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Do You Abuse the i-word?

Monday, December 16th, 2013

stop-abusing-i-wordInnovation is hot. You hear it everywhere; I even heard a pastor talking about how he “innovates his sermons.”

In 2007 I wrote that the word “leader” was being badly abused; five years later I added “entrepreneur” to the abuse list and today I’m officially adding “innovation.”

It has lost its meaning.

There was a time it was used sparingly and when it was used it referred to stuff like the printing press; steam engine, penicillin, transistor, computer, Internet.

Things that rocked our world.

These days innovation refers more to brand extensions and iterations.

New versions of old stuff are termed innovation to a ridiculous degree—Kellogg CEO John Bryant used the i-word when talking about the company’s new Pop-Tart flavor.

I’m not saying the i-word shouldn’t be used more broadly, since it also signals both a goal and a special type of MAP

Let’s just agree to limit its use to the appropriate, as opposed to the ludicrous.

Image credit: sign generator

Entrepreneurs: are Elegant Solutions Best?

Thursday, November 21st, 2013

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjornmeansbear/5010984974/

Globally, 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a toilet.

1 in 6 people don’t have running water.

Problems like these cry out for innovative solutions, but innovative doesn’t necessarily mean technically sophisticated.

A few years ago Cynthia Koenig saw the water problem first hand in South Africa.

Koenig launched a nonprofit organization to help distribute a locally available water transportation tool. In order to address the issues of poor quality control, corruption, and limited geographic distribution, she soon found herself at the helm of Wello. The social venture manufactures and distributes the WaterWheel, a 20-gallon drum that moves four to five times the amount of water possible using traditional methods of collection and carrying.

Simple, inexpensive and can even become a micro-business for an owner.

In contrast, five years ago the Gates Foundation issued a toilet challenge, with daunting parameters.

Make sure it takes in the bodily waste of an entire family and outputs drinkable water and condiments, like salt. And while you’re at it, make sure that the toilet is microprocessor-supervised and converts feces into energy. And all this has to cost just pennies per person per day.

That description is akin to a silver bullet, not a toilet.

The results, to date, are sophisticated, costly and unsustainable ideas, with prices north of $1000 per toilet.

How different from an available solution that, while it doesn’t do everything, does solves the basic problem and is amazingly cheap.

The Peepoo bag, which inexpensively (less than 2 cents per bag) sanitizes waste before turning it into fertilizer, are huge improvements. They can also be critical in saving lives after natural disasters.

Just think what a few thousand cases of these would mean right now in the Philippines—or in Illinois, for that matter.

Too often, sexy and elegant ends up being complex and expensive, whereas plebian and boring equates to simple and affordable.

Flickr image credit: bjornmeansbear

Can You Change Someone’s World?

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonnie-brown/4285989531/

For many LIFE has become life, which they choose to live out on a small screen instead of on nature’s infinite stage.

But for some, that small, smooth screen is becoming an onramp to the infinite stage.

Smartphones and tablets, with their flat glass touch screens and nary a texture anywhere, may not seem like the best technological innovation for people who cannot see. But advocates for the blind say the devices could be the biggest assistive aid to come along since Braille was invented in the 1820s.

Not surprisingly, the iPhone is a leader in assistive apps.

One such is VoiceOver, which reads aloud the name of each app as you run your finger over it, just as a visual label shows when you rollover a menu item.

Many developers either don’t think or can’t be bothered to take advantage of the technology by labeling the buttons on their app, which leaves sight-challenged users literally in the dark.

What those developers haven’t figured out is that this is a substantial market—ten million in the US alone and a globally aging population that guarantees it will grow.

Moreover, it’s a highly networked market where anything new and useful is speedily shared.

Even if you are strictly in it for the money enabling your app to take advantage of the assistive technologies built into iOS and Android is smart, since doing so can differentiate you from the pack and help you access valuable media attention.

Writing an app seems to be a right of passage these days even among non-techies for whom it is a hobby and not a job.

So why not write it for a built-in, accessible market and do a bit of good along with the added income?

Flickr image credit: Bonnie Brown

If the Shoe Fits: Five Keys to Living—Channeling Jack Bogle

Friday, September 20th, 2013

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mLooking for a great role model?

How about someone who founded his company 38 years ago and is still active in it?

Someone who built an amazing organization, with an incredible track record for success through every economic turn?

A financial innovator who created the first index fund available for individual investors?

Someone Time Magazine named one of the “world’s 100 most powerful and influential people” in 2004 when he was 75.

How about Jack Bogle, who founded and built The Vanguard Group.

“Vanguard now has 14,000 crew members, and it’s big business, and that doesn’t really appeal to me much. But those are the perils and blessings of success. When I get disturbed about all that size – $2.2 trillion is a lot of assets – I remind myself that we’re giving good careers to 14,000 people, and it’s a company that’s value-oriented, service-oriented, integrity-oriented.”

Bogle  offers some great wisdom, that, while it is applicable to everyone, is especially apropos for founders.

I pulled what I saw as the most important to share with you, starting with a salient quote by Frederick Buechner that Bogle used in a speech he gave at Princeton.

“To live is to experience all sorts of things. (…) Pay attention to your life.”

You can channel Jack Bogle by taking these five points to heart.

  • “Follow your own instincts, try to be yourself and live your own life. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that.”

  • “Other than that, it comes down to some pretty simple things: First, don’t forget your family, because in the end, that’s all you really have. Next, be a decent human being, and don’t think you’re better than anybody else, no matter what your condition of wealth or importance.”

  • “Indeed, never forget the important role of luck in your life. Never, never, never, never say, ‘I did it all myself.’ Nobody does it all themselves. And when somebody has the temerity to tell me they did, I say to them: ‘That’s wonderful. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anybody who did it all themselves, but could I ask you one question: How did you arrange to be born in the United States of America?’ “

  • “The struggle is what it’s all about; people ask me about success. Success is a word I almost never use. Success sounds like you’ve achieved something, it’s done.”

  • “But to be corny, though not inaccurate, success is a journey and not a destination. You don’t say, ‘I’ve arrived, I’m here.’ You say, ‘I’ll try to do a little better tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that.’”

Follow these and you’ll be known not only as a winning founder, but also as an exemplary human being.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Ducks in a Row: Hiring Outside the Box

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

www.flickr.com/photos/33037982@N04/3531601717/If your focus is to foster innovation you are unlikely to do it by hiring in your comfort zone.

Tech managers around the country are whining about the lack of available talent, because they ignore those caught in the 2008 crash and those who don’t fit the typical profile.

Autistic people are so far outside the box that the idea won’t even cross most managers’ minds, but it’s crossing the smartest—including SAP.

“By concentrating on the abilities that every talent brings to the table, we can redefine the way we manage diverse talents. With Specialisterne, we share a common belief that innovation comes from the ‘edges.’ Only by employing people who think differently and spark innovation will SAP be prepared to handle the challenges of the 21st century.” –Luisa Delgado, SAP human resources chief

When hiring you have a choice.

You can chase the same people as everyone else or you can turn your back on the tried and comfortable; there is an enormous amount of talent just lying around for the taking.

At least there is for the good managers who understand that their real job is to build, develop and support their people.

Flickr image credit: wallygrom

Entrepreneurs: Me Too

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

me-tooAre you a ‘me too’ entrepreneur?

Do you dream about creating the next Facebook/Twitter/Instagram?

Throughout history there have always been too many products replicating or providing only slight improvements over what is already available.

The paraphrasing of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s comments into “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” is probably what made it the “most frequently invented device in U.S. history,” with 4,400 patents and thousands more that weren’t approved.

Much of social media and apps are the Twenty-first Century’s version of that mousetrap.

Who should you look to for inspiration?

Maybe Steve Jobs; while he didn’t invent; he took what was there (like MP3) and added amazing design to build his better mousetraps.

Or Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors/innovators of all time, “I find out what the world needs; then I proceed to invent.”

He also provided the quintessential definition of value when he said, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”

So if you believe your product meets the first criteria test it on the real world to be sure it’s in sync with the second.

Flickr image credit: label generator

If the Shoe Fits: What and When

Friday, March 8th, 2013

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mMany of the people who start companies are focused on getting rich—period.

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life as most people won’t so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t. –Anon

But there are many others—more now than ever before and growing—who start companies with a different focus.

They aim to do good by doing well and make the world a better place.

Both would like the tiny bit of immortality that comes with real innovation.

The one thing they all agree on is that whatever it is needs to be done now, because there may not be a ‘later’.

Of course, that goes for everything in life, not just being an entrepreneur.

The most elegant phrasing of ‘why now’ was in a short essay I read recently.

You are older at this moment than you’ve ever been before, and it’s the youngest you’re ever going to get. The mortality rate is holding at a scandalous 100 percent.

That pretty much says it all, so whatever you’ve been “thinking about doing” or “planning” STOP.

Make the future your now and just do it.

Image credit: HikingArtist

A World I Won’t Live In

Monday, March 4th, 2013

http://www.flickr.com/photos/igorschwarzmann/6243421484/Two stories today made me really happy.

Happy that I won’t be around to see the world that the Silicon Valley mentality is working frantically to make happen. (I say ‘mentality’ because startups are all over as is the mindset described.)

It’s a world of instant solutions, from quasi-immortality, postmortem tweets from soon-to-be-launched LivesOn, to futurist Ayesha Khanna’s idea for smart contact lenses that would make homeless people disappear from view—out of sight/out of mind.

Solutionists err by assuming, rather than investigating, the problems they set out to tackle. Given Silicon Valley’s digital hammers, all problems start looking like nails, and all solutions like apps.

And then there is Seesaw, which allows you to “crowdsource absolutely every decision in your life” and practically guarantees siloed, homogenized attitudes over the long-term.

The drive seems to be to avoid thinking in general, let alone any of the less comfortable deep thinking required to mature and develop anything vaguely resembling wisdom.

Leszek Kolakowski argued that, given that we are regularly confronted with equally valid choices where painful ethical reflection is in order, being inconsistent is the only way to avoid becoming a doctrinaire ideologue who sticks to an algorithm. For Kolakowski, absolute consistency is identical to fanaticism.

Or as Emerson said long before the rise of today’s technology, “A foolish Consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers, and divines. With consistency, a great soul simply has nothing to do.”

The main problem with so many innovators is that they want to solve problems with an algorithm, which ignores the entire messy human equation; much like medicine desperately wants to believe that one-dose-fits-all.

Nor, in the rush to innovate, do they give much thought as to the longer-term effects of their miracles.

The interactive dialog provided by digital media was hailed as a way to draw millions more into the dialog, which sounds great until you look at the real effect of negative comments on stories.

Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place. (…) The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

Turns out it’s not so much the comment, but the tone that has the greatest effect.

So. No discussion, no disagreement within your little world, no ethical dilemmas, no deep thinking, mental struggle, stretching or growing.

Maybe no innovation.

Is this the world in which you want to live?

Flickr image credit: Igor Schwarzmann

Entrepreneurs: Israeli Innovation

Thursday, December 27th, 2012

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafaelgomez/6809681211/It is well-known that Israel is a hotbed of entrepreneurs with a thriving startup culture, but are you aware of just how far back all that entrepreneuring started?

And so, in ancient Israel it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dorothy.

And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com. And she said unto Abraham, her husband, “Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?” And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, “How, dear?”

And Dot replied, “I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. The sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS).”

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent.

To prevent neighboring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures – Hebrew To The People (HTTP).

And the young men did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. Indeed he did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drumsticks.

And Dot did say, “Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.” And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or eBay as it came to be known.

He said, “We need a name that reflects what we are.” And Dot replied, “Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.” “YAHOO,” said Abraham.

And because it was Dot’s idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com. Abraham’s cousin, Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot’s drums to locate things around the countryside.

It soon became known as God’s Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).

And that, my children, in truth, is how it all began.

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Hat tip to John Fiscella for sending me the story.
Flickr image credit: Rafael Gomez

Expand Your Mind: a Different Look at Innovation

Saturday, October 27th, 2012

In 1914 why did that ultimate capitalist Henry Ford raise worker pay to the unheard-of wage of $5 a day? There is many a corporate titan who would do well to consider Ford’s philosophy today—before developing next year’s executive compensation plan or even deciding on this year’s bonuses.

Not only was it a matter of social justice, Ford wrote, but paying high wages was also smart business. When wages are low, uncertainty dogs the marketplace and growth is weak. But when pay is high and steady, Ford asserted, business is more secure because workers earn enough to become good customers. They can afford to buy Model Ts.

These days, innovation is touted as the world’s savior, but is it really the game-changers or their copycats that provide real economic benefit? An excerpt from The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking, by Eli Broad posits the latter. And before you argue keep in mind that Apple didn’t invent computers or MP3 music players.

Who does capture the benefits of new ideas, products, and models? Imitators. They get a free ride, avoid dead ends, capitalize on the shortcomings of early offerings or tweak the originals to better fit shifting consumer tastes. And yet, imitators rarely get the recognition they deserve: When was the last time someone received an Imitator of the Year Award?

Based on descriptions of the new Windows 8 operating system I’ve decided that I will switch a few weeks after I die. If all you use is a smartphone or tablet you’ll probably have more tolerance to it, but if you use multiple applications on a real computer not so much. HBS’ Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses it in terms of people’s resistance to change and I agree, but I have a much stronger resistance to things that make me feel incompetent and/or stupid.

Technology is good at that and as one commenter said, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat there getting angry trying to figure out how to get something done. I’m not an idiot when it comes to computers, but this OS made me feel like one.” Kanter’s response? “Your software should not make anyone feel like an idiot.”

Common wisdom says “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it,” but there are times when that attitude is shortsighted. The Smithsonian certainly isn’t broke in any way, shape or form, but it has looked to the future and decided it needs to update its brand if it plans to continue for another 166 years and beyond.

Although the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex, is already a popular and trusted brand, officials there nonetheless decided they needed to raise awareness, particularly among young people, of precisely what they have to offer.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

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