There’s a large number of things that, if you took them away, I’d still find a way to make things happen. On the other hand, there’s a small number of things that I really don’t have the time to re-learn, desire to re-experience, or money to re-buy. So here’s a brief list of them, broken down by category.

Tools:

• My iMac and a 20 up/20 down connection.
• vi – Indispensable.
• Korn Shell – Similarly indispensable.
• Google

Skills:

• Typing.
• Linux 0.96 Kernel It shipped with Slackware in ’93. If you could get this to install, compile, boot, and dial out on a 2400 baud modem on a 386DX you were stoked. You also had to learn just about everything about computers, from bios settings to manually setting jumpers. No Google for another 4 years.
• 10 Days to Faster Reading My reading speed went from 350 wpm to 850 wpm in one month. Great for plowing through tons of stuff.
• Getting Things Done Create one way in to your own process for getting things done. For me, everything physical comes through a box that’s by my left foot. From there I either knock it out or put it in Things to follow up on later. Same with emails except they don’t go in a box.
• Practical C If you can write even semi-basic programs in C then you can hack your way through just about any other language. Or at least read it and figure out what it’s doing. Plus, you also get to allocate memory all by yourself.
• Running Meetings There’s two types of meetings – informational and problem solving, there is no “both” or “we’ll play it by ear” options. Here’s how to set an agenda, stay on track, end the meeting, and follow up. This is apparently so difficult a subject that Harvard Business Press had to publish this.
• Presentation Zen Seriously, please stop throwing everything on a single slide to show how much you could find on Google. If you want to show how much you know try and use as few words as possible to convey your idea. The less you slap on a slide to get people to understand what you’re talking about the smarter you are.
• Knowing that the sale price minus COGS had better not be negative. Not even close. Ever.
• A statistics course in college. The professor made us calculate the odds of a real horse race for our final. I can’t remember how I did but it made calc and trig look pretty damn simple. I also learned that the only time there’s ever a precise answer is in calc and trig. Everything else is SWAG.
• Advanced Selling Strategies A book by Brian Tracy in which, if I distill it down says, shut your mouth and listen to what your prospective client’s problem is first. Then figure out how to solve it. Never get those two backwards. Find the pain points first, then the solution.
• Peak Performance Learning the mental skills of the world’s top athlete’s was invaluable. I used this to help me get into the Teenage Mr. Arkansas in 1984 at 16 years old. And the concepts apply to business too.
• USMC. ’85-’89. The last two years was working in two-man teams, on our own, away from the battalion. I really learned that I could fend for myself and pretty much deal with anything that came up.

So there it is, the list of the top 16 things that make everything else possible. None of these (especially boot camp and getting the .96 kernel to boot) do I want to repeat. Everything else gives you the basics to figure out how everything else works. If there’s tools or specific tools sets that you’ve picked up that you couldn’t or wouldn’t want to be without then feel free to leave a comment here. Maybe you’ll be able to help someone else out.

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.

I learned three key elements this week:

• Fear precedes making a decision, focus comes after you make a decision.
• Keep an eye on mistakes you’ve made in the past (HBR’s latest issue is the Failure Issue) and learn from them. Take inventory of them. What decisions did you make, why did you make them and what were the results? Would you make the same decisions over again?
• If you’re committed and passionate about what you’re doing then that will get other people pulling for you. In other words, if you give a damn it will attract others. Find a way to get those people engaged if you can.

If you’re putting your own startup together then take a look at the resources that SCORE has to offer. They also have webinars and online workshops.

For keeping track of all the things I’m now responsible for I’ve been using Things on the Mac. It’s at bit limited for anything beyond simple tasks so I’ve been playing around with Basecamp and now Zoho. I’m still undecided, Zoho gives a lot for a little money but Basecamp is really straightforward and doesn’t try to solve everything.

[edit] Add Apollo to the list – I haven’t created an account yet but the interface looks clean and straight forward. This is one I hadn’t heard of yet.

I’m taking Sunday off and going to the Grand Prix of St Pete. I went to the inaugural one a few years ago and it was a great race. Tonight I’m teaching my girlfriend who Mario Andretti is. This should be fun…

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.

Or… Allow your employees the latitude to become experts on their own.

For those rare and truly passionate people who’s outside interests and daily jobs mesh – giving them latitude to grow and be recognized as team, corporate and then industry experts grows you and your business as well. It creates a positive feedback loop and if you help these people through honest commentary, attending conferences and eventually having them speak at those conferences, the amount of credibility flowing back to the organization will be phenomenal. Not to mention the expertise that these individuals develop and bring back with them. Expertise is what helps organizations separate themselves from their competition and should be developed as a strategic imperative. When you marry an employee’s passion with objectives of the company – you’ve got a killer situation – but only if you listen and allow it to develop.

How do you recognize these individuals? Talking to them is a great place to start. Reading their blogs, is another. Watching them in meetings, how they contribute, which meetings they tend to participate more in – all are signs of what their interests are.

How else can you help build experts? If you’ve got the space then let them host an event on the campus. Demonstrate your support by sponsoring an event or even go so far as to help these individuals put on an event. Keep it small if this is their first one and and allow them to prove themselves. As long as it all ties back in some way to the corporate strategy and objectives. All of this leads back to thought leadership and it’s the social currency that’s driving a lot of individual contributors who want to stand out. Do this for one person and soon you may have several stepping up. Once that begins to happen you may see a lot more resumes, and business, coming your way.

If you’re setting out to brainstorm new ideas and concepts, here’s some things I’ve experienced over the past few years that may help.

1) Get a great facilitator. Someone that’s open minded, will keep people on track and will get people to contribute.

2) Put a great question together and figure out how to answer it. It helps if you can define what you’re trying to do as much as possible. Free form brainstorming rarely turns into anything of value and usually leads to something that you probably can’t execute anyway. Make the question as specific and restrictive as possible. “How do we solve problem (x) with (y) dollars, (z) time, and existing skill sets?” You may be surprised at how many ideas you can come up with. You may get a lot of resistance at first like “You’re limiting us” but to get really creative you usually need to deal with the realities of the situation. [I forgot to include a very important point here - if somebody is telling you that your approach to the problem is wrong or suggests a different way of approaching it, listen to them. It's possible that they're lateral thinkers, these people make all the difference in innovation. Lateral thinkers are game changers.]

3) Put a time constraint in place. Give yourself a limited amount of time to generate ideas and the ideas you generate MUST address the question asked in #2. Don’t go over, stop on time and move on. However, people may go home and think about it a little longer. They may also have an epiphany. Make certain that you account for this as answers to problems are rarely straightforward. The subconscious may chew on it for a while and come up with something spectacular.

4) Isolate yourselves. Set aside a time and place where nobody knows where you are or what you’re working on. Turn off cell phones and focus on what you’re doing.

5) If it’s not coming together, say so. You can’t force people to come up with ideas to solve a problem. But you can create an environment where people feel comfortable and willing to participate. If it’s just not working for whatever reason then reschedule. Or move to a different location. Or get different people.

6) Create follow-up tasks, delegate those tasks to individuals and put dates and times in place to get them resolved. The task may be to do market research, speak to your target audience or get a patent attorney. Set concrete and measurable tasks that have a specific owner. Leave no latitude as to who should be running with which item.

That’s it at it’s most basic implementation. Before you get started on any session make sure you’ve got the essentials. Whiteboard, pizza, cokes, etc. The facilitator should set and enforce the ground rules and only let people deviate when it’s in the teams best interest.

If you have other experiences, things that worked in the past, things that didn’t, don’t hesitate to comment here.

What problem are you fixing, and who’s problem is it? If you’re fixing your own problem and then pushing it at your customers, step away from the keyboard. A better question to start asking yourself is this, who approves the purchase of the solution I’m creating? If you’re not fixing an explicit problem for that individual then you’re wasting your time. If you’re making it easier to order your products then ask yourself if the decision maker that you’re pitching to sees order entry as a problem. Call the decision maker, make it a point to understand where this individual is experiencing pain – then create a solution to address that pain point. That’s a product which is sale-able and in demand by at least one person. Hopefully they’re not the only ones experiencing this same pain point and you’ll actually have a market for your solution. Unless you are a complete visionary and see a demand for a product that nobody is asking for yet, then stick to the basics. Do your research and talk to people.

One major challenge to any innovation effort, especially one where people from different parts of the organization are involved, is that of conveying ideas clearly and consistently. Although communication skill sets may vary widely across an organization the results can be reached more effectively with some straightforward  strategies. One of my favorite books in this area is The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. He describes how conveying complex thoughts and abstract ideas can be accomplished by just about anyone, artist or otherwise, through the systematic use of pictures. I’m a huge fan of white boards, the bigger the better. Multiple people can contribute – erase, change, rename, or start over completely with very little effort.  White boarding is of course nothing new, but the way in which Dan Roam approaches it is. He presents new ways of looking at problems and new ways of describing ideas. However, I also think that he’s tapped into a more efficient way of cross-functional teams to hit the ground running and quickly get their arms around a problem. It makes things much easier if everyone understands what the others are trying to represent and becomes a major advantage the more people you have collaborating. With just two people on a team the communication is easy to control, if something isn’t clear then it’s simple to ask a couple of questions and get some clarity. Becoming more and more common (I hope) is the situation where you have larger innovation teams working together – some of which may never have met each other. The problem of communicating ideas through pictures becomes ever more important then.

So here’s what I propose… The book focuses primarily on problem solving with others based on the concept of “visual thinking” or solving problems with pictures, so pick up four or five copies and hand them out to people you routinely ‘ideate‘ with. Then find a nice big wall and paint it with IdeaPaint or RustOleum’s Dry Erase paint. I’ve used RustOleum on a 13′x9′ textured wall, with a minimum of sanding and 2-3 coats [and] it worked pretty well. Next, have everyone read the book, pick a previous problem that some or all of you had worked on and go through it again after learning the concepts from Back of the Napkin. The first couple of passes through will be rough as you get your feed feet under you but it will start to make more sense as you go. You may even find a couple of different solutions that you hadn’t thought of along the way. Whatever. Once you and your team is comfortable, start teaching it to others. Slowly. Pick one or two people to try it out on. See what happens. Obviously you really can’t test it until your heads down trying to solve a problem or generating new ideas.

If you try this, tell me what happens. I’m interested to see how others deal with cross team communications through abstract mediums.

ideate – I despise this word. It sounds like something we just made up along the way to make it sound like we were working. But since it’s been around since 1610 I guess I just need to accept it. I promise to use it as infrequently as possible.

The July-August 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review has an article called “How to Stop the Innovation Wars” which discusses a common misunderstanding that the ‘innovation’ side of the house must be separate from the ‘operations’ side largely because innovation is something done by a few people and without accountability or a solid process. In my opinion, if you’re a part of an on-going business then you simply cannot innovate in a vacuum, you must involve the people responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company, involve them early on and solicit their feedback. If you want to make progress with your concepts then you’ll need to come up with a rough, repeatable process that shows how things move through your innovation pipeline. For example, how do you know where and when to innovate? A simple response of “We field suggestions from the rest of the organization through a standardized process…” is fine. So is “When we sit in meetings we listen for unspoken problems, that’s where we start to look.” You might get some funny looks, be prepared to explain what you’re listening for. Specific phrases like “We spend a lot of time/money…” are excellent ways to see bottlenecks in the organization and begin to innovate new business processes or product improvements.

Once you’ve dealt with the “Where to look” question, you must next deal with the “What’s the impact…” question. “When we heard it took a lot of time and people to accomplish X, we looked into the process and found it could be streamlined without impact to other areas of the organization. There are many questions still open but based on a very simple cost/benefit analysis we’ve discovered that we could potentially save $50,000 per year for three years.” Now, if you’re on the creative side of the thought process, PLEASE get someone from the accounting side to help you with the cost/benefit. This is where cross functional teams really come into play, you probably don’t want to get near the financials and accounting probably doesn’t want to sit and listen to other people’s problems. That’s fine as both groups have their strengths. Make full use of them.

You’re going to have to deal with the “How do you come up with new ideas to solve for…” at some point. I’ve worked with IDEO Method Cards but frankly, that’s overkill for a lot of what I’m doing. An appropriate answer might be “We followed the team around all week and found…” or “We conducted interviews with the entire staff, confirmed our original assumptions and are coming up with a detailed plan to address it. We also found two more potential time savers but we will address those after this project is completed.” Either response should work but be prepared for someone else to ask the same people what you did. Their answers and yours had better not differ by much. By the way, we all know that once you find someone who says “That’s how we’ve always done it” you’ve found a gold mine.

If you’ve done your homework and were convincing you’ll probably be asked to proceed. From here on you need a plan. If you can prevent it, don’t give up ownership – you saw the problem, you potentially see the solution, so you run with it. This might be a great time to enlist a project manager. Try to find one that leans toward the creative side if you can. Good luck, I’ve met just one in twenty years. You will need someone on your team that can lay out all the steps and put a general time line together. If you keep ownership then YOU need to report on where you are in terms of that schedule. Be prepared to explain what progress you’ve made, what your next steps are and what is still left to be resolved. Be prepared for the infinitely inept question of “When will you figure out how to…”  If you knew the answer to that you’d already have the answer and you wouldn’t be reporting that it was still a problem, right? A tactful response to this might be “It’s a complex problem, we’ve made headway, we’re confident we’ll figure it out.” If you’re really stuck on a problem, now’s a great time to ask to borrow someone for a few days. Do not get bogged down trying to fix one serious problem – get as many people across the organization involved trying to fix it as possible. Do not make it look like you put the project at risk because you didn’t ask for help early enough. Also, if it looks like you can’t fix it, then friggin’ say so.

If you generally follow these suggestions then you should be making some progress easing people’s tension with innovation teams. And that’s all you’re really trying to do at this point, especially if you’re just getting things off the ground. In my opinion an innovation team that is just starting shouldn’t have a complete methodology. You can develop that as you grow. But what you need to avoid is the perception that you work without accountability and structure. Hopefully this gets you started, if there’s things I’ve missed (definitely) or you can add something you’ve learned, by all means please leave  a comment.

Critical to any organization that is attempting to grow is a flow of ideas through that organization. This first hit me when I was reading “One Up on Wall Street” by Peter Lynch several years ago. Somewhere in there he describes that if he made 1000 investments, ten would break even. Of that ten, only one would perform well, so well in fact that it would pay for all of his other investments. It’s a similar situation for innovation, you generate thousands of ideas but only a few will pan out. Of those few an even smaller percentage will perform above expectations and pay for everything else. The problem is that you can’t predict where these ideas will come from. Flashes of brilliance can come from anyone and at anytime, you just can’t predict either. Therefore you need a process to enable these ideas to progress through the organization while along the way they are supported and enhanced by other disciplines such as Finance, Marketing, Sales and IT.

If today you don’t currently have a systematic process (having a suggestion box doesn’t count) to allow ideas or suggestions to move through your organization, here’s how to start roughing one out. First, what objectives do you want to accomplish; process improvements, new products, cost cutting measures, or all of the above? Second, what are these ideas worth to you and the organization? If you can’t put a dollar figure on them then the chances are your employees won’t value their own suggestions either. If however you’ll cough up $1,000 or more for each idea that gets to production you might be getting somewhere, especially if that idea becomes a new line of business worth several million in annual revenue. Place your highest rewards on what you considered to be the most important objectives you wanted to accomplish.

The suggestion process – this is where things can get bogged down. If it’s made too complicated then the level of effort will be to great for people to take the time to submit the idea. If it’s too simple you’ll get ideas like “let’s start making beer” which is fine if you’re a brewery, a bad idea if you’re an insurance company. In my opinion the submission should be two sections:

• What’s the general description of the product, product enhancement, cost cutting process, etc.
• How does it benefit our business or is it a potential new business

Keep the financial data out of it for now. Yes it’s important but for reasons I’ll cover in future posts, you don’t want to start there.

One of the most critical components (probably the most critical!) is the team reviewing the ideas. If you staff it fully with operationally oriented people, any new ideas you get will be met with ‘what about…?’ questions. This will kill new ideas. If you staff it with ‘what if…’ people then you’ll get some very off the wall stuff.  Instead staff it with a mixture of ‘what if…’ people and ‘what about…’ people to balance each other out. This will be covered in future posts here as well but the important part is that ideas (aside from “let’s make beer”) do not get killed off. They are put ‘in the parking lot’ for future review, they are re-submitted with more information, they are placed into the queue with the rest of the business changes, or they are fast tracked. For any of those, let the submitter know immediately, preferably along with a small cash reward, or time off, or whatever you’re using to compensate people.

Next is the actual process to get vetted ideas moving. This is another critical juncture and one where you may start to see the ‘not invented here’ syndrome preventing things from moving forward. It’s where ideas and suggestions start getting some structure and where financial models are applied, product development plans are impacted and infrastructure changes start being recognized. Weekly status reports should help the ideas continue to progress through the organization, I’d recommend them highly.

Let’s try this with an example.

Say someone in your organization had the idea to stop buying paper towels for all the bathrooms and replace them with Dyson Airblades, where would that person start?

First, answer two questions

• What: The Dyson Airblade dries hands in 8 seconds, is faster than our current air driven hand driers, and is more sanitary.
• How: The Dyson Airblade is 50% more energy efficient than what we have today, it’s more sanitary because we don’t touch anything, and is probably cheaper than all the paper towels we go through every year.

Next, this idea goes to the Review Team. For this example the team should actually assign it to someone to figure out how much is spent every year in paper towels. At that point you can’t reject the idea, compensate the employee based on how you rank cost savings suggestions. It’s probably not feasible to figure out how much power is used by regular air driers but Dyson does state that they’re 80% more energy efficient and gives you a quick web interface to estimate your cost savings. Each Airblade is about $1,200 so if you need six that’s $7,200 without installation. If you’re spending $6,000 a year on paper towels then you’re looking at a two year ROI. Sounds like there’s something here so put it in someone’s hands to oversee, demand weekly reports and push it through the organization. Once it’s installed I recommend additional, and larger compensation for the employee that suggested it. Don’t kill your ROI (unless you’re trying to make an example!) but If you’re saving $4,000 in your second year you can probably afford $200-$300 this year.

That’s it. Although this is a simple example you can probably extrapolate to larger efforts and larger benefits. Future posts will cover compensation options, refining the submission and review process, recognition for your best idea people, as well as teaching the rest of the organization to look at everyday things with a more critical eye.