Bloomberg by Bloomberg by Michael
Bloomberg
An Inspiration For All Entrepreneurs
Members of the worlds financial communities are increasingly securing
the information that drives them from Michael Bloomberg. His specialized
media--including manipulable online data feeds, a global newswire, and
extensive magazine and broadcast outlets--have turned the business of
business news upside down. Along the way, hes made a substantial
fortune and a significant name for himself. In Bloomberg by Bloomberg, he
reveals (with help from colleague Matthew Winkler) how it all came to be.
Personal Review: Bloomberg by Bloomberg by Michael
Bloomberg
I bought this book on 1 January when news first came out of the University
of Oklahoma "bipartisan" gathering, but I did not have a chance to read it
until this week. I went to Oklahoma, only to see this good man
embarrassed by a truly rotten press conference that invited mockery. My
three page trip report is at Earth Intelligence Network.
I'm going to summarize what I learned from this book,and then conclude
with an observation on how Bloomberg could go to the next level while
simultaneously cleaning up our government and educating the 5 billion
poor free, one cell call at a time.
There is absolutely nothing in this book that is conceited or self -serving.
This is straight talk from a hard worker, an Eagle Scout at a very young
age, an ethical businessman, an inspired information entrepreneur. This is
an honest worthy book I wish I had noticed sooner.
The author lived in a one-room studio apartment for his first 10 years,
working 12 hours a day as a matter of routine, not counting his early
morning jogging, where he says he gets his most creative thoughts.
It certainly helped that he had a $10M termination payment from his first
job, but this book positively lights up around the combination of open
workspace, open mind, how to create a company on the fly, fully
integrating customer views, ignorning banks and other pyramidal
consultants. The author discovered the "power of us" a quarter century
before Business Week did its cover story on this topuc, 21 June 2005.
What I was not expecting, and what made the book riveting for me, is the
complete well-paced coverage of how the author realized he could
monetize financial data, then information about the people behind the data,
and then information on the politics behind the people.
A few of my fly-leaf notes:
+ Build from scratch, don't buy over-priced companies or capabilities.
+ Trust me, or go out the door.
+ Do'ers with fires in their belly make for a great team
+ Pioneered compact low-cost workstations with English buttons
+ Excelled at rapid prototyping where good intention was better than any
business plan
+ Really superb overview of how numbers can lie, how dangerous an
automated numbers game can become
+ Outsiders do what's asked; insiders do what's needed.
+ Superb vision for the future of the hand-held cell phone as the single
device, he knew this long before Eric Schmidt came along to help Google.
+ Corrects my long-standing mis=hearing of Marhsall McCluhan's book
title, The Medium is the Massage (not Message, that was a separate
quote)
+ Really excellent stories aabout how hard Bloomberg had to fight to be
accredited both in Washington DC and in Tokyo as a legitimate news
organization
+ "Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination." I wish he had
realized Oklahoma would be a dead end--bi-partisan is code for keeping
the two-party spoils system. Transpartisan is where its at, visit Reuniting
America, 110 million strong and growing. See the definitive book on the
death of the two parties, Running On Empty: How The Democratic and
Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can
Do About It.
+ I agree with his view that computers should not be allowed in the
classroom throughout elementary school.
+ Throughout the book, it is clear the author knows what I learned from
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both personally and through his book,
Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, Change is Hard.
Specificially, big change takes 25 years (I am in year 18 of reforming
secret intelligence and creating public intelligence, he is now in year 1 of
reforming democracy and saving the Republic as well as moral capitalism).
+ The chapter on Management 101 is decent, sensible, and worthy of
study.
+ I've spent hard time trying to do digital innovation, and the details in this
book just blew me away as I followed the innovations the author led back
in the 1980's when CIA tasked me with creating a "smart desktop" for
clandestine operations. Had I known then about this man, I would have
gone to his doorv and offered to help him put CIA out of business. There
is still time.
I put the book down with both a feeling of pain--the Oklahoma debaacle
should never have happened--and hope. This author embodies three big
ideas: moral informed capitalism, honest informed self-governance, and
educational reform.
I have three ideas I offer to anyone who can reach the author, I do not
believe the book I created for him (Democracy 2008, see it at Earth
Intelligence Network) was delivered to him by his staff, one reason he got
humiliated in Oklahoma.
Idea #1: Fund a global "True Cost" project within the Natural Capital
Institute's rapidly growing World Index of Social and Environmental
Responsibility (WISER). Get Paul Hawkins in to energize everyone, and
become the Moody's for true cost information (e.g. designer T-shirts with
4000 gallons of water, water bottles whose plastic required more water to
make than is contained in the bottle, etc). This will change markets within
2-3 years, especially since ScanBack would allow B loomberg to deliver
this information to end-users via their cell phone at the point of sale.
Idea #2: Forget about running for President. It's a lousy job. BE the virtual
president, forming a Transpartisan Sunshine Cabinet (Senators Nunn and
Graham should be respectively Defense and Intelligence), and leveraging
True Majority and Reuniting America to lead a national conversation firmly
grounded in a balanced budget, on how to orchestrate $1 trillion a year in
planning giving to eradicate the ten high level threats by harmonizing the
twelve policies, while also creating the EarthGame to help the eight
demographic challengers avoid our mistakes.
Idea #3: Examine Telelanguage.com and figure out how to register and put
online 100 million volunteers who can use Skype, Telelanaguage, and their
Internet connection to teach the 5 billion poor in any one of 183 languages,
one cell phone call at a time.
The above will sound self-promoting, it is not. I have labored with 23 other
co-founders to do Mike Bloomberg's staff work for the next decade, and if
someone can get him to carefully consider these ideas, I give them to him
freely. I don't need a job, but I do need a planet my three boys can grow
up in, and I believe that if Mike Bloomberg stops trying to leverag e political
has-beens (with a few exceptions), and instead creates an architecture
that can deliver public intelligence in the public interest, he will achieve his
grand vision, faster, better, cheaper.
Thank you, those whom Dick Cheney has inspired into reading my non-
fiction reviews. I never, ever, expected to be of service to the Nation in
quite this way. If my reviews help us restore the Republic, of, by, and for
the people, working with moral capitalists and leaders like this author and
John Bogle (The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism then the author's
unbridaled optemism could be warranted.
See also:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That
Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the
People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
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