Mark Cuban's Knowledge Advantage

 
The story of Mark Cuban's success (an interesting 4-part auto-biography), as it happens, is a lesson in insatiable curiosity. He credits a habit of relentless reading and non-stop learning as giving him the knowledge advantage that's put him ahead of his competitors in any endeavour he's pursued.

I would continuously search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, 3 bucks for a magazine, 20 bucks for a book. One good idea that lead to a customer or solution and it paid for itself many times over. Some of the ideas i read were good, some not. In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson.
Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.

I remember going into customers or talking to people in the industry and tossing out tidbits about software or hardware. Features that worked, bugs in the software. All things I had read. I expected the ongoing response of “Oh yeah, I read that too in such-and-such.” That’s not what happened. They hadn’t read it then, and they haven’t started reading yet.

Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage. Sure, there were folks that worked hard at picking up every bit of information that they could, but we were few and far between. To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the net making it so readily available, I can get an advantage in any technology business.

In a more recent post, Cuban also says another secret of his success has been his tendency to whine. Yes, whine - to challenge the status quo and set out to change industry conventions that no longer make much sense.

I'm sure there have been many other things I have whined about in the past, and many more that I will whine about in the future. What I dont understand is why so many people think whining has a negative connotation. I dont.

Whining is the first step towards change. Its the moment when you realize something is very wrong and that you have to take the initiative to do something about it. Sure, criticism usually comes along with the territory. Who cares?