I’d like you to see a Can Do vs Can’t Do article. At heart it is a bit happy-clappy about how we can do anything if we just put the show on right here. But there’s also a lot of truth about how we simply never know when something will work out.

Ben Horowitz, writing in Re/Code (the new venture formed by ex-AllThingsD folk), says in part:

As a venture capitalist, people often ask me why big companies have trouble innovating while small companies seem to be able to do it so easily. My answer is generally unexpected. Big companies have plenty of great ideas, but they do not innovate because they need a whole hierarchy of people to agree that a new idea is good in order to pursue it. If one smart person figures out something wrong with an idea — often to show off or to consolidate power — that’s usually enough to kill it.

Nobody knows anything. That could be the short summary of this but it also fits in with my own You’re on your own and it’s necessary point about how we have to press on ourselves. Full disclosure: that link is to a version I wrote of that post for my personal Self Distract blog rather than here on The Blank Screen. I did it first on The Blank Screen but then realised why I was really writing it, realised that it went a bit deeper into a personal thing and wrote a much improved version for Self Distract.

That’s my one and here’s Re/Code’s piece.