It takes a maverick

I get a little preachy about bucking the trend and not following all the weasels into the mouse trap. So instead of me going on and on, I'll point you to the new book `Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win.'  If you need a little encouragment to not start or invest in the next wireless social networking startup, mash-up widget engine, or user-generated video platform then this is for you.

Examples include Netflix, Cranium’s efforts to make gaming instructive and universal, ING Direct’s mission of encouraging savings, and HBO’s vision of producing content good enough to pay for (imagine that!). And they try and draw on the common themes and threads across all of them. It's caused a bunch of others (Ed, Scott, Guy, and their blog) to chatter about what all these stories mean, but mostly I would say all of these people grew amazing businesses, despite common convention and naysayers, because they were so pissed about something that they had to take action (more on that later). They had a core value they wanted to change about an industry.

Worth a read to get your guts up to do something truly different.