The authors post about the e-book at their blog, ChangeThis Manifesto “I Am The Walrus” Released!.

The possibility of finding and spreading remarkable ideas, creating great things, and sharing them with others represents a wealth of opportunity (largely untapped). We hope that reading our manifesto helps you figure out your brand; that it encourages you to take some risks and be extraordinary. It’s easy to stay put and avoid change, but when you look back will you wish you’d said yes to do something different? We chose to say yes and we are doing something different…with a little help from our friends.

There is a series of “I Me Mine” that continue the process from the e-book.

A freelancer sells her talents. While she may have a few employees, basically she is doing a job without a boss, not running a business. Layout artists, writers, consultants, film editors, landscapers, architects, translators and musicians are all freelancers. There is no exit strategy. There is no huge pot of gold. Just the pleasure and satisfaction of making your own hours and being your own boss.

An entrepreneur is trying to build something bigger than herself. She takes calculated risks and focuses on growth. An entrepreneur is willing to receive little pay, work long hours and take on great risk in exchange for the freedom to make something big, something that has real market value.

The entrepreneur is comfortable raising money, hiring and firing, renting more office space than she needs right now. The entrepreneur must dream big and persuade others to share her dream.

The freelancer on the other hand can focus on craft. She can most easily build her business by doing great work, consistently.

According to these definitions I as coach am a freelancer, I am selling my talents.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

It is a great read about viral marketing or word-of-mouse, how it can help you promote yourself or your company for free. There are examples of viral marketing such as eBooks and videos at YouTube. There is also a word of warning:

The power of the Internet makes it easier for people to fall in love with you faster. But beware—it also makes it easier for them to fall out of love with you faster.

The story of Website Grader by HubSpot and HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog is one of the examples, an interesting concept.

What’s your favorite question? Over the years we’ve found that the most popular answers to this question are ‘why,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why not’ in that order. A trend we’ve also observed is that those who ask ‘why’ are typically more holistic or whole-brained thinkers, those who ask ‘how’ are typically more box thinkers, and those who ask ‘why not’ are typically the challenging thinkers. All types, of course, are equally valuable and equally required for innovation!

I love this part of the text: Why does the typical 5-year old ask about 65 questions a day while the typical 40-something only asks about 6 questions a day? In other words, ask like a child – be inquisitive!

The first link is 5 Ways to Enhance Your Creativity at Problogger. The fifth one, record your ideas, is important. Always (well almost always..) have something around so you can make some notes when brilliance strikes.

The second link is over at ChangeThis, Hugh McLeod (known from gapingvoid) has created a PDF-file called How To Be Creative. The document is spiced with his cartoons.

The third link is also from Problogger, 9 Attitudes of Highly Creative People. The first attitude listed is curiosity, I have loads of that.

The forth link is from CopyBlogger, Three Easy Ways to Expand Your Creativity. The posts starts with the first sentence of a quote by Albert Einstein.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

The fifth and final link is also Problogger, How to Be a More Creative Blogger – Methods of Creativity.

It is a list of recommended books covering many business topics:
+ A Quick Note On Organization
+ Manage Your Life and Work
+ Learn the Fundamentals
+ Strategic Thinking
+ The Only Thing Constant is Change
+ Masters of Management
+ The Finest Minds in Business
+ Dollars on the Books (Finance and Accounting)
+ Numbers and Negotiations
+ Operational Effectiveness
+ Form and Function
+ Project Management and Marketing
+ Do Your Own Thing
+ Speak Your Mind
+ The Delicate Art of Human Relations
+ Sell, Sell, Sell!
+ Economics and Worldviews
+ Business, Past and Present
+ Rules and Morals
+ Analyze This
+ Voices of Experience

There is in all 42 books, lots of reading but it can be done while attending “school of life”. Mixing studies with practice makes learning easier. The catch is you will not get a MBA diploma.

All I am really an expert at is being stupid and learning from it….I have become an expert at not making the same mistake twice, and learning from every stupid thing I have ever done.

I have read many bestseller business books over the years and I do agree with Larry:

There are simply no secrets. When you see the word “secret” you should run! And when you hear that someone has a brand new concept for how to be successful, beware. You don’t need anything brand new; you need to go back to the old and simple stuff that makes sense.

Instead of 500 books about the secrets of customer service, try this: Be nice. Say thank you. A secret? I hope not. Isn’t that all you are looking for in a transaction?

Instead of 600 books on the secrets of selling, try this: Ask. Just ask people to buy. Ask, ask, ask, ask, and ask. Become a master asker.

Instead of 700 books about the secrets of leadership, try this: lead. Get out in front of people and give them something to follow.

Larry ends his manifesto with Larry´s Truths about Business
+ Attitude doesn’t matter.
+ Who cares if your employees are happy?
+ You don’t have to love your job—but it helps.
+ Not firing people is a cancer on your business.
+ Do the right thing no matter what.

When it comes to knowing if something is the right or wrong thing, simply trust your instinct. Larry puts it like this: “If you have to ask, it’s the wrong thing”.

Adaptive Path has a great article called Experience Attributes: Crucial DNA of Web 2.0. There is a PDF called What put the 2 in Web 2.0 about attributes and with examples.

ChangeThis has a manifesto called Web 2.0: Strategies and Lessons for Business Leaders.

There is a large catalog of sites over at EVERYTHING 2.0.

Not everyone is impressed by Web 2.0 I read this blogpost with comments by Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: “nobody even knows what it means”.

When asked if it’s fair to say that the difference between the two might be fairly described as “Web 1.0 is about connecting computers, while Web 2.0 is about connecting people,” Berners-Lee replied, “Totally not. Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along. And in fact, you know, this ‘Web 2.0,’ it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0.”

Summary:
Such seemingly dissimilar groups as the Apache Indians, music swapping programs, Wikipedia, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Queda have one thing in common: they are all starfish. According to Brafman and Beckstrom, each of these resilient groups succeeds because they are absent any hierarchy (head) and conventional organizations (spiders) best watch their backs.

I like this phrase in their text: Size matters. There is power in being small.

Lesson to learn: small and agile organizations can beat the big guys.

Update May 1, 2007.
Jason Alba has posted Book Review: The Starfish and the Spider.

Update April 7, 2008.
I have written a book review at The Starfish and the Spider.

According to Kawasaki, some examples of making ‘meaning’ are: make the world a better place, increase the quality of life, right a terrible wrong, and prevent the end of something good.

Make meaning sounds great but it is not that easy to apply, it is a different thinking than the regular vision-mission. Make mantra is great, it forces you to condence your concept.

Guy Kawasaki has a website and a blog named Signum sine tinnitu.