Continue reading »]]> Flash back to spring 1976. I was going to the prom with my friend, and I went with him to arrange to rent a tux for the event. The rental form asked for our top three color choices, and we dutifully listed three: black (of course), dark green (in the semi-darkness of the gym, it would look a lot like black), and powder blue. When he showed up at my house the night of the prom, you can guess which color tux my friend was wearing. I don’t know what we were thinking when we put down “powder blue” on the order form. We certainly weren’t being ironic (high school proms in 1976 were mostly irony-free), and now we were stuck with one of us wearing a powder blue monkey suit.

To this day I retain pleasant memories of the evening and an axiom I refer to as The Rule of the Powder Blue Tux: to wit, never agree to an option that you know deep down you won’t like if you end up with it. This axiom has served me well in life choices large and small (second dates, drapes, holiday travel, a business logo). The next time you are asked to identify a set of options, and you realize that you won’t be happy if the result turns out to be Option No. 3, do yourself a favor and pick a different No. 3—or go with just two options. You’ll be glad you did.

Continue reading »]]> There are a lot of reasons why we shouldn’t sit for long stretches. The same goes for our brains: we need to occasionally drop in on websites designed to stimulate us aesthetically, make us think (about different sorts of stuff), or make us laugh.

Here are 4 sites I like to visit on a regular basis:

• Give Me Air provides daily doses of art, literature, humor, music, photography, and other delights. The first time I visited the site I clicked on Music and had the good fortune to discover the Brooklyn-based band The Spring Standards.
• With so many music outlets, it can be hard to remember to log onto Pandora. But I’m very glad when I remember to do it because the artists on my 3 stations (built around Robben Ford, Shawn Mullins, and Stanley Turrentine) are excellent company.

• Brain Pickings offers excerpts from written and spoken works, many of which address issues of creativity, self-expression, and the artistic process. I especially enjoy the site’s visual images, which can be truly amazing. For a good example, check out Kay Nielsen’s Stunning 1914 Scandinavian Fairy Tale Illustrations.
• The Oatmeal is funny, funny, funny (and thoughtful). A recent entry, Why Nikola Tesla Was the Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived, is a case in point (Thomas Edison fans, though, should approach with caution).

Continue reading »]]> Several friends and associates have recommended Shark Tank, so I overcame my aversion to reality programming and watched an episode. Like most of the other reality series I’ve sampled, this one was occasionally painful to watch. But there were some takeaways that I will share with my entrepreneur clients. Here are three:

1. Set your ego aside. The best entrepreneur contestants were the ones who filtered out the investors’ bombast and impatience, listened to what the investors had to say, and responded respectfully to some very sharp questions. One would-be entrepreneur refused to consider pricing her product for a higher-end market, telling the investors that they didn’t know her market like she did. Well, as the saying goes, don’t let being right be the only thing you’ve got.
2. Give up something to get something. The investors often presented competing offers for some percentage of the entrepreneur contestants’ companies. In one case, the investor offered to buy the company outright, employ the entrepreneur for 3 years at a guaranteed salary, and pay the entrepreneur royalties on product sales. Given the entrepreneur’s circumstances, this was a good deal—and he took it.
3. Take someone who has your back. Some contestants seemed much more fixed on walking away with the exact amount they came in looking for, and they seemed unwilling or unable to evaluate the competing offers in front of them. OK, this part of the show is designed to heighten the drama and in real life we generally don’t have to choose from among 3 different offers in 60 seconds. But if you find that you have trouble responding flexibly and coolly during negotiations (especially where numbers are concerned), take someone with you who is good at looking at options from multiple angles.

Continue reading »]]> Welcome to the first installment of the Red House blog. As you can probably tell from the rest of the website, our clients are often involved in a new venture that is usually technology-based. It can be a group of scientists that wants to start a tech-centric company, an established organization looking to go in a new direction, or a business/economic development group that needs to provide technical assistance to its clients.

What these groups have in common is a drive to innovate.

This blog will be about the ideas, resources, and opportunities that support innovation. Sometimes it will be about the money, sometimes it will be about a cool technology, and sometimes it will simply be about something that helps the right brain and the left brain get along better.

We hope you find these postings interesting and useful, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.