(After meeting Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for the second time last night at the Future Forward Event “What’s Next In Tech 2009,” I decided to put a fork in my notes and get this up on the blog.)
Mr. Bricklin’s book, Bricklin On Technology is a thoughtful and highly detailed history of his involvement, understanding, and thought leadership in the computer technology and software industry. To me, it was an enjoyable, yet extremely vicarious read, giving me the why about the “what’s” in my career as well as lots of new ideas. My career has been mainly about starting and helping businesses and I love ideas for solutions – old or new! (There are all sorts of resources on the web about Dan Bricklin and his long time partner in crime, Bob Frankson so I won’t go into their biographies except to say they created Visicalc.)
What are the most useful things in the book for a Startup Entrepreneur?
An Entrepreneurial Design Pattern: On Technology presents a dozens of business and information patterns and ideas in case study form. Mr. Bricklin’s experiences and observations can serve as a pattern for new entrepreneurial experiences driven your ideas. This is to say Bricklin On Technology is about the development and application of knowledge as articulated by systems. Look at the book for patterns and ideas about how to confront theories that you might have about a business problem or notion about how information is used.
Mr. Bricklin likes plaid shirts or at least he wears them. Last night, he was teased about his plaid shirts by Scott Kirsner of Innovation Economy. Mr. Kirstner was the moderator at the Boston College School of Management Future Forward Seminar “What’s Next in Tech 2009.” Metaphorical? Perhaps, an emblematical demonstration of making order of things – just like Mr. Bricklin’s concept of how businesses tendency to think linearly versus non-linearly.
One example: Mr. Bricklin confronts the notion of “The Tragedy of the Commons” and what we now know as Web 2.0 (crowd sourcing, social networking) with a concept called the “Cornucopia of the Commons.”
Mr. Bricklin doesn’t just write an essay or blog entry (the ever-growing repository of his public ideas.) He contacts the particular thought leader fostering the idea and has a meaningful discussion or debate with them. Shouldn’t every entrepreneur do the same?
Its about the solution, not the software or the technology: You’re not going to find bits or bytes in this book, you’re going to find fundamental notions about information’s impact on society and how technology can help. Even last night, in the back of the auditorium, Bob Frankston was saying “Its not about the technology.” As I have long held that belief, this meant a great deal to me. Both Mr. Bricklin and Mr. Frankston have flipped more than a few bits in their day but it always has been about the value of technology to business and societies and not technology for its own sake. The book consistently demonstrates this important systems construct.
Observations and Translations of People, Seminal Events and Essays: Throughout his career, Dan Bricklin met and interacted with an incredible number of people working on improving the value and the articulation of information in society. You’ll find his experiences, observations and findings about @DaveWiner, @DonBulens, (and a great many others), the rising importance of tagging and semantics by systems (not by people), observations about interfaces and what makes good systems, culling old patents for new ideas, the importance of Open Source, and what gets a developer excited.
Recommendations about how to read Bricklin On Technology: I’m not going to profess to tell you how to read this but you might find it very useful to have paper clips (or dog ear like I do) and a highlighter. There are very few books that I read more than once. This one was different. I read once for the stories, highlighting what stuck out the most to me. I’m reading it again for patterns and I’m pretty sure I’ll surface an idea or two – either to help a client or to build some great software myself.
Who are they to me as an entrepreneur?: Long ago, I used an Osborne to mimic algorithms of a business simulation game running on a main frame. Now, almost 30 years later and I’m still trying to crack a business game. Its running on a different system called the Internet, and millions of people are involved. Today’s algorithm is very similar to the one in the business simulation game I played (but it is less linear!) I like the outlier solutions and enjoy helping companies who have them. I’m glad to have met Mssrs. Bricklin and Frankston.
If you’re an entrepreneur, by reading On Technology, you’ll have opportunity to learn about how a real software entrepreneur thinks, reacts, and manifests change. In this case, the entrepreneur happens to be one of the pioneers of computing as we know it now and today? Dan Bricklin still manifests change.
Links: To keep up with Dan Bricklin. To keep up with Bob Frankson. Be sure to try to attend anything Scott Kirsner at Innovation Economy moderates or writes. Mr. Kirsner is incredibly insightful, dialed in, and entertaining!)
