don’t encourage overtime. Tell your people that the best way to impress you is to do a great job in the time allotted for it and then go home and relax.” – The Mafia Manager

8. “A real leader faces the music even when he doesn’t like the tune.” – Arnold H. Glassgow

9. “A little thing is a little thing but faithfulness in a little thing is a great thing.” – Hudson Taylor

10. “Be as careful as to the books you read as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.” – Poxton Hood

11. “Beware of those who stand aloof and greet each venture with reproof. The world would stop if things were run by men who say ‘it can’t be done.” – Samuel Glover

12. “Be great in little things.” – St. Francis Xavier

13. “Be a life long student, read as many books as possible.” – Nelson Mandela

14. “Calamity is the test of integrity.” – Samuel Richardson

15. “Your arrows do not carry, observed the master; because they do not reach far enough spiritually.” – Zen Master

16. “Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste death but once.” – William Shakespeare

17. “You are in a war. You must plan to take the other guy down first and do it. Winning is not the best thing; it’s the only thing. If it were not, no one would keep score. To win the war, you must take charge. You must set the organization’s objectives, establish a chain of control, delegate, appraise performance, adjust and act.” – The Mafia Manager

18. “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” – Winston Churchill

19. “When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough.” – Donald Trump

20. “To win one hundred battles in one hundred victories is not the ACME of skills. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the ACME of skill.” – Sun Tzu

21. “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable as a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other thing under the sun.” – John D. Rockefeller

22. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

23. “To lead people, walk behind them.” – Lao Tzu

24. “If you see a snake, just kill it. Don’t appoint a committee on snakes.” – Henry Ross Perot

25. “The most important thing in your business relationships is your reputation for honesty. If you can genuinely and sincerely fake honesty, you will be a success. Never doubt it.” – The Mafia Manager

26. “Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity. I want people moving and shaking the earth and they are going to make mistakes.” – Henry Ross Perot

27. “After loyalty come ability, skill and competence. Promote only able people (and the occasional humbler). You find able people by testing them.” – The Mafia Manager

28. “Do not fear when your enemies criticize you. Beware when they applaud.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

29. “Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” – John F. Kennedy

30. “Fire is the test of gold, adversity of strong men.” – Seneca

31. “Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.” – John D. Rockefeller

32. “Be prepared for betrayal from anyone on your staff, but especially from those you have the most trust in. Every betrayal must be repaid as quickly and as publicly as possible. If you should let a betrayal go unpunished, you are through as a leader.” – The Mafia Manager

33. “When people are placed in positions slightly above what they expect, they are apt to excel.” – Richard Branson

34. “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgments.” – Dr Warne W. Dyer

35. “He who establishes his argument by noise is weak and command shows that his reason is weak.” – Montaigne

36. “He who believes is strong; he who doubt is weak. Strong convictions precede great action.” – J. F. Clarke

37. “At meetings, have someone else float your newest ideas. Watch the reaction of the rest of your staff. Note who opposes, who supports, who links up with whom. See who responds with an open mind, whose mind is already made up, one way or the other. If you are going to walk on water, you have to know where the rocks are.” – The Mafia Manager

38. “Giving people self confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do because then they will act.” – Jack Welch

39. “It takes character and control to be understanding and forgiving.” – Dale Carnegie

40. “Before making an important decision, get as much as you can of the best information available and review it carefully, analyze it and draw up worst case scenarios. Add up the plus or minus factors, discuss it with your team and do what your guts tell you to do.” – The Mafia Manager

41. “The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.” – Steve Jobs

42. “Inventories can be managed but people must be led.” – Henry Ross Perot

43. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and only five Minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

44. “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton

45. “Don’t be too familiar with your followers; it may at first inspire affection but eventually, like all familiarity; it will breed contempt.” – The Mafia Manager

46. “I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way.” – Lee Iacocca

47. “It’s alright to be Goliath but always act like David.” – Philip Knight

48. “If you want to be great and successful, choose people who are great and successful and walk side by side with them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

49. “If you hear a voice within you saying ‘you are not a painter’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh

50. “There will be times when you will have to be abrasive, even brutal to members of your staff. Don’t worry that your people will say bad things about you because of this. They already have. But in general, try to be pleasant and accommodating. Try to please the greatest number who work for you that you can; antagonize the fewest. Blow smoke.” – The Mafia Manager

Don't Look for the Next Opportunity. The One You Have in Hand is the Opportunity

Do we have to wait for success? How long do we have to wait for the real absolute opportunity? Well, the next opportunity would not probably happens. During our current projects, when we make mistakes and all things gone terribly wrong and everything tend to get worst and messy.

In the end, what we always do is give up and just get over it. To straighten all the mistakes, we make a false promise that the next jobs would be a good one and it will be the real opportunity for improvement.

However, the same situation loops consistently and we are still waiting for the right choice to execute the right move. The waiting continues and follow us until the dead end. Ended up like a total losers.

What is in your desk right now is the actual opportunity. Bring the ultimate efforts and determination and do your best now not then. It is the time now. Don't look for the next opportunity, the one you have in hand is the opportunity.

Quote by Paul Arden from the book "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be"

Content insight by Redzuan Harris, Cariblogger.com

Communicating Creatively with Customers

Businesses that know how to effectively communicate with their customers typically outperform their competitors. Consumers have become more savvy and require more engagement than ever before. It's important to consider that every customer is different, but there are some genuine factors that improve the quality of any service provided. That starts with how you communicate with your customers, but it's important to understand the new and exciting ways you can do that.

The Amazing "Social Media"

Lately, the entire concept of social networking and social media has become a focal point in online customer interaction. Customers online become accustomed to seeing a strong social media presence from all of the businesses whose services he or she uses. Social media tools include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, and the blog world. It's important for a company to have a strong following in each of these areas of networking in order to reach a wide audience and to appear to the rest of the world that other people are using and enjoying the service your business provides. There are a wide variety of social media strategies, and many are time consuming. It's important to gauge the level of social media your business needs before pursuing it further.

Communicate All the Time

Companies that are constantly communicating with their customers are giving them the information he or she needs, when he or she needs it. Many successful and prominent businesses send text messages online to all of their contacts. Over time, these businesses acquire a vast amount of user information and contact methods. More recently, online registration forms have been including an area to input phone numbers. This is another way of being able to communicate with customers. According to CBC/Radio-Canada, almost 92% of online consumers use a cell phone. This means that a simple text message can reach almost every single customer in a business and convey to them important information.

Email is Still King

Although not considered modern and exciting, email is still one of the best ways to communicate with customers. Emails can influence customers' feelings toward a company and its services. They are also used to provide information, distribute surveys, and create special email-only promotions. Emails go directly into a customer's inbox, which makes the conversation almost personal. Successful businesses have advanced email forms and newsletters that captivate an audience. Structuring emails so that they emit a positive response will keep users satisfied and assured that they picked the right company.

Reap the Rewards

A successful business can reach out to a wide audience of customers and convince them to spend money. In a marketplace that grows more complex and connected on a daily basis, customers are craving information that is attractive and doesn't waste their time. If a company can use communication tools to perfect this, it will receive a direct increase in customers and revenue.

By Juan Harris, Cariblogger.com

Do Not Seek Praise. Seek Criticsm

Appraisal is pleasing. Indeed. People are more likely to seek for praise than criticism. We tends to be a pretender rather to be a critical. We love to filter out all the bad and get to hear what we want to hear. If you have produced a piece of work, you will get your colleague of friends for approval and get other people to say good thing about it. What about criticism?

"Please tell me you like my works".

"I don't like people who don't appreciate my jobs".

"I think my work is better".

It probably OK to seek for praise. But it is better to crave for criticism. Try to view from other perspective. Don't see what good you have done, get to find what are the better things that you should have done.

"Whats wrong with it?".

"How can I make this better?".

"What are the things that you don't like about it?".

Try to convert your question and get to know the negative side of your ideas. You may get more improvement's ideas to make it better. Do Not Seek Praise. Seek Criticism.

Quote by Paul Arden from the book "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be"

Content insight by Redzuan Harris, Cariblogger.com

Books Every Startup Founder Should Read

Are you a startup founder? Do you need advice on what to do next but don’t know where to start looking? Do you feel like giving up on your company? Many startup companies do not last long because, after the company is started, founders and/or co-founders do not know what to do next.

They are stuck in the beginning and don’t know how to get to the next level, having received incorrect advice or they have not been advised at all. No growth can take place because you are stuck in the positions for too long.

The best way to move forward, is to gain some knowledge and then apply it. As they say, ‘Knowledge is power’; so knowledge without action is rendered powerless. It is not enough to know. You have to do something with what you have received.

Here is a list of some of the best books on the market for any startup founder. Whether you like to read or not, should not influence your decision on whether you are going read these books. In these books are some great strategies on how to make your company a great success. That should be your number one reason for reading these books.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

This has become the second bible to most startup founders. If you are dedicated to effectively and efficiently building a business, this is the book to read. Lean manufacturing inspired all of the great lessons found in the book.

Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki

If you want some all-in-one start up advice, take some time out to read this 500-page book. It will be worth it. It may take you some time, but it will be worth it.

The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noah Wasserman

As a startup founder, you will face some common problems. Wasserman insightfully gives some great advice on how to deal with these.

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

Johnson outlines seven guiding principles in this book. They are applicable not only to startups but everywhere. If you follow these principles, you could come up with some great ideas to make company a success.

The Intelligent Entrepreneurby Bill Murphy

The book chronicles the stories of three graduates (all from Harvard’s Business School) and their businesses. Some great one are ‘Start-up as a couple’, ‘Founders’ relationships with investors’, and ‘Business model pivots and other personal accounts’.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

The author is the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Wired. In the book, Anderson explains why freemium is the future of technology business.

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

When you launch, your product sales will go up. In the course of time, sales can decrease. In this book Moore explains why this is. He also explains how you can prevent your product from completely disappearing by adjusting your marketing strategy at certain times.

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

The book visually shows visual patterns of the common business model; it opens your mind to the business end of what you are building.

Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston

This book features interviews with the likes of Max Levchin (Paypal), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Stephen Kaufer (TripAdviror), Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us) and more. This book will make you realize that even these great companies all had to start somewhere and they all had their challenges. Today they are a huge success, yours can be too. You also get to see things from the founders’ perspective.

The Startup Playbook by David S. Kidder

The book contains some key practices, behaviours and ideas for success. Key founders like Caterina Fake (Flickr and Hunch), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Sara Blakely (Spanx) and many more also share some great advice for startup founders.

Start-up: A Resource Book of The Founder by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

The book shows you, step by step, how to create your new business. It also contains the management of the startup projects course.

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

This book is a definite guide for anyone who wants to start anything. It lays out all the tactics of bootstrapping, branding, rainmaking, positioning, recruiting, and pitching.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

The book as an account of the success of Zappos, what the founders and employees went through and how they ultimately came up with their winning strategy. A great book if you feel like you are ready to give up on your company.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

This book is known as one of the best known motivational books. It is also the first one of its kind. Since first published 1936, it has been ‘updated’ quite a few times. If you want to get the best of what the author has to offer in this book, find a copy that was published before the 1960’s. It will be worth all of your efforts.

Summary

Some of the authors of these books, gave a vivid description of what it takes to make a success of your startup company. They shared their own personal stories, or relayed those of others. Whether you are in the beginning stages of your startup or not, I’m sure you will be able to find a book, even in this list, that will help you at the level that you are now.

"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves"

E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951.

By Leandre de Bruyn, Cariblogger.com

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know

After reading this chapter, It makes me feel bloated. Here are the situations. You are a talented and knowledgeable IT professional. You have an impressive and outstanding skills that makes you big score on your salary and earn company respect. Despite of your infamous fame in the company, you are shy and polite person. Love to stay alone not socialize. Nobody knows you.

Your friend, however, is just a plain person, less knowledge and lack of IT skills. But great in knowing and getting around people inside and outside the company. Your friend, print a business card and with good words and socialize with people. Been accepted into the community and been well recognized as a IT guys with great attitude.

Your friend, is a somebody to the people and was granted, blessed and appreciated with lots of opportunity. While you, with lack of social skills and reluctance to be around people will stay forever alone. Unnoticed and nobody to the people.

Yes. This is the reality of life. It's not what you know, It's who you know. Cheers.

Quote by Paul Arden from the book "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be"

Content insight by Redzuan Harris, Cariblogger.com

How to Convert a Great Idea into a Reality?

source : http://visual.ly

Some Facts on Entrepreneurs

Source

http://antiwantrepreneur.com

9 Entrepreneurs who didn't take NO for an answer.

If at 1st you don't succeed, try again! These entrepreneurs did, and found huge success

source : http://visual.ly

Top 10 Technologies and Trends for 2014

1. Mobile Device Diversity and Management

“Enterprise policies on employee-owned hardware usage need to be thoroughly reviewed and, where necessary, updated and extended…. Set policies to define clear expectations around what they can and can't do. Balance flexibility with confidentiality and privacy requirements.”

2. Mobile Apps and Applications

“Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. Gartner recommends that developers focus on creating expanded user interface models including richer voice and video that can connect people in new and different ways.”

3. The Internet of Everything

“The Internet is expanding beyond PCs and mobile devices into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and consumer items such as cars and televisions…. The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models – Manage; Monetize; Operate; Extend. These four basic models can be applied to any of the four "internets” (people, things, information and places).  Enterprises should not limit themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (i.e., assets and machines) has the potential to leverage these four models.”

4. Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker

“Bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises should design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible.”

5. Cloud/Client Architecture

“In the cloud/client architecture, the client is a rich application running on an Internet-connected device, and the server is a set of application services hosted in an increasingly elastically scalable cloud computing platform. The cloud is the control point and system or record and applications can span multiple client devices.”

6. The Era of Personal Cloud

“The personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services…. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role.”

7. Software Defined Anything

“Software-defined anything (SDx) is a collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning.”

8. Web-Scale IT

“Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting by rethinking positions across several dimensions.”

9. Smart Machines

“Through 2020, the smart machine era will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal assistants, smart advisors (such as IBM Watson), advanced global industrial systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT.”

10. 3-D Printing

“While very expensive ‘additive manufacturing’ devices have been around for 20 years, the market for devices ranging from $50,000 to $500, and with commensurate material and build capabilities, is nascent yet growing rapidly.”

Source

http://www.information-management.com/gallery/top-10-technologies-and-trends-for-2014-10024978-1.html

How to be a Successful Muslim Entrepreneur?

Do you want to be a successful Muslim entrepreneur?

Prophet has pointed out that the business is being a high position with Allah Almighty, as his saying that : "9 out of 10 of livelihood (available) through the business" (Narrated by Tirmidhi).

The Quran and Hadith set out this code for every Muslim to abide by and it encourages the following traits in a Muslim.

1) Commitment to Faith - the successful entrepreneurs are focused on their worship to Allah(SWT) because they know all prosperity and success comes from Him alone.

2) Impeccable Character - the successful entrepreneurs held high values which are celebrated in Islam such as responsibility, keeping promises, honesty.

3) Creativity and Innovative Thinking - the successful entrepreneurs need to apply Islamic principles to solving problems in many fields, such as medicine, agriculture, food, technology that have great implications for the Muslim Ummah

4) Future Oriented - Successful Muslim entrepreneurs know Allah(SWT) will  ask everyone to be accountable for how they used their time, wealth, health and knowledge and they make sure they prioritize their life accordingly.

5) Motivation - the successful entrepreneurs are driven by their passion to excel and achieve their goals.

6) Be the Best - the successful entrepreneurs work on acquiring the cutting edge knowledge in their fields and always reading about current trends. 

7) Self- Confidence - A successful entrepreneur doesn’t listen to naysayers.

8) Do What You Love - Money isn’t a motivator for human beings, working for something higher than we are is.

9) Be Persistent - A successful entrepreneur always does what it takes to get the job done no matter what obstacles get thrown their way. 

10) Focus on Solving Problems -  A successful entrepreneur follow their dream, remember to focus on helping others find and accomplish their dreams/goals first.

source : http://hodansibrahim.com

Outcome-Driven Innovation

Do you still need to understand the innovation process.

Outcome-Driven Innovation transforms jobs to be done theory into practice. Tony Ulwick, Founder for Strategyn successfully create new innovation strategy and innovation process. 12 element has be discovered such as Customers, Market, Need, Opportunities, Segmentation, Sizing, Competition, Strategy, Pricing, Ideation, Testing and Positioning.

Find out how the best innovation process has be done.

source : http://strategyn.com

8 things successful people do, and why they work

Do you have what it takes to rank among the remarkably successful? There are people whose names are synonymous with success. These people work differently than most. Discover the habits of the most remarkably successful, and find out why those habits work.

Source: visual.ly

How to Never Give Up on Becoming an Entrepreneur

One more howto, which may become a page for our book Becoming an Entrepreneur (http://kck.st/BeAnE), the one that talks about failure, giving up, starting up again, and the odds of success

Source: visual.ly

9 Signs You Might Be an Entrepreneur

You might totally disagree with this. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Dell and many many more are successful examples of Entrepreneur. They didn't hate the status quo, were rebels, resisted authority, were bad at small talk or didn't fit the norms. They just worked hard and didn't relax, had passion and were focused on what they wanted to achieve. 

Source: visual.ly

Do Entrepreneurs need to go to college?

The tech community is split down the middle on this one; in a tech startup, does college education matter or does a college dropout with a big idea have just as good a shot at finding success as an entrepreneur?

Source: visual.ly

Inside the mind of startup entrepreneur

An infographic that not only displays what we already know (that unfortunately 75% of startups end up failing), but also offers solutions to any potential obstacle.

Source: visual.ly

The Evolution of the Office

Office culture is changing and work is evolving. Allowing teams to own their work and promote freedom is an important part in building a culture that's innovative and inspiring. Let's look at the history of the office to help shape our future.

Source: visual-ly

The end of Kodak's moment.

History of Kodak and it's downfall, completed for an infographics class.

Source: visual-ly.

Growth of m-commerce and mobile payment solutions

M-commerce has become part of our lives. In fact, it’s overtaking e-commerce. Retailers must understand what their customers prefer. Are you a retailer or a business wondering if you should have a commerce app as an extension to your current platform? Once you learn this infographic, you will soon realize that having a mobile strategy to reach out to more customers through mobile is a no brainer. Sound businesses always listen to their customers to understand their preferences. This infographic shows you what they are. Check out Judopay’s mobile payment solutions to accept in app card payments for your m commerce applications. 

Source: visual-ly

A PRODUCTIVE day in the life of a Social Media Marketer

A Social Media Marketer needs to get a lot done over the space of a day and they use lots of tools to help. This infographic shows 29 social media tools that marketers use!

Source: visual.ly

31 Insanely Easy And Clever DIY Projects

Our group just presented a book review, "INSANELY SIMPLE THE OBSESSION THAT DRIVES APPLE’S SUCCESS" by Ken Segall. In this book Ken Segall highlighted the 10 elements of "Simplicity" in making Apple product innovative and creative. The elements are:

• Think Brutal
• Think Small
• Think Minimal
• Think Motion
• Think Iconic
• Think Phrasal
• Think Casual
• Think Human
• Think Skeptic
• Think War

 I'm not going to talk about Apple products but I would like to relate the book title "INSANELY" and the 10 elements of "Simplicity" with DIY (Do It Yourself) project which we can do at our home or even in our office.

Use Bookends as Floating Bookshelves

Nail Polish Key Covers

Build a Bookshelf With Two Ladders and Planks of Wood

Create a Couch From Wooden Pallet

Make a Bike Rack out of Those Wooden Pallet

and many more at http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/31-insanely-easy-and-clever-diy-projects

Social Entrepreneurship - TOMS

Social entrepreneurship is the process of pursuing innovative solutions to social problems. Business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, but social entrepreneurs also take into account a positive return to society. This video taken from YouTube shows program organized by an one of social entrepreneur Mr Blake Mycoskie - the founder of TOMS shoe.

Source: Wikipedia, Youtube.

How Two IT Guys Turned Their Love For Apple Products Into A Multi-Million Company

In 2002, Chip Pearson and Zach Halmstad were IT guys who loved Macs. Halmstad was managing a large installation of Macs at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Pearson had a company called The Foundation, a Mac reseller, that helped other businesses use Apple products.
Flash forward 11 years to Tuesday. The company they founded together, JAMF Software, just raised $30 million from Summit Partners, its first second VC investment. (UPDATED: the company raised $3 million three years ago.)

In 2002, they were bucking the trend. Those were the days when most businesses ran Windows. There were few IT tools to help them manage a lot of Macs, to do things like install software across hundreds of PCs, set them up on a corporate network, troubleshoot problems.

Today JAMF has over 4,000 customers, including 34 of the Fortune 500; is managing over 3.8 million devices, between Macs, iPads and iPhones; and employs 275 workers (over 100 hired in the last year alone).

"When we started out, it was a labor of love. We thought that someday we might have 30 people working for the company," Pearson, CEO, told Business Insider.

"[2002] was the year that the first Apple store opened, the first iPod was released, OS 10 was pretty new. For us it was always something that we needed to do, more than thinking it would turn into a successful mid-sized business. It was out of a love for Apple, Apple's deep commitment to its end users," he says.

After the iPhone launched and business users started bringing it to work, JAMF took off, in part because there's a peculiar trend that happens with Apple devices, Pearson says: People tend to go from one Apple device to lots of them.

"We believe the world is going to go from a one-device worker to a three-Apple device worker. One of the interesting things we've seen is no matter where they come in, whether someone starts out with the Mac, the iPhone or the iPad, they end up where they want more of those Apple technologies for their day-to-day use," he says.

Because of that, enterprise use of Apple devices has exploded, he says. Enterprises are renewing their contracts with JAMF with ever-more devices. Revenue has grown 70% at JAMF since Apple introduced the iPhone, he says.

JAMF isn't the only software that helps enterprises manage Apple devices. JAMF plays in a hot enterprise area called Mobile Device Management. It competes with Microsoft System Center (although System Center is geared toward a company that mostly uses Windows with a few Macs/iOS devices thrown in). Others include MobileIron and AirWatch. (AirWatch nabbed a huge $200 million venture investment, also its first, in February).

But JAMF differs in that it only manages Apple devices, not Windows. It's success is a big indicator of how much progress Apple has made with enterprise users, without much effort or attention to them.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/it-guys-who-love-apple-make-millions-2013-12#ixzz2o6j4q3jU

7 Innovation Myths Holding You Back

In her book "The Power of Why" Amanda Lang argues that innovation is simpler than you think.
One reason we’re endlessly focused on expert innovation, or as she calls it, innovation window dressing, is our core belief that innovation is difficult.

According to one recent study, 68% of business leaders believe that innovators are “born and cannot be made.”

However, scientists have shown the exact opposite is true. For instance, a landmark study of identical twins who were separated at birth found that although 80 percent of the variation on IQ tests is attributable to genetics, only 30 percent of performance on creativity tests can be explained that way. In other words, 70 percent of creativity is related to environment, which means that it’s entirely possible for just about anyone to learn to think more innovatively.

What is innovation?
Innovation is not, as many people believe, synonymous with invention and therefore out of the reach of the average person. It’s simpler than you might think. You don’t have to create something mind-blowing and entirely new, like the automobile or the Internet. Often, innovation simply means making incremental improvements to something that already exists … And frequently that’s accomplished by borrowing and adapting an idea or approach or technology from another field altogether.

Sounds a lot like how Gutenberg developed the printing press. “An important part of Gutenberg’s genius,” writes Steven Johnson, “lay not in conceiving an entirely new technology from scratch, but instead from borrowing a mature technology from an entirely different field, and putting it to work to solve an unrelated problem.”

So innovation is often remixing and cross-pollinating ideas. Most innovation starts with curiosity. Can this be done? Can this be improved? Why won’t this work?

A lot of us, though, just don’t do this. On the job and at home, many of us hit on an answer that sounds “right,” or that others approve of, then figure question period is over. We burrow down and focus on implementing whatever solution we’ve devised, unwilling to revisit or rethink it. And that’s a mistake. Sometimes it’s the follow-up question, or the one after that, that is going to field the game-changing revelation. …. Just stopping at the first plausible response is how a lot of us get stuck and find ourselves unable to solve problems.

Sounds like we’re losing our grit. We’ve been brought up to think we’re so smart and clever and that we don’t have to work hard for anything that we just give up when we come against a tough problem.
The main difference between innovators and the rest of us is that innovators ask more and better questions, “and they are more driven to find answers and embrace them, even if the answers are first not what they wanted or expected to find,” Lang writes. “They have less in common with Einstein, frankly, than with young children.”

Kids do a lot of things we’ve learned not to do, ignoring conventional wisdom in the process. Most times the results are as you’d expect — sticking your tongue on cold metal? Yea, that was a bad idea. But sometimes the ideas stick and they come up with something we never would have thought of.

So when kids ask questions, encourage them. When you don’t answer questions kids do an odd thing: they stop asking.

That’s exactly what we don’t want them to do, for a number of reasons. For starters, highly curious kids learn more the more they find out, the more they realize they don’t know and the deeper they dig for information, whether the topic they’re interested in is computers or rap or chemistry. Curiosity is, therefore, strongly correlated with intelligence. … Researchers found that kids who had been equally intelligent at age three were, at eleven, no longer equal. The ones who’d been more curious at three were now also more intelligent, which isn’t terribly surprising when you consider how curiosity drives the acquisition of knowledge.

“In the industrial economy, the person who wins is the expert,” explains Claude Legrand, co-author of "Innovative Intelligence."

“In the knowledge economy, the person who wins is the one who has the process to solve complex problems.”

Lang also blows up some myths about innovation.

Myth 1: Innovation is about the newest thing.
Sometimes a great innovation is indeed a “step-change”: the motorized vehicle that displaces the horse and buggy. But most innovation is incremental. From my own favourite, life-improving innovation — the curved shower rod — to just about any product or service you can name, little improvements and developments are being introduced all the time. …

Myth 2: Innovation is a solo activity
Consistent with our tendency to think of innovation solely in terms of mind-blowing new inventions, we often think of innovators as geniuses, oddballs with wild ideas and wilder hair. People who occupy the far end of the innovation spectrum were probably less easily tamed by our school systems and may therefore be less comfortable in corporate environments. But even mavericks and mad scientist types need other people to implement the innovations they’ve dreamed up, and usually, those other people wind up incrementally improving their inventions in some way. …

Myth 3: Innovation can’t be taught
Every day, people like Colonel Rolf Smith teach organizations, businesses and individuals how to get in touch with their inner innovator. But teaching innovative thinking isn’t like teaching Math or French— it’s more a matter of teaching people how to harness their existing natural curiosity in order to unleash their innate capacity for innovation.

Myth 4: Innovation is top-down
Remember the flocking theory? Flying in formation, birds on the periphery — where the risks are, and where you can see more — send messages and warning signals to bring flying in the centre, where it’s more protected and safer. Similarly, in a fast-food restaurant, the clerk at the counter cottons on long before anyone at head office does that the new trays are flimsy and hard to stack. In a hospital, the nurses may resist washing their hands unless there’s a way to communicate both up and down the food chain that the problem is the harsh cleanser they’re made to use. Smart companies like Four Seasons and Whole Foods explicitly recognize that the closer an employee is to the end-user, the more likely he or she is to have concrete ideas about how to innovate — and the more important it is for the higher-ups to listen.

Myth 5: You can’t force innovation
It’s very true that you can’t tell others to start innovating pronto, and expect much good to come of it. But you can create an environment that encourages and rewards curiosity and therefore promotes engagement and innovation.

Myth 6: Change is always good
Tell that to the product team that dreamed up New Coke. The funny thing about that epic failure was that the beverage itself actually tested well — people liked the stuff. What didn’t fly was the implication that there was something wrong with Old Coke. … The sheer math on ideas suggests that about half of them will be lousy. But that’s not catastrophic unless the lesson taken is that there’s no point in continuing to dream up anything new, and it’s safer to stick with what’s always worked in the past.

Myth 7: Innovation isn’t for everyone
Let’s put this one to rest forever. Remember how kids in developing countries respond to the Soccket? When they see the ball, they almost immediately start asking questions and dreaming up their own innovations. Innovative thinking is contagious. It’s a bug that anyone can catch.
Since our ancestors first stood upright, humans beings have been innovating: more and better tools, different and improved circumstances, more effective and efficient ways of doing things. It’s pretty silly to think we’ve suddenly all lost that basic drive now that we’ve hit the twenty-first century. If anything, our capacity to innovate is exponentially greater because of our unprecedented ability to share information and ideas, which also makes it much easier to take something from one field and apply it to another.