Lion v. Buffalo

A lot of times, opportunity is defined by perspective. First, consider you are a buffalo roaming the plains of somewhere grassy, like in this video. You see the tigers, and realize: things are going poorly for somebody today. What should you do? Well, I have never been to buffalo survival school, but it seems like the best idea is to stay in the middle of the pack and hope one of your buddies blows out a knee. You may be thinking "Ah, you have forgotten the possibility that the tiger get's nobody! That is what I would hope for." But, you are wrong. If the tigers fails to eat my buddy, you just have some really hungry tigers. Based on the fact that there are still tigers, something tells me they will eat before too long. If you live in a buffalo herd, you want to surround yourself by weaker buffaloes, because if you are the slowest, you are lunch.

Let's review: the best potential outcome is that one of your buddies dies, and the worst outcome is that none of your buddies dies and you took one for the team. How do you win? Why do you play? It seems like you are just waiting for your time to go...so switch sides.

Consider this game from the perspective of the tiger. Instead of hoping to not die, you are chasing the herd, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Hopefully, it is you that makes the strike, because there is something wonderful about leading the chase. But, if your buddy makes the strike and you just come and join him for some chow, that is not bad either. The only thing that sucks is if your whole crew fails to deliver. If you live in a tiger...I cannot remember the name...gaggle, you want to surround yourself with the most powerful buddies you can. You hope for their success while working aggressively to achieve success yourself. This seems like a fun game.

If you find yourself in a job where you are trying to position yourself against your co-workers so that you are not the one that gets fired, switch teams (or create a new team). Hunt for opportunities. Go for the kill but support your buddy and hope he succeeds as well.

Matt

Create your own innovation pipeline.

Many ideas. Fewer experiments. One big bet.

I know a lot of people who have a lot of great ideas...actually, a lot of ideas is probably more accurate. I am one of them. The problem is, that most people who have tons of ideas have no process for clearing their mind (and their mouth) of the less interesting ideas and putting more energy into the more interesting ideas. A solution to this problem is creating an innovation pipeline.

The first requirement for an effective innovation pipeline is tons and tons of input: new, random ideas. Random is important, because if you just have 100 different ideas about how to make a better mousetrap, you are not innovating, you are just engineering a better mousetrap.

The second requirement is to create some sort of fitness function that helps you evaluate the ideas and select the best (most fit) for experimentation. For example, you can score each idea for customer value, business value, ease of prototyping, and degree difference from the next best solution. The score is not as important as the process of critically evaluating your landslide of ideas and quickly sorting the potential winners from everything else.

The third component is to create experiments for the best ideas. An experiment is a prototype plus a business model--you want to learn as quickly as possible whether you can build it and whether you can make money off what you built. As far as prototypes are concerned, a good prototype is one that approximates what the customer would use (e.g., not just screen shots/drawings). As far as business models, do not wait until your product is in the box to figure out how to try to sell it. Do it early so you can adapt your product to the demand when it is still small and flexible.

Now that you have your experiments up and running, you need another fitness function. What happens if you cannot adapt your product to make a customer say "that is awesome" as he is reaching for his wallet? Throw the experiment and the idea away before you have invested too much time--you are just dating your experiments, and the quicker you give up on lower quality ideas the better. Even if you could make a marginal idea float, it is better to put that same amount of energy into a better idea and make it fly. Knowing that failure is a very real possibility, you want to invest as little as possible in your experiments so that you do not end up in a personal "too big to fail" scenario: if you have mortgaged your house or invested the last five years of your life for your new venture, you may not be able to reasonably assess whether you should just push a little harder or walk away.

So do not wait before looking your little experiment in the eye and making the call. And have many other experiments, so you can get a sense of what a good experiment feels like. And have many other ideas so that you can kill an experiment with confidence knowing that there are other good candidates waiting in the pipeline.

Once you have an experiment that feels right, you are ready to do great things. It is time to stop with the hedging of many and put yourself behind your one big bet. The big bet will evolve over time, but you are probably stuck with it for five years if it actually succeeds. The odds are still that you will fail, but you now have a better chance of success. And, by the way, do not feel guilty about what you have done--you never kill an idea or an experiment. You will probably end up looking to some of these as you execute on your big bet if you determine that they might satisfy a customer need. So get started today: write down all of your ideas on a board and build the foundation of your innovation pipeline.

Happy innovating.

Matt

Dragon Soup

An old man asks a group of youngsters to sit around the fire so that he can tell them a story.

"The village was gripped in terror. A dragon was loose. A village meeting was called to resolve this problem. First, an wise man stood up and exclaimed 'dragons never attack people in groups...the key is to travel in pairs...or MORE!'"

Now the other villagers were not convinced. Not only was it difficult to abide by these rules, but even if you abide, does the dragon? Who is to say he does not eat you both...and so another elder proclaims...

"Nay, nay...the key is that we must stay in cottages AND reinforce all doors and windows. The greatest concern is that the dragon can get into our homes and eat our families before our eyes. We MUST secure our doors!!!"

Now the other villagers were really not convinced. Not only does this lock the villagers into their homes, but it also means that if the dragon is able to penetrate the defenses, the occupants are doomed to certain destruction...and so a young man with more gumption that brains proclaims...

"Who wants dragon soup!"

Sometimes, a bit of ignorance about the impossibility of the task at hand is just what is needed.

Shamelessly Promoting Oneself

So, I am looking to build a site all about me. Basically, I want it to provide a unified view of everything that I am, and allow people to learn/subscribe (or request to subscribe) to whatever information they want. I have tried live spaces (not too great), google profiles (not too great), Visual CV (better, but not too great), LinkedIn (does not feel like it is about me), facebook, and some others, but I have not found a home. I want something that people would be able to explore my life, either work or personal. Any recommendations appreciated..

Add next to hide

I was just using an IDE (stands for "I'ld rather be fishing, but I am using this code application instead"), and I ended up hiding a folder that I was trying to add something to. There was no request for confirmation. No ability to undo. I tried to undo/unhide by just adding the folder again, but I got a pretty lengthy message explaining the impossibility of my attempt. BUT, at the end of the message, I was informed that there was an option under Project for showing hidden files. I accepted the message, forgot where the message said the option was, forced the message to repeat by trying to add the folder again, and this time I made sure to remember. I clicked the button, the hidden folder appeared, I right clicked it and...yes there was an option to unhide it.

Three minutes later, and completely out of the rhythm in which I had been, I came away with two learnings: 1) I have no short term memory (I just had to re-read the start of this post to remember what I was talking about); and 2) I wonder how often this happens. If this is a one time deal, I should have my license to the product revoked because I am not worthy of its utility. My hunch is that I am not alone. When two options are adjecent in a GUI, it must be expected that some user with a caffeine overload and all twelve fingers typing madly will occassionally misfire. Software should be built from the ground up to enable this kind of discovery and help the developers address the deficiency. I should not have to build this into my software, but my IDE/framework should provide it out of the box (I guess that is out of the internet).

Instrument your software so that it can help you discover its insanity.

m@

Clippy is coming

Microsoft's Clippy is much maligned. The reality is, it had some accuracy and UX issues. Specifically, it usually gave you the wrong information (-1) while disrupting your workflow (-2). Now, imagine that it works perfectly: you are cruising along in an application, no clippy; you hit a bump, and clippy casually says in a corner "you do not have a semi-colon at the end of your expression...should I add it?" No tinking on the glass, asking you if you want help, and when you say yes saying "do you want to add a printer?" Who will be the first company to implement a clippy++? Note: I get the sense that some people will not like clippy, no matter what.

A good day at work

Had a fun discussion at work today. We have started a lunch-time BS session (that is brainstorming) where people pitch ideas that do not make sense for their jobs but do make sense to the pitcher.