The Art of Rainmaking by Guy Kawasaki: An interesting article about salesmanship and what is referred to as “rainmaking.” Kawasaki lists out several ways to practice the art of rainmaking, but this first one caught my eye because it immediately reminded me of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and regular readers (all 5 of you) know I can’t resist a Stephenson reference.
“Let a hundred flowers blossom.” I stole this from Chairman Mao although I’m not sure how he implemented it. In the context of capitalism (Chairman Mao must be turning over in his grave), the dictum means that you sow seeds in many markets, see what takes root, and harvest what blooms. Many companies freak out when unintended customers buy their product. Many companies also freak out when intended customers buy their product but use it in unintended ways. Don’t be proud. Take the money.
This immediately reminded me of the data haven (a secure computer system that is protected by it’s lack of governmental oversight as well as technical means like encryption) in the “modern-day” segments of Cryptonomicon. Randy Waterhouse works for the company that’s attempting to sett up a data haven, and he finds that the most of his customers want to use the data haven to store money. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, most of the people who want to store their money their are criminals of the worst sort. I guess in that particular case, there is reason to freak out at these unexpected customers, but I thought the reference was interesting because while there may be lots of legitimate uses for a data haven, the criminal element would almost certainly be attracted to a way to store their drug money (or whatever) with impugnity (that and probably spam, pornography, and gambling). Like all advances in technology, the data haven could be used for good or for ill…