My regular weekend ramble, plus links to some great blogs and financial articles for you to peruse.
I am not convinced that having a good idea, failing to pursue it, and eventually seeing it implemented by someone else is worth beating yourself up over.
And not just because I’d have knocked all my teeth out!
Mainly it’s because I’ve learned that good ideas are common, whereas good implementation is hard and rare. And then you need good luck.
One day I’ll do a post called I Coulda Been a Contender, but for now there’s Missed Opportunities [1] on Eliminate the Muda. It’s my blog post of the week.
The author, Greg, explains one of his untapped ideas:
My first ‘house’ was what most would refer to as a townhouse. In fact it was a condo with a crappy design. It was a two-level built over a ‘garden home’.
The entry was ground level but immediately inside the foyer was the stairs to get to the first floor. Can you believe… no doorbell!
A quick $100 in parts at the local hardware store and I learned that running wire inside walls was not a typical DIY job. I then cobbled together a homemade wireless triggered door bell.
There was nothing like it on the market at the time. Today you see them in stores across America, unfortunately these are not mine. I never showed for the appointment with the patent attorney.
There are several other ideas where the wireless buzzer came from. Unlike me, who is a one-trick pony of missed chances (they’re nearly all in media) Greg covers the waterfront.
I get the impression Greg feels he should have made a packet. Personally, I doubt he would have. Not that he personally couldn’t have, or that nobody else did, but just because the odds are against anyone succeeding with inventions.
Starting up a business is really hard [2]. Creating new physical products from scratch is hardest of all. Thank goodness people do it, but don’t kid yourself.
I was reading some academic research cited by fund manager Jeremy Grantham the other day that suggested all human enterprise is based on faulty logic. We hugely over-estimate our capabilities, and underestimate the odds of failure.
Or at least that’s what the people who actually get off the couch do. The rest of us are Noble Prize caliber evaluators of the bad odds.
This sort of talk always goes down badly with my finance blogging buddies, so I’ll end with a video of some bright young company founders who share office space.
It looks like fun – a 100% good reason to start a business.
This week’s money blog posts
- Debts net out to zero [Better read than it sounds!] – The Aleph blog [3]
- Does stock market risk decrease over time? – Investment Fiduciary [4] (by Mike [5])
- What happened to the middle class in the UK? – Simple living in Suffolk [6]
- Everything is becoming tradeable – Online Investing AI blog [7]
- UK house price to earnings ratio rising again – Stock Tickle [8]
- Should you change your career? – Wealth Pilgrim [9]
- 4 ways duct tape can fix your personal finances – Len Penzo [10]
- Mayhem with M&A – The Psy-Fi blog [11]
- The dark side of early retirement – Financial Samurai [12]
- Risks you’d take to live your dream – Simple in France [13]
- What if you’d bought Apple shares instead of Apple products? – Kyle Conroy [14]
- Should you pay to educate your child? – Money Funk [15]
- 6 things to negotiate when buying a house – Moolanomy [16]
More from the mainstream press
- Labour made some things better – The Economist [17]
- Australia latest country to lose carbon goals – The Economist [18]
- How the parties (don’t) say they’ll cut [Graphic] – The Guardian [19]
- Indeed, IFS complains there’s a conspiracy of silence – Flanders/BBC [20]
- Why are the ratings agencies so powerful? – Peston/BBC [21]
- Property recovery funds missed their moment – FT [22]
- Shares in a hung parliament – FT [23]
- True cost [alas per share not per fish] of BP’s dreadful oil slick – FT [24]
- Income taxes should rise by 6p in the £1, says NIESR – The Telegraph [25]
- Falling dividends payouts could have bottomed – The Telegraph [26]
- Investing in collectibles – The Independent [27]
- Can this chap be a millionaire by 30? – The Independent [28]
- 10 ways to lose money trading without trying – Motley Fool [29]
- Video: Where next for commercial property? – This is Money [30]
Want some interesting reading every weekend, delivered straight to your Mac? Sign-up for free [31] to get this roundup.