Archive for the ‘Start up’ Category
- Innovators
Last night I had dinner with a friend I had not seen for a year. She is a very good friend but because of her schedule (super mum with super career) and my schedule we basically end up seeing each one once year for serious conversations and dinner. It is a pity really and it needs to change (that for 2009!); but Monday’s dinner (at Tati Bistro, I should have selected Loire instead, foodie regret here!) brought out a discussion I recall having a few times: how do you groom innovators and how do you encourage innovation in an organization? In my reading list his week the Harward Business Review is dedicated to innovation and this article is bang on:
The tendency is rooted in false beliefs about how innovation works. Senior managers seem to assume that innovators spontaneously generate new ideas much as a magician pulls a rabbit from his hat—that if they simply leave these people alone, golden ideas will spring forth. Then sales, marketing, engineering, and finance people can decide how to implement and profit from them. In fact most revolutionary ideas evolve quite differently. Innovators propose new ideas. Various experts within the company sort through enormous amounts of information and often conflicting opinions. Then the innovators home in on the most critical components, see connections, and discern how to bridge different parts; they work hard and efficiently to recombine these pieces and cultivate internal buy-in for the innovation. The iPod is a case in point. The idea was originally conceived by Tony Fadell, a consultant Apple hired to develop new projects. An Apple engineering team assembled it from off-the-shelf parts and combined it with in-house design features such as Apple’s user-friendly controls. Having generated buy-in along the way, Fadell had little difficulty selling the result to senior management.
Take the time to read the online article as it explores how successful companies identify, groom, and place people who can master the innovation process. And surprise? It is not what you think! Potential innovators can be groomed but talk about finding a needle in a haystack in an organization and you don’t start describing the finding and grooming process…
- Queen’s Entrepreneurs Competition 2009
I am looking forward to being one of the judges for QEC 2009 (Queen’s Entrepreneurs Competition). Although their website needs major help (!), the event promises to be awesome. Previous years account for that already! For the 21st year in a row, Queen’s University is putting on the Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition (QEC). The QEC is a business plan competition that brings students from top schools around the world to Kingston to compete for over $25,000 worth of investment grants. There will be 16 finalists which is going to make for some exciting judging…Besides the competition, meeting the other judges and speakers, I am looking forward to meeting like-minded entrepreneurs and hearing some of their stories and of course offering any help I can.
- Talent is (seriously) overrated
I have a gigantic pile of books to read and I am looking forward to the holiday break to catch up on some of my reading. Yesterday I randomly started with what was on top of the pile-o-books: Talent is overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin. I like Goeff Colvin’s writing – he is a brilliang journalist – so I am not surprised that I was still finishing up the book in the wee hours of the morning. Now that said the first thing I thought when I read the title was: everyone talks about talent, firms hire talent, there is a shortage of good talent, but… we all know that what’s really happening is that “hard work is under rated” or even overlooked!As a youngster I used to play basketball so so much that it sometimes affected my school work. For those of you who know me, you know that I am short – I envy all the tall 6 foot ++ geeks – but I am short and there is very little I can do about that (except consider some stilettos!) but when I was young I used to bet people that I could score a 3 pointer on the basketball court. I always won the bet, because acquaintances would take one look at me and bet I could not get a 3 pointer in. Ha! What fun and great pocket money while it lasted. How did I do that? Practice. Hours and hours and hours of practice. So much practice that some days I could not lift my arms as I would have spent hours dunking balls. I loved it and I had one single goal, one single desire: scoring a 3 pointer. I asked my coach for feedback, I asked him to watch me shoot the ball, I asked him to suggest exercises to correct my shoots etc. until I could score practically with my eyes closed. It was sweet.
In those days I was obsessed with scoring a 3 pointer. Obsessed to the point of carrying my own basketball ball to practice any chance I had. That’s when I realized as a kid what my mum meant when she said: “sit your ass down and practice the score!”. I hated music but loved basketball. My mum would not hear any of it. I continued to practice music poorly escaping to my real practice: basketbal!
Colvin’s book settles the question of whether great leaders are born or made: they are made. Through deliberate practice. Florida State University researcher K. Anders Ericsson, writes: “Until most individuals recognize that sustained training and effort is a prerequisite for reaching expert levels of performance, they will continue to misattribute lesser achievement to the lack of natural gifts, and will thus fail to reach their own potential.”
To become the very best you need to spend more time learning how to and practicing and not less. Hommage to hard work if I ever saw one.
Need to get going on applying this to my running!
- Mo’ money Mo’ fun at hohoTO
If you have not hear about hohoTO then you must be living under a rock!
A group of us have been working very hard in the past week to get Toronto’s Geek Event of the year under way. And I have to say that I am totally blown away by what we have accomplished in a matter of 72 hours: scheduled the party (it is now for Monday December 15, 2008); booked the venue, sold tickets, got sponsors and in total fund raised over $10,000 from our generous sponsors and ticket buyers all to go to the Toronto Daily Food Bank. But I want more. I am a demanding person I know. I want every single one of you out there who has not bought a ticket to buy one immediately. Why? Because our ticket price is going to increase on Tuesday and it will increase by $5 everyday until December 15. So buy your ticket now, or allow me to part you with more of your money on the day of the event because… you know… you will want to attend and tickets at the door will be prohibitive!
All the event details that are fit to blog follow:
Location: The Mod Club
Date and Time: starting at 19:00 on Monday December 15, 2008
There will be incredible geeks to meet, chat to, drink and dance with. There will be awesome food. A great charity to support and an awesome way to end the year. Planning this event has brought back fond memories of my early years fundraising for the Food Bank, the Toronto Humane Society and Aids Action Now: things get done before people care! A great thank you to the entire Toronto technology community who has been incredibly supportive in the planning and fundraising for this event. A great thank you to all the folks who rolled up their sleeves without asking questions and got working, working, working to get things done. We are at the half way mark (the event is in a week) and I still wish we could fund raise double the amount of money we currently fundraised, why you ask? Because these are difficult times for a lot of people, you have seen the scary headline…
Please give generously. Please buy a ticket for yourself or someone whose company you enjoy! Please help us make a difference for The Toronto Food Bank. And if you can’t attend the event, well, please consider buying a ticket anyway, your donation will go straight to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
Only positive thoughts forward.
(Photograph copyright Tim)
- HoHoTo
That’s the Toronto Technology Party we are planning! In Toronto, on Tuesday Monday December 16 15. Of course this is a last minute thing, but we are used to it; we bring you DemoCamp, Mesh and all sorts of Toronto geek gatherings so we are used to putting our heads together and getting things done.We need you to get the word out to everyone in the software/technology space in Toronto as we would love to see everyone before the year end. The number of tickets for the party is limited so getting your ticket is a must – ’cause begging ain’t gonna to get you in the door.
When: Tuesday Monday December 16 15, 2008 starting at 19:00
Where: The ModClub
Who: Geeks! and everyone else.
You are all welcome to join us. All proceeds from the party will go to supporting the Toronto Daily Food Bank. More details to come your way in the very near future but don’t let that stop you from getting your ticket(s) now.
- Software development
We have our own brand of software development at Idee and that will need a much longer post than the time I have today for this drive by blog post: this is an oldy but a goodie: Martin Fowler on (agile) software development.
- Geoff Entress, Seattle’s Prolific Angel Investor, on why startups fail
My favourites:
They spend the money they raise too fast. “Conserve your cash,” Entress said. It’s very difficult to raise more funds, especially these days.
They react too slowly to changes in the market. This includes things like not changing their overall cost structure quickly enough, not cutting staff deeply enough, and not adjusting the business model.
They don’t hire the right team as the business grows. Startup founders often don’t “scale” to large public company CEOs.
They don’t listen to their customers. Customers can be “sold,” but they usually know better than you what they want.
They don’t change their business model when it becomes obvious that it is flawed. Be decisive, be flexible, learn what works and do more of it.
and the rest of the top ten is here.
- Obama’s victory and business lessons
Nice little business week article: So often, companies think they’ve nailed execution by doing the same old “milk run” better and better. But winning execution means doing the milk run perfectly—and finding new customers and opening new markets along the way. You can’t just beat your rivals by the old rules; to grow, you have to invent a new game and beat them at that, too.
- Paul Polak: Go where the action is
Paul Polak’s 12 steps to practical problem solving (geared to startups) via GigaOM:1. Go where the action is. “Spend significant time with your customers. This is how you learn what they need,” he says. Not hours, days. Polak lived with his farmers for 6 months.
2. Interview at least 100 customers a year. You do it. Not an employee. Listen to what they have to say. “Too many entrepreneurs build the product they want to build — not the one that’s needed.”
3. Context matters. If your solution isn’t right for the context, for example, if it costs too much for the customers you’re trying to serve, you won’t succeed.
4. Think big. Act big.
5. Think like a child.
6. See and do the obvious. Others won’t, which is opportunity for you.
7. Leverage precedents. If somebody has already invented it, don’t do it again.
8. Scale. Your business must have potential to scale. Remember, your market must include at least 1 million customers.
9. Design to specific cost and price targets. Not the other way around. (Celeste: it means — Do not price to your design, design to the price you need to hit to make your product appropriate to your customer.).
10. Follow practical three-year plans. Two years is too short. Ten is too long.
11. Visit your customers again. And again. “Any successful business in this country is based on talking to your customers all the time. A good CEO spends half his time ‘in the field.’”
12. Stay positive. Don’t be distracted by what other people think.
- Aristotle on collective intelligence
This floated to the top of my feeds today – no idea how I have stumbled upon it since it is now past midnight and this has been open on my desktop all day! But how fitting: I spent a good part of the day troubleshooting a couple of client issues and more than ever when “all come together… they may surpass the quality of the few best”…The actual quote from Micheal Nielsen’s blog post is below:
all come together… they may surpass – collectively and as a body, although not individually – the quality of the few best… When there are many who contribute to the process of deliberation, each can bring his share of goodness and moral prudence… some appreciate one part, some another, and all together appreciate all.
No kidding!
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