XPLANE joins Dachis Group

The acquisition was announced this morning — this is exciting news for all of us!

More info here: Dachis Group acquires XPLANE and be sure to check out the buzz on Twitter.

New project: The Carbon Economy

For the second time in recent months XPLANE has partnered with The Economist to create a compelling video on a topic of global importance. After working together on “Did You Know? 4.0”, The Economist enlisted XPLANE’s visual communication expertise to develop “The Carbon Economy” about the growing importance of climate change and green technologies and solutions.

“The Carbon Economy” will be shown at The Economist’s upcoming Carbon Economy Summit on November 17 and 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The video is three minutes in length and includes simple visuals and a moving soundtrack to clearly convey the troubled state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The production was created using Apple’s Keynote software.

For more information on The Carbon Economy Summit, visit http://carboneconomy.economist.com.

David Allen releases The Ultimate GTD Workflow Map, designed by XPLANE

The David Allen Company: “If you ever feel like you need to get more in control or regain your focus, here is the ultimate guide for getting and staying on your game. The set of productivity best practices which David Allen has researched and synthesized over the last three decades are brought all together into one stunning visual display — the GTD Workflow Map. It’s a rich compilation of the key steps for gathering, clarifying, organizing, and reviewing everything you need to track and manage, as well as an explanation of all of the factors that you must take into account in determining priorities.”

“I spent more than two years crafting and fine-tuning the map, ensuring that it would thoroughly and accurately describe the essential elements of time- and self-management,” says David, “It’s as simple as I could get it, while still embodying the subtleties and complexities that have to be factored in, to make it real and useful. And the visual representation we’ve come up with I think is a highly effective way to make something this meaningful really clear.”

The poster was created by XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Visit www.xplane.com to learn more about how XPLANE clarifies complex business issues through visual collaboration.

37 Pithy Insights From Street-Smart Entrepreneurs

The original article included gems like “There are always more things to do than there is time to do them. Startups are a continuous exercise in deciding what not to do.” And “There’s a lot of value to being likable. Good things happen when people like you. When people like you, bad things have less of a chance of being fatal. I advise being likable.” Now here are what OnStartups.com readers had to say:

The response to an earlier article “Startups: 10 Things MBA Schools Won’t Teach You” has been overwhelmingly positive. The article has now received about 150 comments across various websites (on the OnStartups.com site, in the OnStartups LinkedIn group, etc.) Unsurprisingly, many of the comments are much better than anything I could have ever come up with on my own.

So, to further the conversation and discussion, I decided to collect, edit and share some of the fantastic insights from reader comments.

Why Business Plans Don’t Deliver

This WSJ article lays out five most common flaws and how to fix them:

Truth be told, most business plans fail to make much impression on potential investors. Most aren’t even read in full. Their shortcomings tend to be obvious even in a two-page executive summary, largely because they are written before enough real work has been done to create a solid foundation.

I set out to understand why most business plans don’t deliver. Drawing on the hundreds of plans and pitches that I’ve seen over many years of working with entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures, I searched for common patterns in plans that gained no traction. The result? Five oh-so-common varieties of plans that go quickly into the trash without further consideration.

10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business

Let’s make sure to revisit this in 2 1/2 years… :-)

24/7 Wall St. has come up with 10 ways in which Twitter will permanently change American business within the next two to three years, based on an examination of Twitter’s model, the ways that corporations and small businesses are currently using the service and some of the logical extensions of how companies will use Twitter in the future.

A reminder of how simple business can be when you don’t make it complicated

Not everything can be this simple, but lots of things in business should be:

Yesterday I found a flyer on my front door.

I’ve been staring at a project in my backyard for a few weeks. Staring hasn’t gotten it done. So I figured I’d see what it would cost to have these guys do it.

I called them. 10 minutes later the guy came by. He was down the street on another job. We walked out back. I told him what I needed done. He looked around for 20 seconds and said $300. I said “deal.”

That’s it. No proposal. No “I’ll get back to you tomorrow”. No “Let me see how much the materials will cost and I’ll drop an estimate in your mailbox next week.”

Is Your Agency an Adhocracy?

Not just relevant to ad agencies:

The bureaucratic organizational model thrived during the 20th Century. But is it the right model for advertising agencies in the 21st Century? Could an adhocratic model be better suited for these challenging times? …adhocracy, according to academics, is an organization which is the opposite of a bureaucracy. One that cuts across bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results

The Vendor/Client relationship — in real world situations

How David Beats Goliath

When underdogs break the rules, by Malcolm Gladwell:

When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never raise his voice. This was National Junior Basketball—the Little League of basketball. The team was made up mostly of twelve-year-olds, and twelve-year-olds, he knew from experience, did not respond well to shouting. He would conduct business on the basketball court, he decided, the same way he conducted business at his software firm. He would speak calmly and softly, and convince the girls of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense.