metacool

Keith Duckworth

This week, the world lost a great innovator, Keith Duckworth.

An engineer by training, Duckworth was one half of the vaunted firm Cosworth, designers of the paradigm-shifting DFV, which changed the face of motor racing and brought home 155 race victories.  Funded as a venture by Ford, the DFV acted as a modular platform around which indepdendent designers could, for the first time, create Formula 1 cars which could compete with factory efforts from the like of Ferrari. 

Duckworth was one of those fantastic engineers who, by embracing the realities of the business context they operate within, turn mere ideas into market-dominating innovations.

India Times on the d.school

Here's an article about the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (a.k.a. "the d.school) from the India Times.

Though it quickly ventures off into a discussion about more traditional approaches to design education, I like the article because of what it represents:  it's very much an example of Thomas Friedman's belief that ever-increasing flatness will, and it's also about the emergence of Dan Pink's view that R-directed thinking will be what enables one makes a good living in the 21st century.

Most of all, it affirms my belief that the d.school isn't so much a place as a state of mind.

Hackathoninnovation

Here's a cool idea:  hold an eight-hour hackathon for your offering or business.  Get a lot done.  Innovate.  Hackathoninnovation, in other words.

The people over at FeedBurner did this recently, and got a whole bunch of stuff done.  Sure, this is easier done if your offering is a piece of web software, but I'd argue that the spirit of a hackathon can be applied to everything from your corner Dairy Queen to the Pentagon.  It's the innovation equivalent of working an extra weekend shift on the manufacturing line to get it cleared of WIP.  It's all about turning off the WiFi, switching off Outlook, closing the meeting calendar, and getting stuff done.  It's about really focusing on the important stuff, rather than on the urgent or routine.

Racers get the idea of a hackathoninnovation -- they have to do it all the time.

What could you hack today?

Happiness & Innovative Behavior: Send Help!

I'm starting to write another column for BusinessWeek Online, this time on something around the subject of happiness and innovative behavior.

I need your help. 

What are your thoughts on this subject?  What stories do you have for or against?  Please comment below or drop me a line.

Many thanks.  Mahalo.

Complementary Products

It's always interesting to see the kinds of complementary products that spring up and form the ecosystem around successful offerings such as the iPod Shuffle. 

Here's one you probably didn't expect:  iBelieve

metacool Thought of the Day

"For the longest time ideation was about throwing out as many ideas as you can.  We've realized pretty quickly that it's really not about a bunch of ideas, it's about really good strategy, alignment and business, diagnostics, and deep customer understanding... the ideas are no longer just about the product, they're about new business models and how you go to market, and what's your supply chain like."

- Sam Lucente

VCitis

Now, some of my best friends are in the venture capital industry, but Dave Hornik's creative connection between Narcissistic Personality Disorder, your average VC, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is just too funny to pass up:  VCitis

Venture Design, part 10

The airline Song is dead.  As Seth notes on his blog, Song was a superficial attempt to create a new airline with a new value proposition.  The superficial part was that it was more about the "brand is who we say we are" approach than the much more real "brand is what we do" approach.

The cool part of Seth's post is his insight that this event can be looked upon as a total failure, or as an opportunity to learn.  If you can do the latter, and treat everything as an experiment to be learned from, no matter if the outcome is "good" or "bad", then you're well on your way to a process of creating ventures that starts to look a lot like design thinking.

metacool Thought of the Day

"If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt.  Don't ask why, or what difficulties you may get into."

- Richard Feynman

Rust-Proof Branding

I'm happy to say that I'm now writing a column for BusinessWeek Online

Here's my debut:  Saturn's Rust-Proof Brand

Tom Kelley Blogging about Innovation

My colleague Tom Kelley is writing about innovation this week over at Fast Company Now.   

You can hear a podcast of on interview Tom did on NPR about his new book titled The Ten Faces of Innovation.  If you're at all interested in becoming a better innovator, the podcast is 45 minutes very well spent.  The book is worth your while, too!

Introducing the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford

       

This past Monday was a Good Day for the Stanford "d.school".  Monday was the day it became the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.  Plattner's incredibly generous and visionary donation means that all of us at the Institute can now really focus on our primary mission of training leaders who use design thinking to solve big challenges.

The Plattner Institute was rung in with a big celebration at Stanford's Frost Amphiteater, attended by such luminaries as Plattner (shown above), Stanford President John Hennessy, Professor David Kelley, and Executive Director George Kembel.  As Kelley remarked to the assembled crowd, "Bravo, Hasso!"

Venture Design, part 9

Now that's a creative business model: Eternal Reefs

metacool Thought of the Day

"I like to launch [products] early and often. That has become my mantra.  Nobody remembers [Madonna's] Sex Book or the Newton. Consumers remember your average over time. That philosophy frees you from fear."

- Marissa Mayer, Google

Feld on the venture industry, ASP software, blogging and other topics

Here's a really stimulating interview with Brad Feld of Mobius Ventures (and a citizen of my homeland of Colorado.  Bonus Points!).

Definitely worth reading if you're into the art and science of creating cool stuff.

Navajo Blankets, House Painters, and Innovation

As a boy I learned that the creators of Navajo blankets purposely weave a flaw into each of their creations.

For a variety of reasons, I've been thinking quite a bit about flaws and the process of innovation, and I'd like to explore this Navajo blanket idea in that context over the next few weeks.  I have an inkling that it may be the key to unlocking the potential of heretofore crappy service experiences, such as professional house painting.  Who knows, this just might be the next Beausage.

Before we reach that point, I need your help to answer a few questions:

1. Is (or was) this a legitimate cultural Navajo tradition, or is it a myth concocted to dupe tourists and elementary school children?
2. If it is a real thing, does it have a name?
3. Can you think of any examples from  your own work experience where a purposeful flaw became a beautiful thing?

Please share a comment below or drop me an email.

Sleepless nights at metacool

If there's a little less action on metacool over the next few weeks, please accept this apology in advance.

You see, I just shipped the introductory version of my latest creation.  She's really a beauty -- featuring, among other things:

• a complex, powerful, yet low-power consumption bio-computer running a self-teaching, open-source operating system
• a huge amount of information storage capacity -- won't run out for decades, hopefully even a century
• completely cradle-to-cradle in terms of production materials
• low mass -- all of this in a package only a few pounds heavier than a standard business laptop

Branding is still being developed and will be announced shortly.  We're looking at a premium positioning that's unique without being too exotic.

Our growth plan includes the gradual addition of mobility, moving from a quadraped motive system to eventually a biped mode, which we feel strikes the right balance between traction and agility.  We also expect to add advanced voice recognition, speech capabilities, and the ability to compose poetry and play the saxophone.  I'll keep you posted.

But I'll be busy for the next few weeks.

Innovation Means Really Being There

Here's an intriguing interview with Gary Flint, chief engineer for the innovative new Honda Ridgeline.

This new vehicle redefines what a pickup can and should be.  How did Honda get there?  By getting out and observing real people.  Says Flint:

We didn't look at what people were buying.  We listened to what they wanted... During the Ridgeline's development I spent an hour every Saturday morning at Home Depot with my tasty beverage, and I watched people load things in the parking lot.

When was the last time you got out of the office and just simply observed people going through the stuff of daily life?  Out there lies the kind of inspiration that leads to game-changing innovation.

Enjoyment = Flow = Innovation

Next time your hear someone couching innovation in terms of complex processes, jargon, and esoteric management theories, challenge them with this simple question: how do you plan to enable people here to enjoy their work?

The more I learn about innovation, the more I believe that the organizations who innovate year over year over year are those who treat people well, who build cultures where enjoying one's work -- routinely reaching a state of flow -- is not the exception, but the rule.  If you want to be sustainably innovative, these places teach us, then solve for human happiness.  Think JetBlue.  Gore.  Honda.

Or even Ferrari.  Ferrari, the grandest brand in the world, red speed incarnate.  Because it operates within the byzantine world of Formula 1 racing, where teams spend upwards of $200 million per season to design, build and campaign two tiny cars around the globe, Ferrari could easily be a nasty, brutish place to work.  But it isn't, and therein lies the secret to its formidable record of victory: helping its people get into flow. Jean Todt, the scuderia's leader, says this about his approach to culture:

People will give their best at work if they are happy.  If people respect their co-workers, both professionally and personally, they will want them to be happy too, and will help each other when there are problems.

Could enjoyment really equal innovation?  Yes.  It's as simple (but difficult) a proposition as this: to innovate well, treat your people well.

Venture Design, part 9

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called "What's Good Enough?"

Which is why I positively love this idea:  Good enough is the new perfect

Venture Design, part 8

AutoWeek has a great "compare and contrast" profile of Jesse James (from Monster Garage) and Paul Moller (Mr. Skycar).  Their respective forays into the realm of flying cars represent two very different approaches to venture design.

In one corner, we have Moller, who has spent millions and millions and years and years developing Skycar.  He has a PhD, and his venture is very much a left-brain, Master Plan kind of effort: lots of costly (time + money) engineering and analysis, supported by a huge machine for consuming large of amounts of money with big, complex prototypes.  So far he's gotten the Skycar to hover a few feet off the ground.  It looks cool, though.

In the opposite side of the ring, we have Mr. James, ace welder and intuitive designer, an entrepreneur who knows his way around an English Wheel.  If you've ever seen Monster Garage, you know that Jesse is all about building things now, and doing things to the hilt.  Talk is cheap in the land of Jesse, and its a place where you build to know.  In stark contrast to Moller, Jesse's flying car venture was a two-week, multi-thousand dollar affair, and it resulted in a Panoz Esperante that flew 350 yards.

Who learned more?  Big budget, big schedule, or lean budget, scrappy schedule?  Ventures that seek to crack open new market spaces (like flying cars -- not a good market, mind you, but a new market nonetheless) face a central challenge of closing critical information gaps.  If you have suitcases of cash, and a lot of extra time on your hand, try the Moller model.  Otherwise, as a proponent of appropriate venture design, metacool has no choice but to endorse Mr. James.

What's Good Enough?

My post last week on Venture Design sparked an interesting discussion about the topic of "good enough" in the world of innovation.  Victor Lombardi made this point:

Some recent experience with teaching product development to the "linear business types" taught me to be careful with explaining the concept of "good enough." For example, a business analyst I spoke with pointed out we should only develop a product far enough to exceed customer expectations; anything further is wasted development money and results in lower profit margins. To him, this was "good enough" design. But this thinking can lead to, for example, series of incremental improvements and leave a company vulnerable to a competitor's breakthrough design.

Here's my perspective:  "Good Enough" is a worldview.  It's a way of approaching challenges where the appropriate solution path is not obvious.  In that situation, 50% accurate information today is an order of magnitude more valuable than 100% accurate data tomorrow, because having that data allows you to take action now, and the act of moving takes you one real step closer to a workable solution -- perfectly accurate info is always a day away.  Perfection equals paralysis, and the way to reach a more innovative mode of existence is to accept "good enough" as permission to go ahead and get stuff done.  Life is short.

In reality, taking a "good enough" approach to developing your offering is the key to reaching greatness.  Per Victor's point above, if you view "good enough" as a one-shot deal and ship a turd to market and leave it there to fester, you're only fooling yourself into a state of perpetual mediocrity.  But, if you say "this is good enough today, and I have a plan for good enough in a week, a month, a year," then you'll be iterating your way to success, learning all along the way.  The first generation iPod was a "good enough" effort done quickly, and it taught Apple a lot about a new (to Apple, at least) marketspace.  Subsequent iPod offerings capitalized on those lessons learned -- real information from real customers in a real market.  The "good enough" worldview allows you to stand on the shoulders of giants of your own making.

(metacool disclaimer:  the AMC Pacer pictured above should be used only as an educational example of how a "good enough" offering not tied to a strategic development plan will result it in a mediocre turd.  Yes, the Pacer influenced the design of the Porsche 928, but there's no accounting for taste)

metacool Thought of the Day

"Teaching elephants to dance may be easier than teaching managers how
to innovate... Managing organizations is important. But managing creativity is the must-have skill for today's managers."
- Bruce Nussbaum

Innovation, Empathy, and the Internet, part 3

Yet another example of how the Internet can help us get outside of ourselves, to see the world through the eyes of others or from a completely new point of view:  mezzoblue writes about Google Map's new satellite imagery feature being used as tool to tell a compelling, authentic story about the devastating environmental impact of clearcutting. 

I'm beginning to believe that the emergence of design thinking in our society is somehow related to the rise of the Internet as an ubiquitous source of information, entertainment, and stimulation.  Never before have we had ready access to so much complexity.  Design thinking -- with its emphasis on empathy for humans, iterative problem solving via prototyping, and an entrepreneurial mindset -- is the best way I know of to work with that complexity.

metacool Thought of the Day

"Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope. This comes down to a few elements:

• having high expectations that you will succeed - despite any setbacks or frustrations
• having the sense to break down an imposing task into smaller, manageable ones
• believing that you are able to achieve your goals, whatever they may be. Be dogged and determined
• and don't be afraid to be different."

- James Dyson

How to Compete with Google

Brainboost

Empathy and the Business of Innovation

In case you haven't seen it, allow me to point you to this great Bruce Nussbaum article about design thinking.  "All the B-school-educated managers you hire won't automatically get you the outside-the-box thinking you need to build new brands -- or create new experiences for old brands," Nussbaum says.

"The truth is we're moving from a knowledge economy that was dominated by technology into an experience economy controlled by consumers and the corporations who empathize with them."

Amen, brother.

Innovation, Empathy, and the Internet, part 2

Here's another example of how easy it could be to use Internet-enabled observations as a source of inspiration for your innovation process: whatsinyourbag

Think of each of these photos as a unique story about how one human gets through modern life. 

There are easily hundreds of wants and needs here waiting to be solved.

Help change the world, visit WorldChanging

I admit it: I'm a bit late to the party on this one.  WorldChanging is one of the most remarkable blogs around, but I didn't know of its existence until late last week.  No matter, now I'm hooked.

From their unique mission to their strong point of view to the depth and breadth of their content, the crew at WorldChanging will change the way you approach being a global citizen.  So, pay WorldChanging a visit.  If you have a child, talk to her about the things you learn there.  If you have a blog, give 'em a link.

There's too much important stuff at WorldChanging to ignore.  Like this.  Or this.  And this.  Wow.

Innovation, Empathy, and the Internet

Observing our fellow human beings work their way through life can be a rich -- arguably the richest -- source of inspiration for innovations.  Sony's Walkman grew from Akio Morita's insight that, given a choice, people want to listen to music whenever possible.  Henry Ford's Model T, and later Pierre Boulanger's incredible 2CV, both came from the realization that would soon be wealthy enough to want and use basic, affordable transportation devices.  Scott Cook succeeded in a crowded market by building Quicken's user interface around insights gleaned from watching people -- including his wife -- balance paper checkbooks.

But getting out of the office to go observe real people can be intimidating, difficult, maybe even impossible.  As organizations grow and work roles become more specialized, talking to real people becomes the job of the research department instead of the people actually doing the development work.  And as things grow even bigger, the research department hires outside research firms to do the work.  Bye bye human empathy!  Real people and their vibrant stories and true needs get reduced to PowerPoint bullets, statistical tables, and cheesy clip art.  Can we really expect inspired, breakthrough innovations to come from that?

If you work in the kind of situation I just outlined above, I think you have three choices:

1. Accept the status quo, get your "user insights" from your research group's hired help, and watch your organization slowly ossify and become functionally unable to innovate.
2. Don't tell anyone what you're doing, go observe users, start a blog, listen to support calls -- anything.  You might hit a home run.  Or not. This takes guts and runs the risk of derailing your career because you're undermining the research bureaucracy.

The third choice?  Ask yourself this:  how hard is it to go out and observe real people in an age where, without leaving your desk, you can:

• observe humans at a conference in Tokyo
• watch people stroll through an aerospace museum
• quickly learn what 120 believe to be true even through they can't prove it

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is yet another case where the Internet really does change everything.  Let's embrace Internet-enabled observations as yet another source of innovation inspiration.  It's cheap, it's there -- why not?

Stanford's new Institute of Design (aka the "d.school")

A secret informant slipped me this manifesto from Stanford's new Institute of Design (aka the "d.school"). 

Pass it along to your friends!  Join the design thinking movement!

Building a Product Dynasty: Gran Turismo 4

Five simple steps to creating a product dynasty, a la Kazunori Yamauchi:

1. Tap into your abiding love for cars and racing to create a vision of the best damn driving game/simulation around.
2. Hire only programming maniacs and monster artists who share your extravagant automotive fetish.
3. Do everything totally, massively, to the hilt.
4. Ship the best damn game to market.  See what works and what doesn't, and take notes for future editions.
5. Wait a few years, go back to Step 2 and repeat.  Wait a  few more years and repeat again.  Let another presidential term slip by and repeat once more.

Today is one of those hallowed days that makes even this thirty-something professional giggle like a kid on Christmas morning.  Why?  Because today -- today!! -- the talented crew of Polyphony launches Gran Turismo 4, a tribute to focused vision, technical virtuosity, and the entrepreneurial moxie it takes to design every fractal element -- from large to small -- to the hilt.

Excuse me while I go flog my Toyota Celica WRC rally car through the snowy forests of Finland.

Expanding the Definition of Your Offering

Where does your offering start and end?  Where should it start and end?  What could you do at the borders of your existing offering to help it deliver a more delightful user experience?

The people behind the Everquest online fantasy video game asked themselves these questions and came up with something pretty special:

While playing EverQuest II just type /pizza and a web browser will launch the online ordering section of pizzahut.com. Fill in your info and just kick back until fresh pizza is delivered straight to your door.

How cool is that?  Pizza on demand isn't a traditional video game feature like better graphics and more complex story lines, but it is an amazing way to enhance the video game experience.  And it's a good example of how customer-centric innovation doesn't always need to be something big and scary.  It might just be about asking the right questions.

Creating Cool Stuff with Storytelling, part 3

I've always worked in product development.  It's an intensely social environment where people are constantly telling each other stories to get their point across.  Accordingly, I've probably sat through at least one PowerPoint presentation for each day I've spent in the office. 

It's often painful.  So painful, in fact, that next time someone stands up in a meeting and begins reading directly off their PowerPoint prezo, I swear I'm going to every-so-politely inform them that the last person to read to me out loud was my mother and that procedure ceased circa 1974.  Trust me, I can read, and if there's some text around, I'd rather digest it myself than try to listen to you and read it myself at the same time.

Here's the problem:  PowerPoint wasn't designed as a tool for documenting complex thoughts or piles of information.  As a wise man once said, trains of thought need tracks.  And those tracks are best constructed of prose, which is what Microsoft Word is for.  So when people use PowerPoint as a medium for complex and complete sentences, tables, lists of bullets, etc... they're not helping their story or their audience get to a good place. 

Cliff Atkinson shows on his blog that removing text from PowerPoint improves both information retention and transfer.  And I recall Seth Godin advising that we use no more than six or so words on any PowerPoint slide.  Use a photo or drawing instead, he says.  Removing text from your PowerPoint decks forces you to become an active storyteller, and that's fine, because that's what we humans do when we're around one another. 

So.  Word = Prose Documentation.  PowerPoint = Active Storytelling.  If you need both outcomes, use each program to write up two different documents.

von Hippel on Innovation & Interesting Users

As of late I've been getting reacquainted with the thinking of Professor Eric von Hippel of MIT, who studies the innovation process.  It's intriguing stuff.  Here's an excerpt from his paper "Breakthroughs to Order at 3M":

Not all users are created equal with respect to the development of commercially-important innovations and innovation prototypes.  Research shows that almost all user-developed ideas and prototypes of general commercial interest tend to be developed by “Lead Users” – that is, users that: (1) expect to get high benefit from an innovation and so have a strong incentive to innovate and; (2) that are ahead of a target market with respect to one or more important trends...

The point is, if you want to find users that are actively exploring and testing new ideas, it is a waste of time to survey users in the center of the target market.  Instead, you must develop methods to seek out users that are at the leading edge with respect to needs that are important to that market – even if such lead users are rare and hard to find - because that is where interesting user idea generation and innovation is concentrated.

You can see more of his writing here.

Blink + The Wisdom of Crowds

Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds) are having a fascinating exchange of letters on Slate this week.  It's a worthwhile read if you're at all interested in how to structure decision making processes to better foster innovation.

Cool Books of 2004

Another list.  Here are my favorite reads of 2004. No claims to comprehensiveness or consistency, and not all were published in the past year; just a list of books that made me think different in 2004:

On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins:  an elegant book on the nature of intelligence and how the brain works.  The good news for metacool readers is that "real intelligence" is the way that designers think.

The System of the World, by Neil Stephenson: third in the baroque triology, capable of stimulating latent nerdism, and a helluva of a long book, it continues Stephenson's fascinating journey through the origins of modern finance and computing.  I loved every page of it.  Not for everyone, which is refreshing.

The Innovator's Solution, by Clayton Christensen: forget the hype, the content is outstanding.  Clay tested the ideas in this book on my class at Harvard Business School, and yet I still find something fresh and interesting each time I go back to its pages.  The chapters on need-based market segmentation strategies are excellent.

Porsche: Excellence was Expected, by Karl Ludvigsen:  perhaps the best business book of 2004, unfortunately Excellence is marketed as a car book, which will keep it out of the mainstream.  In a world where marketing-led "brand building" is an oxymoron, Ludvigsen shows how Porsche built a brand with deep integrity piece by piece, slowly evolving it over time.  His discussion of the genesis of the Porsche Cayenne SUV also shows how quickly a brand can be diluted and maimed by managers out to make a quick buck.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie:  any book recommended by both Richard Tait and Bob Sutton (both proponents of humane business practices, and really good guys themselves) has to be good, and Hairball delivers.  Look, any organization will have its problems, and those problems can seem particularly nasty when seen from the inside.  The real question is: do you care enough about those problems do something about them?  Hairball is a guide to engaging with an organization to help solve its problems without losing your soul.  It also contains some great advice about dealing with nasty behaviors in the workplace, including teasing, which has run rampant in every org I've ever worked in.

Emotional Design, by Donald Norman:  if you haven't noticed, I'm quite taken by this wonderful piece of thinking.  His Visceral-Behavioral-Reflective model of human cognition is a powerful way to understand slippery concepts like brand and meaning, making this one of the most important books on marketing (where marketing is the process of understanding human needs and creating offerings to meet those needs) to come out in years.  His message about beautiful things working better is important, too.  Read this one.

metacool Thought of the Day

"In life there is nothing more foolish than inventing."

- James Watt

Design for Free Culture

In early November I attended the pod casting discussion at BloggerCon.  Toward the end of the pod casting session, Larry Lessig pointed out that it would be great if technologists driving the design of podcasting software could do it in such a way as to make the entire domain of pod casting hard for would-be naysayers to grok.  Essentially, his point was that technology creators and facilitators should think about the larger societal context in which pod-casting operates in order to keep the copyright fun sponges out of the picture. 

Too often designers and technologists completely avoid asking the question "Who will expend energy actively blocking this innovation of mine?".  It would be a great thing if that question started getting asked with more frequency.  Even better would be to involve legal types in the early design phase of a new technology so as to design in barriers to prevent the naysayers from dictating how people should and can use a particular technology innovation.

Hammers & Nails

If you ask a group of mechanical engineers to create a land mine detection system, they'll likely develop a system which prods the ground.  Electrical engineers might create a detector using magnetism.  In contrast, the biologists at Aresa Biodetection are using a color-shifting, genetically modified plant to signal the presence of land mines:

In the presence of chemical compounds released by explosives into the soil, the Aresa plant turns pink.  While there are certainly ecological and political barriers to implementing this solution, one has to admire its elegance.

If you're a hammer, the world looks like a nail.  Aresa's plant is a wonderful example of how innovative solutions often arise when technical domains and professional disciplines collide.  While you're probably not creating landmine detection systems, you could be doing this today.  For example, if your goal is to create an innovative, record-setting promotional campaign, why not add a nuclear engineer to your existing marcomm team?  Mix some screwdrivers in with the hammers and good stuff will happen.

metacool Thought of the Day

"I never knew I was going to get to the result until I got there." -- Pablo Pardo

Tanks and chunks

Forging an enduring bond with customers is at the core of what a brand is all about.  What if you could add depth, vigor, and passion to that relationship by encouraging your customers to participate in the creation of the very offering they consume?

For example, Virgin Atlantic recently held an open competition to create the graphics for 20 different airsickness bags.  Called Design for Chunks, the contest -- nicknamed "retch for the sky" -- attracted hundreds of submissions and resulted in some tasty (ahem) creations.

Over at Ducati, with an offering miles more complex than an air sickness bag, the potential for user involvement in the design process is lower.  Simply put, you can't have laypeople mucking about with the design and engineering of a superbike.  Even so, working within that constraint, Ducati tries hard to make the Ducatisti feel like they're part of the development process by encouraging them to vote on the details of future products, such as the fuel tank of the 2005 model year 999.

Examples of this kind of participative marketing are manifold, from Firefox soliciting its user base for help with product logos to Guy Kawasaki holding a design bakeoff for the cover of his new book.  The point is, why not tap into the collective genius of your users?  If in open source software development many brains make deep bugs shallow, then with participative marketing many brains can make shallow offerings deep. 

Embrace and engage your users, get deep passion.

metacool Thought of the Day

"If you are a marketer who doesn't know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you're no longer a marketer.  You're deadwood."

- Seth Godin

Simplicity that Works

Trick or treat!

Several dozen kids yelled that at my front door this Halloween evening, but for most of the night I felt like my new IBM T42 ThinkPad was also shouting the same thing. Why?  Because I spent over two hours trying to get this brand new computer to stop:

1)  Crashing every 5 minutes

2)  Losing its connection to my home wireless network every 30 seconds

IBM Trick No. 1: As of last week I used another ThinkPad with the same operating system (XP), and it had no problems working with my network

IBM Trick No. 2: When I called IBM ThinkPad support, they said, and I quote this verbatim: "We only make the computer part, we can't help you with the software stuff."   What an incredibly poor response, one that betrays a lack of understanding of the business they're in.  What I need from from IBM is a total solution -- if I wanted to spend a perfectly beautiful California evening hacking on a crappy PC, I would have bought some no-name brand, and not spent a premium for a ThinkPad.  IBM seems to be competing with Handspring for the worst customer service on the planet, but that's a story for another time.

Treat:  this week's Economist has a special section on IT complexity, which made me feel feel better about the fact that my new PC has worse manners than a new puppy -- everyone has the same problems with this horribly complex technology. 

What I want is simple: simplicity that works.  A few months ago in this blog I touched on the theme of simplicity; I'm looking forward to revisiting it over the next week.

Bringing cool stuff to life: 2004 TED Prize

I'm obsessed with the process of bringing cool things to life. I admire the TED Prize, because it isn't about being a genius or a superhero -- it's about doing great stuff. The 2004 winners are Bono, photo-artist Edward Burtynsky, and medical device pioneer Robert Fischell.

Some say that rockers are but court jesters, but some use their fame as a bully pulpit. Bono has done this; the TED site leaves us with one of his remarkable thoughts: "What are the blind spots of our age? It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth."

To my mind, the environmental issues facing us today are beyond comprehension. What do a billion people look like? What does it feel like to lose an organism forever? Photos by Burtynsky can help deliver the message in a way that breaks through the fuzz.

Many people create products which claim to change people's lives, but which really only affect lifestyle. For example, an iPod is way cool, but it differs from my 80's Walkman only by degree. Robert Fischell creates things that fundamentally change lives.  His work is the standard by which that statement must be judged.

Dante or Beowulf?

Neal Stephenson answered some questions on Slashdot recently, and made a point about "Dante" writers versus "Beowulf" writers. Dante writers are beholden to patrons such as universities and fellowship grants, are more likely to be part of the establishment, and have to adhere to external expectations. Beowulf writers, on the other hand, write whatever the hell they want and might find a mass market along the way, critics be damned. In business terms, they're high beta folks, high variance. As Stephenson puts it:

... people on the Beowulf side may never have taken a writing class in their life. They just tend to lunge at whatever looks interesting to them, write whatever they please, and let the chips fall where they may. So we may seem not merely arrogant, but completely unhinged.

I think there's a parallel to entrepreneurial finance here: do you take Dante money for your company from an establishment source (VC, Angels, etc...) and allow them to dictate your behavior somewhat, or do you Beowulf bootstrap and follow your own destiny? Food for thought.

If you're not interested in efinance, read the Slashdot stuff anyway, as there's a particularly cool bit about a LNG tanker. Excuse me while I perform some Red Lotus incantations.

CYA Notice No. 660 from the metacool legal team: This post exeeds the dorkiness exposure limit set by management.

metacool Thought of the Day

“Research should be defined as doing something where half of the people think it’s impossible – impossible!  And half of them think hmmmmm, maybe that will work, right?  When there’s ever a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back and find a time period when the consensus was, ‘Well, that’s nonsense.’  So what that means is that a true, creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense.”

– Burt Rutan

Steve Jobs on Innovation

"You need a very product-oriented culture. Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. How are monopolies lost? Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. [But] what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? So a different group of people starts to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. Then one day the monopoly expires, for whatever reason...but by then, the best product people have left or they are no longer listened to." - Steve Jobs

Things which I believe drive this dynamic in organizations:

1) As Clay Christensen has noted, succcessful organizations drive for ever-increasing margins over time.  This dynamic forces changes in the organization's internal mission and raises the profile and validity of sales and financial people.

2) People who do the creative work of product development are different from the people who do the routine (but very important) work of managing call centers, tracking accounts receivable, talking to shareholders, and keeping the lights on.  Thing is, routine people are more likely to get satisfaction from being managers, rather than from focusing on content, which is what creative people like to do.  So the routine people rise in the organization, mismanage the creative people, and nothing gets good gets created -- witness Apple without Jobs.

3)  Tibor Kalman once said "success = boredom".  If a product line is becoming mature, and if the company is unwilling or unable to roll out new lines of products, the good product people will leave in search of more interesting challenges.  Who wants to be the guy trying to take another $0.01 of cost out of an already optimized mechanism? 

4) Product success drives financial success, which leads to going public, which leads to short-term financial pressures and the generation of a gigantic bureaucratic hairball.  That hairball tangles the creative product people and binds them, limits them.  As the rather creative fellow Richard Branson says, "If it's a private company, you can get away with more. If it's my money, then if I lose my money, no one else has been hurt by it."

Cranium Wisdom from Richard Tait

Attended Stanford’s EDAY over the weekend, and had my hat knocked in the creek by the event’s final speaker, the Grand Poo-Bah of Cranium, Richard Tait.  The theme of EDAY was “the power of play,” so who better than a gaming company Grand Poo-Bah to tie a bow around things? 

Tait’s spiel focused on his own version of the 4 P’s: Passion, Productivity, Profitability, and Play.  Some particularly chewy nuggets:

Passion:

• Lighten & Enlighten: that’s Cranium’s passion, and as a mission it infuses all their daily activities.
• Invest time and energy in your culture: Cranium holds periodic “rodeos” where the group gets together to discuss cultural issues.  What’s going wrong and how can we improve things?
• Encourage each member of your org to come to work each day with a point of view about what they bring to the party: Tait’s daily POV centers on passion, speed & urgency, and discovery.

Productivity:

• Focus on innovation and marketing (metacool editorial: if you do them right, they’re one and the same): Everything else can and should be outsourced.  Drucker agrees, by the way.
• When hiring for jobs that create value in the marketplace, hire for how people think and not for what they know:  Hiring for smarts, and renting experience when needed, is a great way to find (and retain) those knowledge workers capable of creating remarkable products.  To his credit, Tait acknowledged that for routine work (a concept I borrow from Bob Sutton, another EDAY speaker) like day-to day accounting, finance, and operations, you should go for experience.  Just make sure those folks are a cultural fit.  Actively shun the fun sponges who take delight in the creation of bureaucratic hairballs.

Profitability:

• Operational rigor can empower, rather than distract, a creative organization:  Encouraging your entire workforce to actually understand EBITDA (as Cranium does) is impressive.  Setting that EBITDA reporting to a Bee Gees soundtrack takes things to setting eleven.  Creative people are adults, too, and they’re usually pretty smart.  They can understand EBITDA.
• Never forget that customers are your best (and FREE) sales force:  Cranium made its limited marketing dollars work as hard as they could.  In fact, it sold its first million units without a dime of outbound marketing spend.  And people at Cranium do seemingly crazy things to win and retain passionate customers.  For example, Tait once delivered Cranium games on Christmas Day to customers on a shipping waitlist. 

Play:

• Use the spirit of play to guide your product development process:  Cranium went from concept to reality in just six months using a philosophy of rapid prototyping (print out game boards drawn in PowerPoint) and fluid iteration (hold four user playtests a night, and modify the prototype between each one).
• See the world with the mind of a child:  What is interesting?  What works particularly well?  What tastes and feels good?  Case in point, the Cranium color palette – which now informs the entire Cranium brand – was lifted from a roll of Lifesavers.  Classic.  Tasty.  Effective.
• Enjoy yourself in the workplace, and enjoy what you do:  Tait clearly does, and his enthusiasm is infectious.  And he digs old 911’s, which is worth 50 bonus points.

Speaking of bonus items, here’s a charming PDF by Tait which nicely summarizes his thoughts on culture, meaning and innovation.  I’m still looking for my hat…

Download CraniumSecretSauce.pdf

Soichiro Honda on Enjoyment and Innovation

"Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves."  - Soichiro Honda

That Honda the company is a champion innovator is due in no small part to the culture created by Honda the founder.   

What I find so interesting about this quote from Mr. Honda is his focus on the concept of enjoyment.  When was the last time you heard any industry magnate, let alone a Japanese one, say it's all about individual enjoyment, not about the greater good of the company?

Many business thinkers write about managing innovation, as if innovation were a thing.  But innovation is ultimately the expression of a set of behaviors originating in the individual.  So rather than focusing our energy on understanding the output of those individuals (innovation), we should think instead about how to lead those individuals so that they can be as innovative as possible.  Could creating a culture of innovation be as simple as cultivating a culture of enjoyment?  Mr. Honda says "yes": If you're at Honda, then, the central task of leadership is about creating work that leads to enjoyment, and innovation will follow.  It's not unlike the leadership philosophy of Bobby Cox.

But what does enjoyment mean?  Is the implication that work needs to be "fun", as in dot com fun?  Is it about air hockey tables and free M&M's?  Should employees be walking around with inane smiles on their faces?  I don't think so.  My guess is that Mr. Honda believed in the kind of enjoyment which leads to a state of flow.  Csikszentmihalyi (the originator of the concept of flow) wrote this illuminating discussion of enjoyment in his book Good Business:

The experience of happiness in action is enjoyment -- the exhilarating sensation of being fully alive... Enjoyment, on the other hand, is not always pleasant, and it can be very stressful at times.  A mountain climber, for example, may be close to freezing, utterly exhausted, and in danger of falling into a bottomless crevasse, yet he wouldn't want to be anywhere else...  At the moment it is experienced, enjoyment can be both physcially painful and mentally taxing; but because it involves a triumph over the forces of entropy and decay, it nourishes the spirit.

Nourishing the spirit.  Experiencing the thrill of triumphing over adversity.  Happiness in action. When was the last time you heard those words associated with managing innovation?  Next time someone in your workplace couches innovation in terms of by-the-numbers processes, jargon, and esoteric management theories, just ask them this simple question: how do you plan to enable people to enjoy their work?