The Profit Prophet

To the second question: you probably shouldn't.

As to the first...
I'm just another seeker on the path. With limited time and resources, the challenge is to discover my life's calling before the merry go round stops. I'm certain I have passion and interest in initiating new business ventures. Will I "succeed" though?

I ask myself this question every morning. The only answer I can possible give is yes! At this juncture I'm hesitating due to a lack of a market/product that resonates with my internal compass. In addition it appears there's a nearly endless stream of "knowledge" about how to startup a business. If you want to learn more, check out my info.

My long term plan is slowly develop credibility and expertise by continually reading and writing about topics that I find engaging.

Let's break this title down into it's components and we'll see where it takes us.
A prophet in the context of this lens is "a person who predicts the future". Profit can be summarized as "income received from investments or property". But let's not limit the context of Profit to financial gain. Profit may represent a benefit or gain from any of their life's experiences, be it to the individual or to the whole of mankind (or even good 'ole mother Earth).

A Profit Prophet, in my humble definition, is a forecaster of the path a person or group should actively pursue which will yield great benefits from the experience. In this way even a doomed financial endeavor can generative positive returns in the form of new or reforged friendships/partners, and a unique perspective on the market pursued.

If you're like me, you dream of being a guru of greed (GoG). You also like making up new titles, like Profit Prophet. A GoG knows exactly how much wealth is needed to free up their most precious resource, their time! A GoG is masterful at navigating and evolving a business concept through an ever changing market. Let us give thanks to the masters/teachers, those GoGs who are driven by a deep passion, and choose to share this enthusiasm with the rest of us. Let's not forget those still on the path, for the journey is in many ways more rewarding than the destination.

A Profit Prophet is a person who can predict what path is best to forge ahead on in order to maximize their own definition of Profit. Profit here, being what you prize most in life.

How do you transition from a career path that consumes you each day, to a viable life path that provides inexhaustible vital energy and all the warmth and beauty of a sparkling sunset.

There's no price tag on finding your path, it is beyond monetary value. There are times when I wonder whether the limits and boundaries of our physical reality are too great for me to find my path. My imagination is often flooded with film like action sequences and breathtaking fantasy imagery. My tireless thoughts wander to convoluted analogies between math, science, and our human condition. I have often wished that reality was more malleable to my will, perhaps in the future we'll have virtual realities where our thoughts can be more rapidly converted into shareable media?

"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?" a quote from Morpheus a fictional ship captain/hacker in "The Matrix"

You may be thinking to yourself, "Great movie Mark, but what's this have to do with profit or prophesizing?"

Whenever I'm reminded of "The Matrix" it causes a recurring question to surface from the recesses of my conscious mind. The question concerns relative perception, and it's connection to truth.

What truth (product?) can I bring to the world, from my perceptive base that will reward the world greatly (myself included :)? What does making money have to do with making a tangible difference? I believe one has everything to do with the other. In theory, value is measured and given by society in proportion to the utility of the product. In turn, what service, product or truth can we offer to the world that has most value, thereby liberating our precious time to pursue interests as we so choose.

I'll escape this ill posed philosophical trap with another quote from "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (the short story that was the basis for A.I.). Teddy: "You ask such silly questions, David. Nobody knows what 'real' really means. Let's go indoors."

Oh c'mon, who doesn't love a good "Biz Strategy" review?
Me.

But I still got sucked in to the Blue Ocean Strategy. A text by W. Chan Kim,and Renee Mauborgne about the strength of creating new markets "blue oceans" and it's impact on businesses in the U.S. over the past 100 years.

While only in the preview phase with this text, I was intrigued by the distinction between two overarching views for how the industrial structure affects the actions of members of industry.

The structuralist view is a fairly rigid "closed space" perception that markets consist of a limited size, and each company must compete to grab it's share of the fixed market. The structuralist view can be changed by outside forces, like technological breakthroughs.

Within reconstructionist view there's an unlimited abundance of future market demand, albeit untapped. The belief is that the structure and boundaries reside only in managers minds. The system itself can change from within by the forces of creative entrepreneurship. The strategy is thus a shift from competition in a fixed market, to "value innovation".

I was confused enough to wonder what's the silver bullet in "value innovation". After digesting a good half of the book, I think I'm done reading it. While there were a number of logical methods introduced to build a successful strategy for future business, I'm still left wondering how their proposed strategy translates into "building a new market". I believe the strategy is flawed due to one simple reality, there is NO STRATEGY to building a new market. There are best business practices, and rational development tools but NONE of these systems will directly translate into building a new market. It's like trying to capture human creativity, and recreate it with a simple business system. I think I would have received the information better had the focus been on "rational business review tools" as opposed to "the strategy of creativity".

For a much more detailed description see wikipedia's Blue Ocean Strategy page, pay particular interest to the criticisms.