Small Business School
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David Bowden is one of the big brains
at Transition Associates.
Small Business School
Partner With Other Big Brains

HATTIE: So, David, this makes sense to you?

DAVID: It does. It does, just enough.

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Transcript Segments
Small Business School
Small Business School
1. Transform Raw Data Into Knowledge
2. Keep Improving
3. Admit Mistakes
4. Give Up Free Wheeling
5. Give Employees Unlimited Connections
6. Partner With Other Big Brains
7. Charge For Insight
8. Automate The Mundane
9. Adopt The musketeer Mentality
10. Hire The Off Beat
11. Think Tomorrow Sell Today
12. Go After The Chinese Market
13.   Force Marketing And IT
To Work Together
14. Win Coveted Awards


HATTIE: It looks like Greek to me. So you printed out the code.

DAVID: Yeah, this is code printed out from our test server, and this is code printed out from an installation that's going in on a customer server. And something's not quite right on the customer server. Now it may be that we've got a discrepancy in code, but it may be that we've got a discrepancy in the way the server's set up. So I've printed out the two sets of code and I'm just running through, comparing them. And I have found a small discrepancy here. So it's a simple thing. We have a slash going back...

HATTIE: It's a forward slash.

DAVID: ...and a slash going forward.

HATTIE: That's the only thing different in the two pages. DAVID: That's the only thing different, yeah.

HATTIE: So now you get to go to lunch, right?

DAVID: Yeah. Yeah. There you go. One problem found.

MILES: Back in 1995, I worked for a company in the UK called UA Training. I was the director of education there, and it's a large technical training organization. And just at that time, there was the first glimmer of what was going to happen with the Internet. And I thought to myself, `I don't want to work for a big corporation. I want to get out there on my own again,' because I used to run my own business. And I thought, `I can see something here. This is going to be big in education.'

HATTIE: So when you started, where did the money come from?

MILES: My own pocket. We started--it was the HP story. We started in the back room of the house, then we grew. David came and joined me. We moved from one room to another room, to two rooms, built an office, moved out of there, moved into a school, you know.

HATTIE: Why have a partner? Why David?

MILES: Maybe I'm the person who creates some vision and direction and gets out there and evangelizes our message, and David's the guy who really runs the business. (Voiceover) He's the guy who really sits behind the wheel and says, `This is how we can achieve it,' `No, we can't do that.' But it's a balance.

HATTIE: Do you ever fight?

MILES: Never. Not true. We have vigorous debates.

HATTIE: How do you get to a resolution?

MILES: It's very easy. David's always right.

DAVID: The future for us, I mean, our immediate future is in enablement, enabling customers to do what they need to do.

MILES: You have to have a balance between utter realism to face the hard decisions, but at the same time, complete unwavering faith that whatever you're doing, you can adapt to whatever the market circumstances are and keep going.

DAVID: Times of change are unnerving and a little scary. So we have to be nimble, we have to watch what's going on and go with where our customers' needs are and understand those things.

MILES: And that's what keeps you going because, yes, there are hard times. But when you hit those hard times, if you don't believe you can come through them, you might as well pack up and go home.

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