Entrepreneurship 101

As my regular followers know, I spent several years directing a technology entrepreneurship institute, helping tech entrepreneurs (or hopeful novices) turn their ideas and innovations into clear business plans.  One of the challenges my clients faced was the broad variety of “other” things they had to do that they never signed up for when deciding to pursue entrepreneurship.  Everything from deciding on copyright and patent issues to chasing down a reluctant client who was late on their bill.  As one of the services I offered, I had a roster of trusted 3^rd party providers who agreed to provide their services to the Center’s clients at a discount.  We were a not for profit and the clients were definitely pre-profit.  The vendors saw building up Florida’s entrepreneurial talent as a great cause (and maybe a source of higher margin business down the road). 

Now that I am a lone wolf entrepreneur of my own, I am facing many of these same challenges.  Just yesterday, I needed to convert video files from a proprietary format to something I could edit – and I am no tech media expert.  I also needed to make a very attractive, convincing, and technically accurate presentation – and my visual design skills are even less than my technology skills.  Just a few minutes later, I needed to change a text document in ways that were not complicated, but were very time consuming – I had no trouble doing this one myself, but it would have been a much better use of time to hire someone at minimum wage who could have done the job just as well.  And that example above of chasing down a late bill unfortunately was taken right out of my afternoon.    

I got into this gig because I really love designing engaging user experiences for companies, not-for-profits, government agencies, and anyone else who has a good story to tell.  I also love working with motivated entrepreneurs to help them develop their ideas and business plans.  But how many hours a day am I actually doing these things?  Two (out of a ten hour workday)? 

Anyone have any solutions for how to spend more time doing the fun stuff? 

Customization gone too far?

The customization craze has gone too far.   Here are two examples:

A sushi shop in Japan can laser cut patterns into the seawood wrap on its nori.  Then there is a company in Seattle that makes an espresso machine that can write messages in edible ink on top of the foam.   

OK, maybe these are cute.  But if you think about what these two companies could have developed for that same investment of time and money . .  I just think that there have to be some better opportunities out there.

What do you think?  Obviously, the proverbial "cure for cancer" would be better.  But do you think it is a no-brainer that something better could have been done in these two cases?  Or are you happy that they took the time to develop these two ideas?

Thought Leaders In Action

I spent the weekend with the Executive Council of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.  I am completed a three year term on the EC in October.  We spent the weekend discussing a variety of topics, but the most important ones revolved around the long term health of the discipline.  If you are not familiar with HFES, it is the professional society for practitioners, researchers, and innovators who are interested in the interaction of people, technology, and organizations.  Experts in transportation, government, retail, manufacturing, aerospace, military, education, health care, and many other domains practice the magical arts of HF/E.  

You might think that any discipline dedicated to improving the heart and soul of such important aspects of our lives would be in a great position.  But our concern is that the disciplines of HF/E doesn’t have official certification requirements like they do in law or medicine.  Even though it requires a significant amount of education and experience to do human factors well, there is no law requiring it.  So there are people with “human factors,” “user interface design,” or other buzzword on their resume who are not qualified to do what they are doing.   It is amazing how different the results are if you do a side by side comparison of a project done by a qualified HF professional compared to a poser. We half-jokingly discuss organizing smack-down competitions in the reality TV style to demonstrate these differences.   But for now, it is a constant struggle.  Personally, it is great because it keeps my consulting practice in business.  But I wouldn’t be on this Board if I was in it just for the money. The health of the discipline is just too important.

To be honest, the best parts of our Board Meetings are the fun evenings at the bar after a tough day of debating issues back and forth.  That is social networking at its best.  While Facebook and Twitter  are halfway decent as digital substitutes, they still can’t mimic sharing a Harpoon Brewery IPA, aged mozzarella on sesame crackers, and oil roasted root veggies. 

One other quick point.  If you are reading this blog, you know that I am starting to highlight the best thought leaders I can find.  So why would I include this Board in that esteemed company?  In part, it is because the challenges that we are dealing with are similar to the ones facing a variety of professional boards.  I can’t go into all of our agenda in a single post, but we have financial, professional, academic, regulatory, marketing, and many other issues to confront.  We have a Board of volunteer professionals who ran for office despite having full time jobs elsewhere and who are forced to give up what little time they have for family and friends to volunteer.  It is a tough combination, but it is the best way to recruit the best and brightest in the field.  

 So we meet a couple of times of year for just a few days at a time and try to solve the challenges of an entire profession. We have a wonderful and dedicated full time staff, but it is a barebones crew who also have to work long and intense hours.   The only way we can be even halfway successful is to have real thought leaders on the Board.  Luckily, we do!

Are social media adding or subtracting from true social happiness?

Thanks to Elisha Goldstein for making some good points on this topic.  This post is based on my take on his ideas. 

I think his best point is that social media are not good or bad in and of themselves.  It is how we use them. Facebook doesn't kill social happiness, people kill social happiness (don't blame him - my corny joke). 

His other great point is that just like guns are dangerous and need to have some safety devices (like safety locks) to be an acceptable product, social media have some inherent dangers as well.  The problem with social media is that the dangers are less open and obvious than with guns.

It is very true that we have the ability to shut off Facebook/Twitter/et al when we need to get some work done.  It seems obvious that this should be easy.  There is a clear 'x' in the top right of our window that we all know how to click on.

But knowing how is not the same as being able to do it.  Cocaine has chemical effects that release endorphins, rewire the brain, and create a self-sustaining addiction.  Recent research in neuroscience finds that there are aspects of social networking that also have this effect.  Elisha says that as a culture we are not mature enough to handle this risk.  I am not sure mature is the right word, but the idea is spot on.

Experts design TV shows and ads with just the right camera angle shifts, color contrasts, volume changes, and messages to be compelling to our pre-conscious ("ACT NOW!! Limited Time Only! Just a few left !!" gets the prehistoric, resource-poor hunter gathered all worked up).

Social media have many of the same effects.  They are short, come at frequent but irregular intervals, have lots of variety, often involve people we value (social or work or shopping) and that notification beep is just so enticing. 

They are powerful and useful enough that eliminating the tools or locking them away until later is not the best solution.  Elisha's last point is better.  He says that we can use skills such as 'mindfulness' to overcome the hazards of social media while still taking advantage of their benefits. 

We all have the power inside of us.

Flash shop

Have you heard about the flash shop (also called the cash mob)?  It is a cross between a flash mob and a social coupon (Groupon).  A bunch of people all show up at once at a store and get a discount.  You might think it was sponsored by the company (like Groupon is) and there probably are some of these.  But the person who (claims to have) invented it says he picked a local store he liked.  Partly just for fun, partly because he is a “shop local” guy, and in part because he likes the store (it was a bakery).  He sent the invite around to his Facebook friends and Twitter followers and they negotiated the discount with the store owner in real time when they all showed up.  They bought stuff that was already on the shelf, so it was smoother than a Groupon for the store. 

Is this a better user experience?  More user-friendly?  Better business?  There is a lot to think about if you want to do something this as new sustainable business model.

Predicting v forecasting

I heard an interesting hypothesis yesterday.  If you had access to precise data on everything that has ever happened before, you would be able to predict the future.  The short term future would be almost perfect prediction.  Because of stochastic uncertainty, the distant future would be harder, but still a lot better than it is now.  So who needs omniscience if we had good big data and good analytics behind it.

This has a lot of truth behind it, but I would like to restate it by switching two critical words.  I think you could "forecast" the future if you had access to precise "information" on everything that has ever happened. 

The difference is subtle but important.

Data: the high temperature in Boston on June 3, 1926 was 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

Info: the high temperature in Boston on June 3, 1926 was ranged from 69 in the north of the city to 73 in the west of the city.  This was 3 degrees above the average for the month and 4 degrees above the average for the other Junes in the 1920s.

Prediction: based on all of the past temperature data and accurate weather models, it will be 75 degrees on June 3, 2012.

Forecast: based on all of the past temperature data and accurate weather models, there is a 92% chance that it will be 75 degrees on June 3, 2012, with a 99% confidence interval from 72 to 79 degrees.

Why does this matter?  Well, I see pundits in all walks of life (particularly in politics but also in economics, weather, space science and other more quantitative domains) who make their claims as precise predictions when they could not possibly, even with perfect data, be so confident.  The public would be so much better served if we could acknowledge our uncertainty.

The problem is that the general public does not understand concepts like confidence intervals.  Not their fault - public schools don't teach them.  So we need either to change public school curricula (which I doubt - just look at the debates over intelligent design) or to develop a user friendly language to communicate uncertainty.

The greater challenge is that it would have to be short enough to fit in a tweet somehow because when people share the information with each other, that is a common path it will take.

Any ideas?

Putting free will aside

I am not sure how thrilled I am to be basing this post on an insight I got from Sam Harris, but it is one of the best analogies for free will I have seen.  This is based on a recent post on his blog, although taken in a different direction (as I am sure you knew I would).   When we watch movies, we have the illusion that the image on the screen is continuous. Deep down, most of us know that it is really 60 static frames per second.  But concentrating on that would ruin the movie.  Putting the knowledge aside to improve life experience is OK.

We can think of free will the same way.  Perhaps neuroscience can demonstrate that every decision we make is a combination of past experience hard coded into our neurons, culture that is hard coded the same way, and genetics that started out hard coded - with just a bit of stochastic randomness thrown in.  But behavioral science demonstrates that concentrating on this leads us to less ethical and less dedicated behavior.  So human experience is improved by putting the knowledge about free will aside and acting as if we had the full control of our will that our perceptual experience tells us. 

And that’s OK.