Quote from: keemo on March 07, 2015, 08:02:27 PM

Quote from: Dyna on March 07, 2015, 06:24:52 PM

Quote from: TeeGee on March 07, 2015, 01:28:24 PM

Quote from: Dyna on March 06, 2015, 11:17:03 PM

Excellent post, TeeGee. I honestly wish I knew as much as you do when I was your age. We are very proud to have you as part of our team. My commitment is to help build a near perfect framework upon which DNotes can build a solid foundation that can outlast any test of time. Once that is accomplished, the professional managers can run the show with the best business practices just like any other well managed major corporations.

DNotes is more than a stable digital currency built upon trust and integrity. It is built, alongside the currency, as a business capable of immense growth few will understand until it has already taken place. It reminds me of a quote from George Bernard Shaw:

Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not?

I am working on a press release for next week that is quite compelling. It has the appeal to draw the Mavens a little closer to DNotes mission. I am certain that one day DNotes will be a part of many cocktail party conversations.

Thank you for the kind words, but just remember - Google (or should I have said the internet? - one day people will say DNotes as money too). Just imagine all the extra things you could have accomplished - like start DNotes many years earlier, if the internet was around when you were my age! I count myself lucky to be born in the information age, where google is at my fingertips, and research is simple. With the innovations this team is pushing, I'll be saying to the next generation (which will be what, Gen Z?) - 'I wish I was my own bank when I was your age' or 'I wish I had access to cheap credit from anywhere in the world for my start-up at your age'... not to mention the unknowns like - 'I wish I was able to download the internet to my brain when I was your age!'... (although transhumanism and human senescence obviously won't be for all!).

My take home point is, each generation makes use of the take home gifts that the previous generation leaves them. DYNA and his generation gave us computers, his fathers generation gave us the aeroplane, and his father's father the internal combustion engine - my fathers generation gave us the internet, debit cards and the Rolling Stones. Each generations made massive advancements in medicine that improved livelihoods for all and we all use tech advancements left to us, to propel humanity higher even faster! Now we are at a crossroads where a mix of people from different parts of the globe from many different generations are working together to help every person become their own bank, and free them from the clutches of debt slavery via the DNotes project.

Who knows what the ramifications will be? and what I'll one day be saying to my children... (other than 'shhhh, you get access to your first CRISP when you turn 18'.

Hope I didn't make anybody feel older than they would like! Purely illustrative.

Quote from: Chase on March 07, 2015, 02:53:37 AM

Brilliant! I have never heard the term Mavens, but that type of person starts showing their "stuff" as young as preschool and people keep following them for life. You're right, they are a perfect target for DNotes.

I would encourage anybody to read Malcolm Gladwells books - The first of which I read was the 'tipping point - how little things can make a big difference'. For those who want a quick once over, some of the main ideas are described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point

I remember reading about Mavens in there, and ideas like this extract:

"The Law of the Few", or, as Malcolm Gladwell states, "The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts".[3] According to Malcolm Gladwell, economists call this the "80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the 'work' will be done by 20 percent of the participants"

I read it many years ago when I was perhaps 17 or 18 after my dad put me onto it, and I may have a different idea if I were to read it again now. From memory though it was really interesting, as was Gladwell's book "blink - The power of thinking without thinking" (all about instinctive judgements) and "Outliers - The story of success" which was really eye opening, and many people repeat the 10,000 hour rule to master a craft discussed in it.

"A common theme that appears throughout Outliers is the "10,000-Hour Rule", based on a study by Anders Ericsson. Gladwell claims that greatness requires enormous time, using the source of The Beatles' musical talents and Gates' computer savvy as examples.[3] The Beatles performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time, therefore meeting the 10,000-Hour Rule. Gladwell asserts that all of the time The Beatles spent performing shaped their talent, and quotes Beatles' biographer Philip Norman as saying, "So by the time they returned to England from Hamburg, Germany, 'they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.'"[3] Gates met the 10,000-Hour Rule when he gained access to a high school computer in 1968 at the age of 13, and spent 10,000 hours programming on it.[3]

In Outliers, Gladwell interviews Gates, who says that unique access to a computer at a time when they were not commonplace helped him succeed. Without that access, Gladwell states that Gates would still be "a highly intelligent, driven, charming person and a successful professional", but that he might not be worth US$50 billion.[3] Gladwell explains that reaching the 10,000-Hour Rule, which he considers the key to success in any field, is simply a matter of practicing a specific task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years. He also notes that he himself took exactly 10 years to meet the 10,000-Hour Rule, during his brief tenure at The American Spectator and his more recent job at The Washington Post.[2]"

Bill Gates was one of 3 or 4 people on the planet who had met the 10,000 hour mastery of computers by the time demand for skills in the sector skyrocketed, and Gladwell argues this played a material role in his long term success.

"It is not about being first, but being in the best position at the most opportune time" - DYNA, sometime... ages ago amongst the myriad of old forum pages.

As usual, this is another excellent post, TeeGee. The 80/20 Rule has been revised and refined a number of times to make it more generally applicable to help explain many different situations and outcomes.

Among those, Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many", the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule has been used most often as a rule of thumb.

As an interesting note, 80% of business startups failed in the first two years. I would venture to say that the failure rate in the crypto currency world will be significantly higher. In my opinion 90% will fail.

This should help explain why DNotes is so firmly committed to be the best in class right from its beginning. Our mindset is to be the best in everything we do. Instead of taking a risk that there is an 80% chance that we could fail, we have an 80% chance that we could succeed. Of course, that is if we are satisfied with the 80/20 rule. That may be good enough for some, but certainly not good enough for our team. We are committed to accept nothing short of wanting to be the best in everything we do. May be one day, someone can write a book about what it means to be the best in class and why it matters to score high in every category upon which we are being judged. May be one of the core missions of CRISP for Students is draw upon the strengths of Mavens to groom the next generation of the vital few.

Dyna, the ambition to be best in class through being best in everything a business does is a dominant strategy for business success. Here "dominant strategy" is a phrase taken from micro-economics parlance. A "Dominant strategy" is a strategy that dominates any other strategy conceivable i.e. a dominant strategy cannot be superseded.

Leading business professor and perhaps the leading thought leader on business strategy, Michael Porter, has also recognized the need for this. The total competitive advantage that a firm/business can create is the sum total of all the business activities it undertakes. Positioning your company to be the best in class is a significant strategic goal and a very serious commitment that will require tremendous focus, discipline and tenacity.

The key to understanding why one should aspire to be best in all departments is to recognize the linkages across departments/activities and see the multiplier effect. If a business activity links to, say five other business activities, its individual brilliance impacts all these five other business activities and either enhances their performance or detracts from their performance.

Everything is inter-related. A poor performance in one function is not isolated to that function. It degrades performance everywhere else. Thus weakness in certain areas not only keeps the individual score on that function down, it brings down the final score in other areas. Thus, overall business performance suffers due to the confounding of two effects. Each part of the system helps or hurts other systems. Your business is a complete system. Everything is a component or a subsystem of the whole system and affects the output in other subsystems or components. Consequently, much is lost due to weakness in one or more components. Not only is the component weak, it makes other components weaker. An individual components effect on the system is proportional to the number of other components in the system. The more complex the system, the greater the reach of each individual component, either positively or negatively, productively or destructively.

To envision why the ability to deliver a complete package matters, pick your favorite sport or talent show where the performance is rated by a panel of judges based on six different criteria. A candidate scoring 10/10 in two categories and 7/10 or lower in the rest will lose out to the one who scored 8/10 across the board. And so it is with business, being the best in each category is a winning strategy in any business. To be best in the class, everything matters.

Well said keemo. It can be difficult to explain why DNotes is taking this path, hopefully that helps gives people some insight into where we are taking DNotes.