Digital Roam

Launch! on the back of a napkin

A few weeks ago, Guy Kawasaki asked if I'd like to deliver the keynote at the SVASE (Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs) Launch 2009 event.

There are a couple important things to know about Guy. One is that he gets to go on all the coolest blogging trips. (Check out his recent photos from onboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz.) Two is that he knows everybody. Three is that when he asks you to do anything, the answer is "YES!" -- especially if it's as such a great event as Launch!

The whole idea of Launch! is that a whole bunch of brilliant start-ups that need money come to a big event at the Microsoft Mountain View Campus next Tuesday, June 9 from 7:30 - 1:30. They each have 10 minutes to present their concept to all the big Silicon Valley money people. If they launch well, they should come out of there with money in their pockets.

I'm going to use my opening 20 minutes to convince everyone to throw away whatever PowerPoint presentations they've been working on for the last months and instead use a whiteboard. We'll see...

Speaking of moving abroad: The Back of the Napkin takes Asia!

Over the past few weeks, I've received three of the first non-US editions of THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN in the mail.

The first to arrive was the Taiwan edition, published by Yuan-Lion, Taipei. I understand that within weeks it had become a bestseller in Taiwan.

Next arrived the South Korean edition, published by Book 21, Seoul.

And yesterday I received the Japanese edition, published by Kodansha, Tokyo.

I want to thank all the editors, writers, and designers for such spectacular work! It is difficult to describe the pleasure of seeing my words in a language I can't read -- while my pictures remain clear without any translation required.

I'm telling you folks, visual thinking is the global language of the future.

Want be more creative? Move abroad.

Frommer's travel site today quotes a study in the May edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, indicating that people who have lived outside their native country may develop more creative minds. The full study is here.



I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that in my own life the times I lived outside the USA forced me to become a more creative thinker. At age seventeen I moved from Montana to Thailand for a year. That was an extreme shock, but after the initial cultural drowning period I loved every minute of it. It was a wonder in every way to see that the world was more than downtown Billings, MT.

Later, I lived and worked in Russia for several years. I often say that everything I learned about business I learned while watching communism stagger towards becoming capitalism. It wasn't all pretty, but it was without a doubt the most formative business experience of my life.

The APA study concludes with this thought:
It may be that those critical months or years of turning cultural bewilderment into concrete understanding may instill not only the ability to “think outside the box” but also the capacity to realize that the box is more than a simple square, more than its simple form, but also a repository of many creative possibilities.

I can easily see that picture. And I agree completely.