Thanks to John Battelle I read this Economist article comparing Google to Napoleon, while its badly beaten opponents to Napoleon’s historical adversaries. The suggestion, drawing from Emperor’s story, but not very deeply, is for the small guys to get somehow (diverse views on how) together in order to gain more fighting chance.

Reading Sun Tzu once was so far my only adventure with “business as warfare” thinking, and I cannot recall any inspiration specifically from Napoleon, so I did a Google look-up.

The first to be found was Wikipedia’s article “Marketing warfare strategies”. Ironically, considering Nick Carr’s article on Wikipedia’s alleged drive to centralize web’s information through its strong positioning in Google search results. And quite significantly too, since the article was “good enough” for my brief interest in the topic.

A worthy note that warfare strategies imply zero-sum game, where what is one’s gain is someone else’s expense. This is a dangerous mindset to have, especially if one’s market is driven by innovation. If Google’s competitors, some of whom are already suspected of having serious organizational issues with creating innovation-friendly environment, were to merge and create even bigger, paralyzed, lumbering corporate giant, that would rather be closer to a suicide than a winning strategy maneuver.

Nevertheless, even if out of favor for a moment, I am sure military lessons will continue to inspire ranks of, after all still largely male, business leaders. Other than Napoleon and Sun Tzu, also Clausewitz, Mao Tse Tung and even Robin Hood are mentioned. But coming to the Napoleon himself:

Napoleon made four key innovations. They were 1) increase his army?s marching rate, 2) organize the army into self contained units, 3) live off the country, and 4) attack the opponent?s lines of supply. All four provide lessons for business strategists

I refer you to the article in case you are interested what kind of lessons.

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Stanisław Kluza, new finance minister, graduated SGH 1995 (with position in “top ten” group):

Unilever 94-98, PLN 4k monthly

McKinsey 98-99, PLN 6k monthly

Fulbright scholarship, 99-00

BGZ, 02-03, economic advisor, PLN 7k monthly

BGZ, 03-06, chief economist, PLN 15k monthly

Assets PLN 9m.

Currently 34.

Source: Newsweek

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Our project colleague got her apartment robbed when we were in Krakow, along with two set of car keys and the car itself (forget about insurance), computer and other stuff, and her passport (she doesn’t remember its number). Bruna street, near SGH university, first floor; new plastic windows slightly opened, were not even damaged.

You feel rather helpless in a situation like this.

But this inspired me to finally get serious about backups. I also live in the first floor apartment and I always leave windows open. Forget the stuff, but all this data, something like 13 years of my personal computing?

I spent something like two hours zipping and transferring first batch of files, 1.8gb altogether, using two 250mb USB drives. That’s because CD burner of the laptop doesn’t seem to work any more.

When I tried to reassembly zip volumes I found that the archives were corrupted. Must be this fetish company-branded black leather pen drive.

I will wait for a crossed network cable.

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Matteo said that the point of each day is that it surprises with something, otherwise the day is not worthwhile. This is one of the unusual cases that I agree with Matteo on such life-sense kind of topic, even though I would put it slightly differently, since I rather aim myself to learn something new every day than wait for being surprised by a random thing, and Matteo more often than not gets surprised in an unfavorable kind of way.

Yesterday was a first time that I tried a new sport of meeting a person from the Internet board in order to exchange conversations in foreign languages and it got me surprised. I had experience with meeting people found through the Internet in the distant past, but with less targeted approach and only unpleasant surprises. But this time it was much better and I learned something.

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In a shape of Wenlin software, with over 10,000 characters and ca. 200,000 words and phrases. Features I find most exciting, from what is visible in the demo, include finding all related characters, displaying order of strokes for the character, and even presenting the evolution that character went through.

But it’s quite pricey! 249$. And again no sales representative in Poland. I will wait and see after return from China.

First found at Joan Biesnecker’s. I was also surprised to find that Supermemo has apparently such a broad international following.

Previous posts: Supermemo for Chinese

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?that the thing you have thought about has been considered way back ago and even expressed, much better that you will ever be able to, by the minds long gone already.

It is rather disturbing to see almost perfect reflection of your own thoughts in the retained traces of thoughts of someone now dead. And pondering and finding yourself intimately close to thoughts of someone long dead inevitably brings to mind how temporary the universe of your own thoughts is; only till power is cut out and this universe vanishes with all its accrued content.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

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