Category: K.E.E.N. skills

Social Product Creation: Quirky, The Collaborative Invention Unleashed!

Take 6mins and watch this video of the Quirky manifesto – one of the most enlightening videos on the Fourth Revolution’s process and possibilities:

Quirky Manifesto from Quirky on Vimeo.

Quirky is a successful startup that thrives on social invention. Inventions are sorted out by the crowd, and if selected, inventors get royalties… and not just inventors: those that were influential in the later development of the idea, the name, the tagline or the color too!!

The development of this startup is astounding. Launched in 2009 it now launches 2 new products per week.. and they have paid millions to inventors and contributors. More information on this post by Mitch Joel.

Quirky now gets full attention: Quirky just raised $68 million and the attention of highly influential venture capitalists.

Think about it: a startup which is collecting ideas from anybody, put them to proof and vote, builds them, compensates all the crowd that was influential in producing the product… and unleashes the inventiveness of the world.

The Fourth Revolution has not finished to astonish us!

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The Exponential and the Black Swan: The Counter-Intuitive World of the Fourth Revolution

Following our posts on the Fourth Revolution being the realm of the exponential, this nice blog by Paul Graham (a famous Venture Capitalist investor), “Black Swan Farming”, brings closer the related issue of the fact that today, success is extremely rare – and extremely successful. And that as much as the exponential is not intuitive to us, this situation also escapes our common sense. It makes it in particular difficult to take action and put our stakes on the right candidates.

black swanIn the case of startups this expresses itself by the fact that only a very, very, very small handful of startups will make it really, really, really big (1,000x the initial investment or more); and they dwarf almost every other investment – they dwarf hundreds of other investments which either outright fail, or just live on with a nice but limited growth.

This is difficult enough to apprehend; where to invest in is equally counter-intuitive: it is mainly in ideas that seem at first view utterly pointless, and that are not popular.

The important idea in this blog is the fact that the situation is so counter-intuitive that we would need in fact to suspend all kind of intuition about whether a startup could be successful to increase our chances of final success – by taking more risk and capturing more of these freak Black Swans.

We already live in a world which is counter-intuitive through exponential and freak events – we absolutely need to change our frames of mind to thrive in the Fourth Revolution. What are you doing to change from the linear vision of the Industrial Age?

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How to Overcome FLAT: the Exponential Curve Startup Problem

As we argue that the Fourth Revolution is the age of the Exponential, we also face daily a singular problem: the start of an exponential curve, as seen closely, is… FLAT! Whereas it can bring to great heights in a small number of cycles, the beginning can be very disappointing.

Growth chart
Don’t you find that the beginning of the growth chart looks… flat?

And here lies the big struggle of all startups and all human projects. The beginning is flat. Almost always.

But… is it FLAT like DEAD – nothing will never happen and it will remain indefinitely zero, or is it FLAT like the beginning of an exponential that could bring the project to unknown heights?

It turns out that this is a very difficult problem and a lot of writing has been produced on what boils down to this problem. How can we know what kind of FLAT we are facing? When should we call it off, deciding it will never take off? When do we need to be persistent even if the results are poor at present?

Luckily the exponential startup FLAT is never completely FLAT: it is possible to use a microscope and detect some movement. If it shows a definite positive trend then, even if it’s much lower than what you were looking for at the moment, keep the effort, an exponential is possibly being created. If the results vary but look more like an inconsistent random pattern, kill it.

Change the scale of your observation. An exponential will remain an exponential even if very tiny. And you will see if it’s the right kind of FLAT.

Unfortunately, a lot of people kill their project because the result is not satisfactory without checking the actual trend.

What’s the trend on your latest project?

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Are you weird enough?

“Weird (not normal) means that you’ve made a choice, that you’ve stood up for what you believe in and done what you want” – Seth Godin in ‘We are all weird‘

2 covers for 'We are all weird'
A weird book: on the left, the official cover; on the right, the weird cover (a picture of a swami, an ascetic yogi – the “weird” archetype)

Seth clearly means that if today you want to make your mark in the world, well… yes, you certainly need to be weird. And not just a bit weird. VERY weird!

It’s time to take initiative, stop being confused with the other guys, be really yourself.

I know I am not weird enough sometimes – although I do more and more stand up to what I believe.

And you, are you weird enough to thrive through the Fourth Revolution?

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Do you have enough quiet time with yourself?

“Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers” – Dr Ester Buchholz (from Garr Reynolds’s ‘Presentation Zen‘ (a great recommended book to improve presentation skills!))

Quiet time for oneselfAs modern life pushes us around, tries to keep us busy constantly, do we still have enough time to stop receiving all this information and figure things out?

In fact it is all about balance: we do need the contact with the others to receive other view points, open our minds, discover the world, know how other people have failed, sound solutions, what they have learned. And we also need to have some time to be with ourselves, let our creative mind reveal itself and create.

What should the ideal balance be like? Probably lots of interaction with the world and just making sure we keep enough time to be alone with ourselves.

Do preserve this precious time alone with yourselves. be it meditating, walking, looking through the window of the train… It’s worth it. It’s needed. For you. For your contribution to the world. Do it. Now.

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Why the Collaborative Age is about Lean – Accelerating our Learning

Have you read the ‘The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses‘ by Eric Ries? I must say I was a bit reluctant at first because it seemed to be a very trendy flashy concept – of the kind that are trendy for a season and then disappear in the forgotten-great-concepts-that-were-supposed-to-change-the-world.

Lean Startup bookPushed by my curiosity I still read it and I must say that I dived into it. Because what Eric Ries is describing there in the realm of startups can probably be applicable to all types of endeavors in the Collaborative Age. An Age where failure does not cost a lot, and where on can try multiple ideas without committing too much funds or time. An Age where learning from actual feedback can be dramatically accelerated.

The Lean Startup proposes a structured framework to accelerate Learning. It proposes to propose to the world a ‘Minimum Viable Product’ as soon as possible, listen to the feedback, and accelerate the learning curve. Most people and companies do the mistake of taking long time to develop the ‘perfect product’ – that nobody really wants, because we never asked the potential user!

You might also have heard about ‘pivoting’ in the context of startups: it is about deciding to change completely the plans and the business model to respond to the actual feedback. And most successful startups need to pivot once or twice. Hopefully they can do it before they reach the end of the cash runway! Lean enables companies to learn quicker what works and what does not work.

Read the book or watch this video. It’s worth it!


Get Lean, and accelerate your learning. Stop perfecting your product, throw your ‘Minimum Viable Product’ to the world!

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Avoid the entrepreneur trap: go and meet your clients!

As an entrepreneur with a vision, a very clear trap is to develop an idea of the business without asking the ultimate stakeholder: the client.

It is so easy to fall into this well-known trap of not listening enough to clients – because setting up a company involves already so much energy and focus on getting it to run, on developing products, on setting up the necessary organization and infrastructure, that it is easy to forget to check what the clients really want.

Client visit
What do you get from client visits?

Yet every time I go and visit prospects and clients I come back with new insights about what they really want, on the fact that some of our own projects are not really what they expect, and many different inputs that can feed into the future development of the company and its products.

  • It is sometimes difficult – because what you thought were bright ideas do not meet any resonance.
  • It is sometimes exhilarating as the discussion allowed you to see a practical solution to a need, creating a way to fulfill your vision
  • It is sometimes disturbing because what you heard is very different from what you thought.

Yes, it can be difficult, exhilarating and disturbing – but visiting and listening to clients is always worthwhile.

Make sure that you spend enough time confronting reality by looking through the eyes of your prospects and clients! When do you start?

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Openness Alone Cannot Drive Change. It is Just the Beginning.

The title of this post is a quote from one of the most inspiring videos I have seen for a long time. Margaret Heffernan explains how having information available out in the open is not enough for people to notice and take action.

She explains how a scientist investigated the growing number of childhood cancers and had discovered the noxious effects of X-rays of pregnant women on children in the 1950’s – how all this information was published, out in the open – and how the medical establishment took decades to notice and do something about it.

Look at this 12 mins video, it’s worth it!

Here’s the link if you can’t see the video.

I love one of the final quotes of Margaret’s speech: “Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential. But the truth won’t set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it. Openness isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.”

The availability of information thanks to the Fourth Revolution is only the beginning. Leadership is needed to make something out of it, to manage the conflict that open information does provoke.

Hat tip to Tim Berry who talked eloquently about the video on his blog.

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The consultant dilemma: one man show or team show?

As my business shows success, I am confronting a traditional dilemma: stay as a one-man-show and increase personal profitability through deepening my brand, or rather seek to expand and scale through setting up a team?

One Man Show
One Man Show or Team Show?

It is true that I could surf on my network and just expand my own expertise into a more and more profitable enterprise. In the short term it could be more profitable. Yet it is not what I am seeking.

Of course the answer to this question is biased in my case because from the beginning I had planned to involve other people. Still, it is true that expanding my company into a team introduces additional complexity. I now fully understand authors such as Alan Weiss that strongly recommend one-man shows for consulting companies and demonstrate through their own example how they can build such a setup to be profitable and eminently controllable.

Yet I find that there is also a lot of fun in developing a company by involving other people and scaling its impact through other contributors. Having people to discuss with, to work with, to confront difficulties with, is an unappreciated value that really changes the life of the entrepreneur. Yes, of course it involves more complexity and time to organize and manage a team. This time and energy is amply rewarded by the insights and the reach that is developed accordingly.

Not to mention that clients expect often consultant shops to be able to show a team with diverse and complementary skills and talents, that are able to tackle more complex and ambitious projects.

Without doubt, I can confirm that the way to go is to develop a team and expand by involving people. The right people of course, that are carefully selected to join the bus. But that’s much more fun than staying as a one-man show. And in the spirit of the Fourth Revolution, everything is in the team!

A first partner has joined and I hope more will come. I’ll share the learning in future posts!

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How more constraints force us to create better solutions

“In the field of design, there is the belief that with more constraints, better solutions are revealed” – John Maeda in “The laws of simplicity”

Would that also be true in real life?

Would more constraints force us to find better solutions because it would force us out of our comfort zone – out of the easy solutions? At what stage are there too many constraints to impede any meaningful creation?

Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona
Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona (Arizona) – a magnificent example of inspired design in a constrained setting

I certainly do admit that highly constrained situations do force to think creatively and find solutions that are hidden at first. The only condition is to still feel empowered in spite of the apparent obstacles.

How can we continue to feel empowered and inspired when the situations seems immovable? Personally beyond a certain difficulty I often feel more empowered than dis-empowered by the challenge. An other way is to be motivated by the desire to achieve the goal that requires this creation. Your sense of purpose will make you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Now – are the solutions created by us or revealed to us? Isn’t it the same at the end?

Yes, certainly more constraints will make us all find better solutions. It’s a challenge, it’s a chance, we need to grab it. Now.

 

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Transform uncertainty and fear into fuel for creation

“Creators train themselves to transform uncertainty, fear, and doubt into fuel for creation”

This is a quote from ‘Uncertainty‘, a book by Jonathan Fields, which resonates deeply with me.

Firm steps into uncertainty
Are you ready to step into uncertainty?

I hate to face uncertainty. I’d like my life to be organized and predictable for the next few months, years.

I hate having a predictable life. Much too boring. So challenging!

I am stressed and fearful sometimes. Quite often actually since I started my own company.  Some days it gets the better of me and I avoid the issue. Some days it pushes me forward into action.

So what? I progressively learn to accept uncertainty and fear and how it opens opportunities. I still have a long way to go to welcome, to grab these feelings and use them as a source of energy. Still I am on my way, and there are times where I experience uncertainty or fear as a real fuel for creativity.

See, avoiding uncertainty and fear was the mindset of the Industrial Age. Welcoming uncertainty and fear as a transformational force will be the mindset of the Collaborative Age. We need to learn that because it will be what makes us successful.

And you? I’d like to hear about your experience in the comments!

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The essence of entrepreneurship is about making meaning

“The essence of entrepreneurship is about making meaning“. This  statement is by Guy Kawasaki, a well-known entrepreneur and venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley. According to him, the companies that really make a difference are those that aim to change the world. – and are those that also make money.

Here is a neat 2 mins video by Guy Kawasaki on this topic

(here is the link if you can’t see it above)

From my short experience as an entrepreneur, it is perfectly true that the intent to change the world is a great motivator that allows to overcome all sorts of difficult moments.

Many people think they can’t change the world. That’s wrong. We all can change a chunk of it. Smaller or larger. When do you start changing the world?

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