This month’s Inc. magazine has a great story (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071001/pandoras-long-strange-trip.html) about leadership. Tim Westergren is one passionate guy about music. You can read the article for more details, but in short, he figured out a way to essentially map the ‘DNA’ of music. I met Tim several years ago when I was working at Best Buy, and at the time, he was trying to get us to license his technology to put on kiosks in the store. The idea was that if his software recommended music to people that they hadn’t thought of, they’d make additional purchases. Great idea, but in the end (see the article) it didn’t pan out. Fast forward to his latest attempt to leverage the original software idea (www.pandora.com). Now that he’s found a great business model (some 8 million registered users), he’s run head first into the music labels who are doing anything they can to protect their intellectual property (and more importantly, the revenue stream).
The moral of this story is that nothing gets this guy down — he’s down to earth, a reasonable and smart business person and the pursuit of his vision has him relentlessly trying again and again. He’s very close (as the article suggests) to a big success, and as a guy that loves the underdog, I wish him good luck.
As I reflect on the story, it triggers something I’m passionate about — how those of us working in HR technology (I know, not nearly as glamorous as music) help organizations keep track of 100s or 1000s of folks that have leadership characteristics like Tim’s. His story won’t answer the question — but did get me thinking about it.
