Tom Talks

If you’ve been following this current series of posts based on the new book by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer and Paul B. Brown called Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future (Harvard Business Review Press, March 2012), you know about the “Act-Learn-Build” approach

Trying new stuff is part of the fun of running a business. During the past ten years or so we’ve tried five new business ideas: one was a flat out failure, one is slightly better than a financial wash and three have worked quite well. (That’s a pretty good success rate considering the old baseball [

On May 31, we’ll be celebrating Intertech’s 20 year anniversary, a record 2011, and our new building.  Customers, partners, and friends are all welcome to attend our open house from 2:00 to 6:00. Jim White, an Intertech Partner and Java/Open Source expert will be presenting on Groovy. Andrew Troelse

What do you call people who are experts at navigating extreme uncertainty while minimizing risk? Serial entrepreneurs is the correct answer according to the authors of Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future (see previous post for complete citation).  Serial entrepreneurs don

Minnesota Business magazine announced the Best 100 Companies to Work for in 2012.  Intertech made the list for the mid-sized company category.  My thanks to Minnesota Business magazine, our employees, and customers for making this possible. On June 4, 2012, at an event, the rankings will be announce

Nike’s “Just Do It!” may go down in business books as one of the most successful corporate slogans of all times. Americans in particular seem intuitively to understand the simplicity and common sense behind this concise call to action. So why do so many companies have difficulty launching new ventur

Remember former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who was fond of asking, “How’m I doin?! While Koch was more brazen than the typical modest Minnesotan, his need to know if he was measuring up to expectations is fairly universal. In the study of thriving workplaces that I’ve been writing about in this series