You read - Permanent beta

For entrepreneurs, ‘finished’ is an F-word, write Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha in The Start-up of You (www.landmark onthenet.com). We are all works in progress, the authors declare; for, “Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers. Keeping your career in permanent beta forces you to acknowledge that you have bugs, that there’s new development to do on yourself, that you will need to adapt and evolve.”

The book cites Andy Hargadon, head of entrepreneurship centre at the University of California-Davis, for the lament that for many people ‘twenty years of experience’ is really one year of experience repeated twenty times. In contrast, to those who are in ‘permanent beta’ in career, twenty years of experience can actually be twenty years of experience because each year would be marked by new, enriching challenges and opportunities, as the authors point out. “Permanent beta is essentially a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth.”

Career transformation, however, demands real skills in addition to the permanent beta mind-set, the authors remind. Through separate chapters, they elaborate on the need, for instance, to develop your competitive advantage in the market by combining your assets, your aspirations, and the market realities; and to build real, lasting relationships and deploy these relationships into a powerful professional network.

Imperative addition to the ‘start-up’ reading list.

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