I asked yesterday for a more graphical and intuitive way to plan out costs for products and projects. The reason lies in an essay I co-authored several years ago with Jeremy Fein, co-founder of this blog. I forget the exact title of the thing, but its premise was that good entrepreneurial teams are composed of both brains & brawn (Asterix and Obelix, in other words). It has since become my philosophy towards entrepreneurship and building teams.

Good ideas also reside in intersections between different modes of thinking. I don’t know who made up the idea of the ‘execution multiplier for ideas‘ (Derek Sivers posted it on his blog once), but an idea is worth little without someone carrying it out. Similarly, in Neil Fiore’s book “The Now Habit” (the ONLY self-help book I would ever recommend to people) he writes about the source of good ideas, which often come when you least expect it: on your breaks, your holidays, anywhere which is not work-related.

While productivity is a great thing and crucial to executing ideas, idea-generation itself is actually not very compatible with the productive mind. But it’s not impossible to combine the two either.

Let’s look at a sample workflow from problem to idea generation to product (product meaning the outcome of idea generation, which has to lead somewhere):

1. You have a problem (duh… no really, don’t come up with an idea if it doesn’t solve a problem!)
2. You discuss it with people to try to figure out it’s parameters —what is the true gist of the problem?

This is a good time to get stuck. Where do you go from here? Do you go the left-brained route — the super-rational approach that would e.g. benefit from some number crunching in Excel? Or do you take a right-brained approach — the artistic approach of drawing out the problem further on a white board or an outliner?

It of course depends on the complexity of the problem, but it isn’t time yet to go super-rational all of a sudden. It breaks you out of creative solution mode and gets you into execution mode, which is really brain-dead “getting things done” mode. Before you get things done, you have to define “things” much further.

The next step in my process would be:
3. draw out several solutions, preferably in a group, and discuss them and the logic behind it. Is it an elegant solution to the problem? Does it solve it or does it complicate it? What scenarios are there and what are its parameters?

As soon as you come to scenarios, we come into process mode. And this is where a more left-brained approach of calculating resource-allocation (people, time, money) absolutely makes sense. In my last post, I was hoping that someone would have a good way of making this more compatible with step 3, I am still waiting for someone to come up with a good solution, however.

4. calculate it out. What are the costs associated with each solution, what are the benefits of each solution?

Costs vs. benefits could also be called expenses vs. income on a financial projection for a startup. Solid resource allocation is ultimately the lifeblood of a company, however in an early stage it is also the language to use when looking for funding for your company.

I don’t want to be too rigid about this; I’ve struggled with the process of “problem -> idea generation -> execution -> product” in the past and think that it’s an area that benefits from several approaches and also leads to more-than-several pseudo-suggestions on how to approach this.

Rather, I thought to expand a little on yesterday’s post and clarify why I really do want a more visual Excel (for lack of a better term). If you want to combine right- and left-brained perspectives, a white board alone won’t do it and Excel alone won’t do it. I want software that does both.

Retro Programming sucks?

I love this idea, but my no. 1 thought is that the context differed largely for him as a kid and for kids now. 1. there’s peer influences. I know that home schooling is a semi-big deal in the US (tried it once, it sucks) and that a large factor of that is keeping your kid isolated from bad influences.

In the scenario of CreatoComputer2009(TM), you would have to keep the “bad” influence of innovation and gadgetery around kids to a minimum, to allow your kid to use CreatoComp. Because as soon as that kid sees that all the other kids have to work nada to have a working computer, the whole experiment implodes.

Vs. 1978, where everyone had to work at making these wiry beasts, people dared calling a computer, work.

You can take this analogy to anything retro really: cars, movies, Asteroids the game. Compare that to any modern invention and people (except for the nostalgic crowd) quickly turn away.

I agree that to create creative & creating people, you have to confront them with difficult problems to solve at an early age (perhaps). I do think that it needs to be built upon the platform that we are now living with: super-connected graphical interfaces that operate in the digital realm mostly and involve minimal wiring or soldering. I also think that our understanding of education is evolving to the extent that even playing games can be considered a type of learning, which seems fairly compatible with being a child also.

You know there’s only one answer to this problem, right?

Vincent.
(P.S. I know, 2 posts in 2 days. Doesn’t mean that I’m back though, more confused about whether I want to come back. Gotta love the limbo that is August…).

It’s around that time again. First of all, I’d again like to note that I am, for the moment, the producer of 99% of the junk, eh, I mean Gold that appears before your eyes on Tech IT Easy. So, for the moment, these are favourite posts that I wrote.

If you are interested in contributing to Tech IT Easy, either as a blogger or guest writer, please write to us!

This month, I’d like to thank Georgia for writing about guerrilla marketing. Last month, I forgot to thank Jeremy for publishing his interview with social marketeer, Michelle Greer, and Georgia, for writing about Mint.com.

Let’s get to the favourites (in no particular order):

• The “captain’s chair” phenomenon, in which I identify a problem that many one-person-companies-growing-into-SMEs face, the centralisation of leadership around the founder, and the lack of processes that facilitate delegation. Expect more posts about this.
• A short guide for surviving Windows [aimed at Mac-users], in which in a series of a few posts, I start discussing how to survive that “traumatic” move. While I have certainly managed to, I am now happily back on my Mac at work. Even so, I am writing this post on Windows Live Writer, through Parallels (it’s what I call an anchor-app, something that ties you to an environment). Related: Awakening from the OS X vs. Windows War and Battles in the Virtualization Space.
• Media’s Basic Duty to tell the Truth (P.S. Blogs are not Media), in which I, again in a series of posts,  defend Techcrunch’s reputation, in regards to their accusation towards Last.fm. My premise: blogs (like ours) are not media, but some professional blogs, like Techcrunch, have become its equivalent and thus (have to) respect the same principle of reporting the news as accurately and honestly. I don’t want to generalise though, I think that Arrington’s posts in particular, can be much too emotional, provocative, and definitely more blog than pro-media.
• Where do Good Ideas come from?, in which I propose four areas and write about the ease of implementing these ideas. Two supplement posts: On having Heroes in your Craft and The Right Mix between Idea and Execution and One reason not to blog (at least not to blog about your plans) (I sure do blog a lot about idea generation… ).
• What would an Always-On Device look like? Do we even want it?, which comes down to that I would like a device that records everything that I do, in whatever format needed. Some complications: a. do we even want it? How would we process the information? I think that suitable devices already exist, from your camera phone to more specialised and expensive methods.

That’s it for this month. May’s recap can be found here. Until the next time, on Tech IT Easy.

Vincent

I have hardly any time today, catching up on the week, which is terrible for the creative spirit. So, as a 15 min. therapy, where do good ideas come from? Here are 4 areas that I can think of:

Exploration / Rest: Spending 3 days in Paris and 2 days celebrating the national day of Luxembourg was great for thinking about life, discussing various topics and plans, and brainstorming ideas. It is in a way the anti-thesis of working life, which is focussed on making you into a machine, constantly moving, constantly following a routine, and not breaking out into new creative patterns. Ease of Implementation: Ideas are often abstract and need a lot of work to make them useful.

Iteration: This the primary way that companies innovate, by constantly developing routines, slightly adapting them over a long period of time, until version 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.infinity, etc. It is why (consumer) products are the way they are. Ease of Implementation: when you actually have new ideas they face the challenge of breaking existing patterns that are cemented into operating companies and more difficult to change. Still, new ideas are often based on practical data and should thus be more easy to implement.

Deconstruction: This is what I call the Sherlock Holmes way or the “where have you last seen it?” way. You are faced with a problem, e.g. finding something you lost or figuring out how an electronic device works. The best way to do it is to break it down into small steps or pieces (deconstructing) and then reconstructing the reality again. In technology, you might also call this reverse engineering. Ease of Implementation: much like iteration, it is based on realities that already exist. Ideas are often better than what came before, because you’re an outsider, taking something apart and throwing away the junk. Ever lost a piece of text you wrote due to your computer/software crashing? I guarantee that your version 2 will be shorter, more to the point, and better.

Conflict: I was discussing this with Jeremy this weekend, regarding the building of teams that can challenge each other. It’s a destructive and constructive process all at once and I think the benefits usually outweigh the risks. Ease of Implementation: It’s difficult to find that kind of talent and the right mix, so I would say that implementation is not easy. It should however be at the top of the agenda of any organisation who wants to be an innovator in its field.

Other ways to come up with fresh ideas? The floor is yours!

Vincent

I know I wrote about rebooting the entrepreneurial brainstorming sessions. I kind of prefer an informal style of ‘idea generation’ though… Today, the subject is literature, of which there arguably is way too much. Sometimes it’s nice to read a ‘thin book,’ like The One Minute Manager or even The Alchemist.

What those books have in common is that they give you lessons in a very compressed space. But it works, because rather than doing a dry, point-by-point summary of the content published in much longer books, they do so in story-format. The One Minute Manager is about a man trying to learn about management and he goes on a kind of exploratory adventure to uncover the secrets. According to the book there’s only really three elements to effective one-to-one management [there's another book in the series, I'm reading now, on one-to-many management also], but I won’t bore you with them. The only thing to note is that I REMEMBER the lessons in the book perfectly!

The Alchemist is not a management book, it’s a self-help book about finding happiness and the meaning to your life. It’s again about an adventure and you follow this kid across the desert. Very simple principles, clothed in the format of an entertaining and exciting story.

No wonder these two books are best-sellers!

These last decades have seen a tremendous rise on various fronts involving the mass-education of mankind. From MBAs, to millions of published books, to billions of informational websites, it’s understandably overwhelming. As a result, you now get books teaching you (supposedly) “MBAs in a nutshell”, you get websites that sell you books in audio-format. And you also get websites that sell you book summaries for the busy executive.

Having read several of these, I have to say that I’m not impressed. Sure, I can read Crossing the Chasm in 5 pages, but what have I actually learned? How do the lessons that I read in bullet-point format translate into a language that my brain understands and remembers?

The answer is, if you ask me, to start a business that translates (boring / long) books into shorter books and doing so in story-form. Nothing is as exciting to business-folk like me, than reading a Harvard Business Review case-study. Because, it’s a (nearly) living example. I place myself into the antagonist’s point of view and learn about the challenges he/she has to face!

So this is my first “entrepreneurial brainstorming” topic: start a business that translates longer books into shorter entertaining stories and sells them to executives!

What do you think?

Vincent

I always really liked Jeremy’s posts on entrepreneurial brainstorming sessions (I think he got all the way to 15!). I’m thinking of making this a weekly topic and already have ca. 5 ideas lined up, which I’d like to discuss.

But before I start it off, I’d like to briefly discuss the elements that should be contained within such posts. For me, entrepreneurial ideas evolve in 4+ stages (the + referring to the technology side, which also has its own phases of development). Following graph illustrates how I see it:

Not all ideas start with “pain” probably, but for obvious reasons (if you feel it, someone else may too), I think it’s beneficial. The idea is the pitch which I think should be a core-element to entrepreneurial brainstorming sessions. The business-model is the “how to make money” part, which should also optimally be contained within. Business development is the executive part, which is already beyond the scope of these post, though any market data is relevant.

Prototype development is both the most interesting and, for me, the most abstract element in entrepreneurial projects. I think there are variables which affect the timing of prototype development, namely technology risk vs. market risk, and technology cost, which is also a factor influencing technology risk. Technologies which are cheap to develop, e.g. the web, are better to develop earlier, also because the market risk is higher (many other entrepreneurs could be working on the same idea). Expensive technologies, with a significant technology risk also, e.g. biotech or medical tech, require more business development at an early stage, to find funding, etc., though they are also often developed within universities, where there is more freedom to take such risks. OK, I digress.

Entrepreneurial brainstorming sessions, I propose, contain the pain, pitch, and possibly business model as well. Since my ideas range from small ones, like barbers on trains, to complex ones, like e-learning or legal sandboxes (more on that later), I’m not sure how well each can be executed.

Most of all, I’d like the chance to engage in an interesting discussion with both positive and negative feedback, and I hope you do too. That’s it from me, for today! Next post sometime this week, next entrepreneurial brainstorming session next week!

Vincent

This week a Dutch commission on the banking recession to came to an end. Their conclusion: banks should be more customer-focussed (translated article). Wow… If there’s anything this crisis has shown us is that during times of crises, creativity takes a dive out the window. Because I’m pretty sure that people were talking about more customer-focus back when the Lehman brothers went out of business.

Just briefly, before I go on to a more pleasurable topic. Wired Magazine last month had an article on what they identified as the cause this whole crisis: the gaussian copula function (depicted above), invented by a man named David X. Li, which made it possible to model risk down to a simple number, allowing for any idiot out there to label an investment as an affordable risk. As the article states, Mr. Li won’t be getting a Nobel anytime soon, but it only serves to illustrate a simple point: money makes the world go round, and more specifically, money makes the world of finance go round. Banks, until recently, had a nice little formula that allowed them to make money. Now they don’t. Will that formula be found in increased customer-focus, I don’t know. But I do think that we need a better understanding of the complex variables that play a part in our globalised economy, and customer focus alone won’t do the trick.

OK, rant over. My stance for this recession remains: work harder and smarter… and don’t watch the news.

In Hitchcock / Truffaut, Hitchcock tells the story of One-Round Jack, a character in an early film of his, The Ring (1927). Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

A.H. In those days we were very keen on the little visual touches, sometimes so subtle that they weren’t even noticed by the public. You remember that picture started on the fairgrounds. There was a fighter, played by Carl Brisson, and he was called One-Round Jack.

F.T. Because he knocked out his opponents in the first round?

A.H. That’s right. And in the crowd, watching the barker, there was an Australian, played by Ian Hunter. As the barker in front of the tent urged the crowd to go in, he had a little flap and could look back over his shoulders to see how the match was progressing. He used a sign to indicate the round number to the people standing outside. We showed volunteer fighters going into the tent and then coming out holding their jaw. Until Ian Hunter goes in. The seconds were sort of laughing at him and they didn’t even bother to hang up his coat. They just held it, thinking that he would never last more than one round. The match started and I showed the expressions of the seconds changing. Then we showed the barker looking in at the match. And at the end of the first round the barker took out the card indicating the round number, which was old and shabby, and they put up number two. It was brand-new! One-Round Jack was so good that they’d never got around to using it before! I think this touch was lost on the audience.

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock went on to become a great filmmaker, but even he started small, experimenting with different effects, like the glass ceiling I wrote of last, until he understood the effectiveness of his medium. It’s an attitude that I greatly respect, and try to implement both in blogging and my work. You can’t achieve great things without breaking a few eggs.

There’s a pretty entertaining TED video here with the stereotypical mad scientist, Cliffort Stoll, in which he says:

“The first time you do something, it’s science. The second time, it’s engineering. The third time, you’re a technician. I’m a scientist, once I’ve done something, I do something else.”

That’s a philosophy I can also respect.

Back to banking. I think that what is customer focus has changed much over the generations. According to my father, customer focus is having a bank outlet + friendly smile in every neighbourhood. More deeply, back in his day, a bank would contribute more significantly to buying a house, funding well over 50% of the purchase price. I’m not sure how the latter has changed now, but I do now that what is called “customer service” has simply moved online. I haven’t seen the inside of a bank in months and I don’t miss it. To me, customer service is having more payment options, much more innovation, as well as for all transactions, no matter how small or large, to be free, instantaneous, and unencumbered by national borders or currency. I want to see the day where all transactions go via a single device in our pocket. I’d also like to see more funding for things like housing and startups, of course, but I know that a certain measure of reality needs to be in place for that, i.e. how credit worthy is your customer.

I think that won’t be able to count on banks much until they replace the faulty mechanism that was either the gaussian copula function or another one, allowing for banks to regain their profitability. I think that this will entail making mistakes and that room needs to be allowed for that. That banks are supposed to be customer friendly, goes without saying, but that banks are businesses that need a solid balance sheet, goes without saying too.

Went a little overboard there on the text. Sorry about that. Hope it’s readable / entertaining.

Vincent

I’m sitting here writing this on my new Intel Macbook, 4GB of RAM and 256MB of video-memory, coming from a 4-year old PPC iBook with 1GB of RAM and 32MB of video-memory. The latter is the very definition of the principle I’m talking about. From the beginning, I’ve had to find creative solutions to doing my work and it’s been incredibly rewarding. I’ve yet to experience a boundary to the Macbook’s abilities. Having total freedom is exhausting. It encourages exploration, rather than getting things done, and it leads to exhaustion. No matter how far you try to go, you’re still inside that box.

I’ve been engaged in three funding proposals in the last two months. The first, ok, more of a business-plan competition than a funding application. The second, applying for a government grant. The third, applying for a large venture capital investment. Of these three, the grant application was my least favourite and I loved the VC application process. Why?

We have an undefined amount of time to apply for the government grant. We had to follow a template with ultra-confusing headings (e.g. I have three sections that want me to describe the market… am I supposed to do it thrice?). And the total had to be no more than 25 pages.

We found out about the VC option very late in the game, 24 hours before the deadline in fact. We had to fill out a webform, which was in total ca. 8 chapters. Each section had a character-limit (not word), ranging from 100 to 4000. One section for the market and business model = 4000 characters. What the company does = 100 characters. A simple form to fill in the finances, focussing on the key-figures only (revenues, EBIT, equity) which forced us to do all of the complicated calculations for ourselves, and a section for what we wanted to give away of the company and why. Instead of doing an unlimited amount of writing, we used whatever extra time we had to discuss the problems and solutions.

I wrote the 8-page piece for the competition in two hours. Because that’s all the time I had left, after handing in the VC proposal that same day. It forced me to focus on the essentials and nothing more.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a productivity-tool like a laptop, making a startup survive, raising kids, educating people, boundaries are the key to ultra-focussed, ultra-creative solutions to the problem at hand. Giving people total freedom rarely leads to the right results; it makes life easier to both in the very short-term. In the long-term it definitely creates more overhead, as you’re constantly chasing after those that you gave the freedom to. “Kid, it’s been a month, where are you now?” “I’m on the introduction, but I have all the time in the world, right?” Kid, for your sake, I hope not.

The end.
Vincent

P.S. looking for the right picture lead to this article on the same topic.

Audience: How do you set yourself boundaries? I’d love to know!

This is one the hardest things ever. While I was blogging daily it was easy; you somehow get into this rhythm of pumping out text everyday and, at some point, you’ve hit your groove. Taking my break really made little sense to my brain whatsoever, as day-after-day, I kept on writing draft-after-draft, while I was meant to take a break!!!

Luckily-unluckily I eventually gave that up…

Now, I don’t actually thing there is any great secret to starting up again. It’s going to be a bitch, we all know that, and we can all remember that first workout in the gym / at home, after taking much-too-long-a break. Muscle Ache!!! Which in blogging-terms, translates to brain-ache or have-I written-sh*t-today?-ache. I know that, writing this, I will check back over and over and over again to see if it made any sense.

No, the real secret to starting up again is just… to never stop! Or, to continue like you never stopped and have faith in the imagined fact that someday that brain-ache is going to pass… even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.

See you tomorrow, Tech IT Easians!
Vincent

There’s a law in art, which is that to be creative, you must go out and smell the flowers. With that in mind, I’ll take a breather from Tech IT Easy and will look for some adventures that will automatically translate into more and better content… when the time is right.

I hope you enjoyed these last few weeks and until soon, I hope!

Vincent

P.S. I’ll continue to share links and write 140 letter haiku on Twitter.

The point of this mini-series is to vocalise some of my thoughts about the creative writing process, which is something I only think about when I write every day, but not when I only write sporadically. I wrote this post last week Thursday, which illustrate its point perfectly. Another key to prolific writing is scheduling & bundling related tasks. Why?

• For one, blogging isn’t a job, and if it is, it usually isn’t a good job. You blog when you find the time.
• Second, bundling similar tasks is easier than interrupting other ones. When I write, I’m “in the zone,” so why not write multiple posts instead of one.
• Three, ideas come and go when they please. I sometimes wake up at 3 a.m. with an idea and just need to write it down. I don’t go, “oh I’ll just write it tomorrow,” because by that time my creative influx has usually gone.
• Four, researching complex posts can be time-intensive and sometimes happens weeks in advance.

Incidentally, a good book to read (part 1) about the idea of getting into the zone, is Neil Fiore’s “The Now Habit.”

On the note of research, I drew the below graphic about a year ago, trying to visualise how I research and write for a blog (in this case, Food ‘n’ Retail). I personally think it only works when you take research very, very seriously (which you should, but which also takes time). And yes, it’s also the way I visualise innovation in firms, very much inspired by portfolio management, which I wrote about before.

Three horizons, obviously, the first being where its all still one big mess which you run into (or which is where you purposefully direct your energy at). Second, comes the processing phase where you’re trying to organise all that raw data into something useful. Third, comes the moment when the world sees your stuff and responds to it. That essentially feeds back into the organisation to produce future goods that are better. In a blogging context, that is the main reason why I value comments so much, though I’m also conflicted about them—a topic for a future post perhaps.

I think I’ve gone a little beyond the intended scope of this post. But it also illustrates that any project, be it prolific writing, or the prolific creation of any kind of art of product, requires some serious planning behind it, i.e. the timing and combining of activities for a consistent outcome.

Vincent