Still struggling with seeing the need for smart tv’s? They’re cool, have lots of features, price points are dropping and screen sizes are increasing. But that’s not enough. I think we’ve got it all wrong – surfing the web or porting Android apps to them isn’t where this should be going. That’s a disconnect for me, people typically use a laptop or a mobile device for those purposes. Instead, think home integration. What do you want to do when you’re watching TV and don’t want to get off the couch? Those are convenience items for consumers, services that we’ll conceptualize and bring to market. What do you order, have shipped to you, and then watch on TV? Those vertical’s are ripe for disruption over smart TV’s. That’s where this should be going. Surfing the web on my TV? No. Sorry.

I was at ITS2011 in Tampa last week watching Carlos Dominguez give a presentation about innovation and how the best companies approach it. After giving a handful of examples he asked the crowd “How many of you take time out of your week to actively envision what the future will look like?” Out of the entire crowd, perhaps 5 raised their hands. That’s absolutely horrendous. My parents used to say “What will they think of next?” We’re not in that age anymore. It’s up to us to think of what’s next. At a time when ideas are a commodity and technology is relatively cheap, anybody can come up with and start to build “what’s next.” Five people raising their hand for looking into the future is ridiculous, especially at a technology summit. It should be everyone’s job to examine their own lives and those of their family members and ask “What is too complicated today? What tools do I want to see come to market that make my life easier, more connected, or more effective?”

If you’ve ever tried opening a restaurant in Tampa you should be able to come up with at least two services that would make the process faster and more effective for the restauranteur as well as the City of Tampa. How much of that could also scale to other cities? Probably several. Those are products. That’s the future. It’s not the next Facebook but it’s cost savings for municipalities in a time when they’re looking to cut costs and gain efficiencies.Where else would you start looking?

At ITS2012 can we please have 10 people raising their hands?

For reasons I can’t get into, I’ve been struggling with the decision to pivot my business model over the past week. I’ve had three alternate product concepts in reserve just in case the situation developed and I needed to use them. But when the time came I found myself asking “What does this product do that’s unique and that my potential strategic partners can’t do for themselves?” What I had didn’t quite pass this test. The concepts I had were not strong enough to stand on their own because a potential partner could just throw tons of money at it to solve it. Typically when I’m in a situation like this I’ll do the 20 Answers exercise. Some progress but nothing ground shaking. Out came IDEO’s Method Cards. A few hints at things but again, nothing. I spoke with others that I’ve done product development with. Nothing. That’s actually not true, I helped someone with a new feature on one of their products. Tastes great but it’s less filling. Keep looking. Blanking out while looking around my office, I saw Creative Whack Pack cards on a shelf. These were handed out a couple of years ago at my previous role but I always considered them a little too elementary to actually work with. Well, time to suck it up and get back to fundamentals. Quickly flipping through the cards I dismissed every one of them. Until I hit on “Exaggerate.” That one passed the gut check for some reason. Exaggerate the idea – blow it way out of proportion. I took that and re-did the 20 Answers exercise. After about 90 minutes I had the answer. It was feasible, unique in the market, and has a workable revenue model. I’m back on track and that’s what I’m running with for DEMO Day.

When you find yourself in a thought rut and no new ideas are formulating – go back to the fundamentals. Look at things you dismissed before, look in places you thought were too easy, silly, or just dumb.  Go back to Crayons and paste if you have to.

There’s times when you’re heads and down pounding shit out that you forget how much progress you’ve made. At one point I was keeping track of stuff to do (aka “Action Items”) with Things on the Mac but about 30 days ago stuff started happening so fast that I didn’t even have time to enter them. At some point I started to get overwhelmed and thinking nothing was happening fast enough. That’s when I stepped back and took a couple of hours to make note of everything we’ve done. To be certain the “to do” pile is bigger than the “done” pile but there’s things in the “done” pile I thought would take a year to finish. The overwhelmed feeling disappeared and I got my ass back to work. It’s a necessity to keep track of what you need to do, but seeing what you’ve done will get you through the rough spots.

Also, a bit of thanks to the following people for direct support or encouragement: Stephanie (for setting the bar WAY high for work ethic!), Marvin Scaff, John Morrow, Miss Destructo, Joel Lopez, Prof Bill Jackson, Daniel James Scott & Gazelle Lab, WaltonDesigns, Brantley Smith, Adam Crall for sage advice, Douglas Lee Miller for listening to me rant about entrepreneurship and innovation, Dishtopia for relaxing tea (in a doilie free environment) and to 717 South for refuge and great martinis.

And for those of you that are curious, we should be ready to announce some of what we’re working on within the next 90 days…

In 13 years of overseeing databases I got caught without a backup exactly one time. Luckily it was for a dev system and it wasn’t a catastrophe but it did remind me of how important they are. Actually, they’re not just important, they’re your ass if things fall apart. Same goes for products. Your optimal way to go-to-market may not always be open to you. In that case you’ll need contingencies. Say for example that the primary feature in your product, the feature that distinguishes it from your competitors, can’t be implemented. Do you go to market anyway and hope for the best? Hopefully not. Do you wait until you develop a new capability or feature and then release? Or do you release without the feature and release the new capability as soon as it’s ready? It’s one of the last two options, but it’s all up to you to figure out. One of our possible contingency plans is shown here.

Actually, there is. But I’m actually referring to “catchup” as in the type of activity you do to catchup to your competitors. At this point the “next big thing” could just about be any-thing, why in the hell would you spend your time building what your competitors have already done? I’m a huge fan of Scott Adams (it won’t be long before I’m asked to take this down) and this one from December of ’09 pretty well sums up how futile this strategy is. If you don’t have any ideas but can execute, GREAT! Team up with someone that has great ideas. Don’t know anyone like that? Go to BarCamps, CodeCamps, Front End Developer Conference or even a StartupCamp. If you’re in Tampa or the surrounding area then you’re in luck because all of these events are either coming up in the next few months or are looking for people to help launch them. If you want to get involved then please let me know and I’ll make sure you get in touch with the right people. At a minimum get out there and see what people are working on because it’s interesting, it’s fun, and above all it’s ORIGINAL!

Don’t pitch ideas, pitch results. And never say “I’ve got a great idea!”

I’m working on two separate types of presentations – one for investors and one for strategic partners. For investors the key points are how much money can we make, how fast can we expect a return, what’s it going to take to get there, and what results we have so far. For partners it’s how do we support the brand and improve the consumer experience. In neither case will I discuss how good the idea is. Instead I’ll be pushing what we’ve accomplished, how we scale the solution, what our next steps are and where we are according to plan. That’s what is in both types of pitches although they’re both aimed at different audiences and have vastly different expected outcomes. So if you’re getting ready to pitch the next big thing, focus on what’s in it for everybody but you.

Not a whole lot of progress over the past two days, basically refining strategic partner and investor pitches as well as getting access to credit and operating cash. There has been a huge breakthrough but I’m not yet prepared to share it.

But I can share this… Someone said to me over the weekend “Why don’t you start generating more ideas?” Well, for one, I don’t have a problem coming up with a lot of ideas. I need to focus on the one’s I’m passionate about and get those done first. But this discussion did remind me that a lot of people do have issues generating ideas. By accident I also saw The99Percent.com’s posting of Idea Generation and Execution.

I’ve had a number of discussions with my business partners that revolved around the difference in thought patterns between corporate people and entrepreneurs. It’s very hard for many to understand why someone would not or could not be a little more open minded, a little more creative. I’d written a post a few months ago about Innovators and Operators and how they approach the management of a business very differently. One through aggressive creation and the other through aggressive optimization. Both sides have their strengths and both have their weaknesses. But trying to get each group to change their perspective. This interview is from 1999 and shows how IDEO goes about looking at things differently. If you’ve used IDEO’s Method Cards then you’ll immediately see some similarities in their process and how the cards being to walk you through analyzing how things are used on a daily basis. Here’s a hint – take any established player in a market that has a low cost of entry (in other words it’s not pharma). Take one or two of their products and use the Camera Journal card to start your research. You will find a weakness in the product if you look hard enough. Do this several times with different companies and different products. At some point you’re going come to the realization that you could do better. It’s likely that you’ve found a new product.

Good luck.

By the way, here’s a link to the transcript of the interview.

For those creative individuals that are submitting new cost cutting or product ideas, the incentive may not be strictly financial. That may be a portion of it, but the overall thrill of creating something may be from getting an opportunity to participate in bringing the idea or product to fruition. Money and schwag are great but can be a fleeting experience. I contend that people will get a greater sense of satisfaction, will last longer and spread further through the organization if you reward them with the ability to contribute to the project. If you haven’t done so already, poll your organization to see what they consider to be the best rewards. You’ll probably find that it’s more money and more time off. However, there is an alternative – not everybody is in it for strictly monetary rewards. There are many who want to participate in creating something new and exciting so give people the opportunity to say “I built that” and you may be surprised at how engaged your most creative people become.

In reality, the 80/20 rule is 90/10 when it comes to innovation. Only 10% of “ideas” that are generated could be considered in the “good” category. However, of the entire population of ideas, 1% would be considered “great.” The difficult part to begin to grapple with is that of all ideas that a team comes up with, only .001% will be in the “fantastic” category. That’s it, 1 in 1000. For some, just coming up with that 1/1000 is enough of a thrill. All too often that’s the extent of it. There is no follow through, no attempt to build a consensus of opinion, and no attempt to prioritize and take the “idea” all the way to the “product” stage. For some, “I thought of that” is enough. But that doesn’t create sustainable business and it doesn’t create effective people and teams. What does create a business is follow through. After reading Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, it’s clear that a process is needed to move things from the innovation stage to the execution phase.

As Scott puts it…

Only through organization can we seize the benefits from bursts of creativity.

So how do you move repeatedly from idea to launch? In my experience the easiest way to make this happen is to create a simple project plan and set milestone dates and stick to them. For example…

1. Brainstorm, conceptualize and refine the idea for 30 days.
2. For the following 3 days we will review objectives and prioritize.
3. In 15 days we’ll have a working prototype.
4. For 10 days following that we’ll review results and have a working solution.
5. In 5 days we’ll launch in specific pilot areas.

Keep going from there. Put a process together that you can follow. Not too detailed just a general sense of what everybody is doing. If it’s more complicated than a football play then you need to stop and rethink because nobody can follow it. Pick a project manager to oversee the process. No Gantt charts, just clear and simple markers to show where you are as opposed to where you should be. When dates slip, ask “why” not “who?” If the “why” is associated to the same person every time then the “who” will answer itself. It also polices your process. You should also let the people following the process police it as well. In my opinion, anyone that is a part of a process should have the responsibility of calling “bullshit” on any portion of the process that impacts them directly. They should also be required to offer a workable solution, not just complain that the process is broken or too difficult. Once the issue and a potential solution are voiced, the rest of the team following the process needs to have a say in changing the process. Whatever you do, don’t wait to make the change if everybody approves. Make it now. Test it. Do a dry run and see what happens.

Once you’ve got one team up and running with this, split off a smaller team and move new people into the original team. Add people slowly so they can get their feet under them and get accustomed to the culture. Have the teams work on different cycles, one conceptualizing and the other executing. Create a pool of the top 10% of ideas to draw on and see if they can be enhanced. The two teams should get together at regular intervals to discuss what they’ve learned about each other and about the process. Have ONE process. Not one for EACH team. Shuffle people around from time to time to avoid group think. Mix things up again by having a different person lead the initiative. That gives people experience at leadership and making decisions without all the facts available. That type of experience will prove to be invaluable to your people, your teams, and your company.