INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

An exclusive interview with Guy Kawasaki

March 7, 2007

Looking for great ideas for starting a blog, a business, or changing the world? Look no further than Guy Kawasaki.

There's no better expert on beginnings than this Forbes.com columnist and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Previously, Guy was an Apple Fellow at Apple Inc., where he was one of the minds behind the Macintosh. He is also the author of eight books, including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

Here, Guy shares thoughts with Kelsey Howarth, Senior Writer for Cognos, an IBM company, on technology trends, driving the competition crazy, and the art of starting anything.

KH: What technology trends or products are you watching with interest?

GK: "I read the same publications and Web sites as most people do. I hope you don't think that venture capitalists know any more about the future than anyone else! I love user-generated content and clean tech. The former because I'm a generator of such content, and the latter because I'm tired of America being dependent on oil."

Shedding light on "unsung heroes"

KH: What business leaders do you most admire and why? What qualities or traits do these people have that make them so effective?

GK: "I don't answer this question anymore. I used to say the usual names: Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, Anita Roddick, whoever, but I've come to believe that some of the best people are teachers, ministers, single moms – people no one has ever heard of. The famous get enough attention. Let's shed some light on the unsung heroes who are changing the world one child, class, or acre at a time."

"The famous get enough attention. Let's shed some light on the unsung heroes who are changing the world one child, class, or acre at a time."

KH: In your book Rules for Revolutionaries, you encourage people to "Don't worry, be crappy." Do you feel that modern businesses are frequently paralyzed by the quest for perfection?

GK: "Actually, I wish this were more the case. It would be a high-quality problem if companies refused to ship things until they were perfect. More often, companies ship crap because (a) they don't even realize it is crap; or (b) it's the best they can do."

"Driving your competition crazy"

KH: You've written the business book with my favorite title of all time: How to Drive Your Competition Crazy – Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit. It's based on your hard-won experience of competing against world-class marketing organizations such as IBM and Microsoft. How does a company drive its competition crazy?

GK: "The single best way is to do what's right for the customer and thereby succeed as a company. It's not what you do to your competition. It's what you do for your customer. The best way to drive your competition crazy is to succeed."

Internal entrepreneurs and PostIt® Notes

KH: In The Art of the Start you write about the need for people in large companies to engage in "internal entrepreneuring" to bring new ideas to light. What are the factors that make it so difficult to get things done in big companies?

"It's not what you do to your competition. It's what you do for your customer. The best way to drive your competition crazy is to succeed."

GK: "Just about everything is stacked against an internal entrepreneur, but the two biggest factors are the "every ninety days we have to announce good earnings" orientation and the curse of success: 'things are going well – why change?'

To this day many people cite Art Fry and PostIt® Notes as a great example of intrapreneurship. Isn't it sad that this is the best, perhaps only, example of intrapreneurship for the past few decades?"

A new mantra for Cognos?

KH: You also encourage readers to create – not a mission statement – but a mantra for their companies. In the book you share the elements of a good mantra and some hypothetical mantras for companies such as Coca-Cola, Wendy's, and the US Air Force. Care to take a stab at one for Cognos?

GK: "Here's one: 'Know before you go.' All of what you do boils down to enabling managers to know before they go and make a decision."

KH: Your blog is entitled How to Change the World. This seems a daunting task. Are we up to it?

GK: "We, the human race, certainly are. We, as in you and I, we just have to give it our best shot."

Benefits ofbeing "impractical"

KH: You refer to your blog as "a practical guide for impractical people." You seem to have a real fondness for impractical people. Why?

GK: "Because practical people are the ones who care about earnings in 90 days, evolving existing businesses, and perpetuating, perhaps with slight improvements, the status quo. People who change the world are impractical people."

"People who change the world are impractical people."

KH: I see from the garage.com web site that Pandora is one of your clients. Their Music Genome Project is fascinating. Can you give us the inside track on how that got started?

GK: "It's your typical Silicon Valley story that starts with some geeks saying "Wouldn't it be cool if...". Trust me when I tell you: it wasn't practical for them to ask that question."