Hockey Sticks and Mastering your Destiny

Rolf Skyberg took us through one of the most entertaining presentations, titled Dangerous Curves: Hockey Sticks, Swine flu and More. It was about controlling the destiny of your company and products by mastering early detection of elusive patterns of growth and decline.

So what do Hockey Sticks have to do with mastering your destiny? It’s not about the Hockey Stick so much as about the shape. It’s one of the many patterns (seen over and over) that describe a company or product growth trend. This can be a very dry topic to all but a select group, but not the way Rolf presented it. Using humorous anecdotes and quirky real-life examples, Rolf described these 5 curves, what they mean, and how not to get bitten by them.

• Hockey Stick Curve
• Infection Curve
• Sinusoidal Curve
• The Gartner-Hype Curve
• Normal Growth Cycle

The presentation wrapped up with why it’s important to watch short term data points, but also to pay attention to the bigger picture - “It’s only a difference if it makes a difference”. And he illustrated this with a walk through possible options when you receive any of three “oh crap” emails in the middle of the night.

If you missed this presentation at eBay DevCon 2010, you can also find it on his blog. Rolf provides much more information, insights, and humor than I can do justice in one little blog, so please take a look for yourself.