MissingMethod

Tough Love for businesses that want to love design, from a Fast Company article by Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management:

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the worlds of business-as-usual and business-by-design is the way each side actually thinks. In traditional organizations, the dominant forms of logic are inductive (demonstrating through observation that something actually works) and deductive (reasoning from a set of existing principles to prove that something must be).

…

Corporate folks typically believe they can “prove” the future by applying rigorous inductive and deductive logic to the present.

…

Designers use inductive and deductive reasoning as well, but they also rely on a third type: abductive reasoning, the logic of what might be. A.G. Lafley, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, understands the need to braid all three forms of creative thinking. While he is a true data hound, Lafley also pores over anecdotal research and allows customer comments to influence him even if they are not rigorously collected or statistically significant.

via MetaCool

Modern wood-pulp papermaking methods were first developed in China around the first century (105 AD), but it wasn’t until 1391 that Chinese emperors began ordering 3×5 foot squares of the stuff for use in the bathroom. Why did it take a thousand years for people to realize wiping with paper was better than the alternatives (leaves, shells, corn cobs, etc.)?

Understanding simple connections between problems and their solutions is hard. It’s easier to justify why existing methods (i.e. corn cobs) are good enough. What can do to help yourself discover simpler solutions to problems?

Ask stupid questions.
Stupid questions are the hardest to answer. They’ll get you thinking about problems from a new perspective and allow you to be skeptical about the established thinking on a topic. Example: Einstein started his work on relativity by imagining what things would look like if he traveled on a beam of light.

Try new tools.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is Ruby on Rails, everything looks like a Ruby on Rails project. Get a new hammer: Flash, OpenLaszlo, Processing, Camping are just a few examples.

Be positive.
Shooting down ideas is easy but wasteful. It’ll kill your creativity, especially if you’re working with a team. Learn to say yes more. Saying yes doesn’t mean “Yes, this is how we’ll solve the problem”, it just means you’re accepting the potential of the idea to lead to an eventual solution. Check out John Sweeny’s Innovation at the Speed of Laughter for more on this (Sweeny’s presentation video here).

Solve different problems.
The creative process often leads to a solution for a problem you weren’t even concerned with. So what? Be an equal opportunity problem-solver.

Be Persitent.
Again, Einstein says: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

When in doubt, start.
Doing is better than not doing. Don’t be afraid to just start.

Sneakerplay is a “sneaker-based social network which has been in private beta for the past few months” and just opened up. According to Mashable.com it’s “an incredibly simple network that lets you create a profile, add pictures of sneakers and put two pics head to head using the “battle” feature.” Better still, they managed to get a promotional deal with Nike Air.

Things that are funny about this to me:

1. We built practically the same thing with Sneakology.
2. We built it in 24 hours, as part of the RailsDay2006 competition (which, by the way, still hasn’t announced winners).
3. We didn’t get a deal with Nike.

Anyway, props to Robleh, Mohamed and Rob (the developers) for executing on a nice idea and getting the promotional buy in from a major player.  When we developed Sneakology, it was  mostly for fun, and  we didn’t imagine it had much business potential. I’m glad to see we may have been mistaken.

The scary thing about being an entrepreneur right now is that you risk being swallowed by all the hype. For a primer on what’s wrong with Web 2.0, check out Zeldman’s article, Web 3.0, or Russle Beatie’s WTF 2.0.

There’s so much excitement (much of it legitimate) about new technologies (like Rails), new ways of using old technologies (AJAX), and new communications vehicles (MySpace, blogs, RSS, podcasts, etc.), that’s it’s easy to think that any idea can be successful. But’s that wrong.

The fundementals of business haven’t changed. You still have to sell something people want to buy. People don’t buy Ruby on Rails or AJAX or podcasting. Russle said it best:

Break it down - it seems pretty simple. You create a product or service with some inherent value, and then make money from that value and if the money you earn is more than it took you to produce that value, you’ve got a business.

Matt Mower was kind enough to tease out a reasonable top ten list out of this post on suggestions for not being a dot-bomb 2.0:

1. Have a revenue model
2. Be a complete business not a feature
3. Affect real people not just bloggers
4. Get a real memorable name
5. Don’t intertwine your fate with Web2.0
6. Get honest feedback
7. Make sure your revolution really is coming
8. Make sure your market can support you
9. Don’t expect to be (or be bought by) Google
10. Have fun

I agree with these for the most part, although I’m not sure about the order. I’d put #10, “Have fun” much higher on the list; having fun makes everything else easier.

One point that’s missing is “Build something people will pay for”. Maybe it’s implied in #1, but I worry that a lot of people set out to build something they think people will want, rather than figuring out what the market needs first and then building that. If you’re building a product for yourself first and others second (i.e. 37signals’ Basecamp or my own Feedmarker), that’s fine, because you already know what the customer wants. But if not, you need to validate that your idea fills a market need.

Another one I would have liked to see on there is “Try building something that doesn’t depend on the internet”. Maybe this belongs after #3 (affect real people). It’s a big world out there, and most of it still happens off-line. I know it sounds counterintuitive these days, but I think there are still a lot of great ways to make money that aren’t based online. Of course most business will have (or should have) and online component. But I’d like to hear more about the ones that work in the “old world”.

You know when you’re walking to work and your banana starts getting tossed around in your pants? Then when you take a look, it’s all bruised up and nasty? Well, now there’s a solution:

OK, so it’s got an unfortunately evocative shape, and it lends itself to lewd comparisons, but the Banana Guard is a really cool, useful solution to a real problem (at least for me). I bike to work every day, and often by the time I get there, my bananas are all bruised up and unappealing (sorry for the pun).

The Banana Guard solves that by protecting the fruit in a strong rubbery casing that is even perforated for ventilation. It’s a perfect example of a simple product solving an annoying problem and bringing value to the buyer.

It’s just $9.95 for a single guard, or $35 for a 5-pack.

These days, more and more new computers are shipping with built in webcams and microphones. That means new business opportunities are opening up around letting people create content with their computer over the web. Odeo and its child venture/experiment, Hellodeo are two of these; Odeo lets you record audio through your built in mic and save it to the web, Hellodeo does the same with video.

Most people think that to be able to do something like this, you need to purchase Adobe/Macromedia’s Flash Media Server, which is so expensive they don’t even list the price on the site (think thousands of dollars).
Red5 is an open source Flash server. It’s the open source counterpart to Flash Media Server, and it can do a lot of the same things, for free! With Red5, you can accomplish the kinds of advanced user interaction you never thought were within your reach:

• Real-time Multi-player gaming
  • No more turn based gaming for Flash
  • Say goodbye to polling a server for updates
• Multi-user video chat
• Stream Music/Audio
  • Ondemand entertainment
• Stream video
  • Ondemand education
  • Ondemand entertainment
• Broacast Live Streams to anyone with a flash client
  • Live Concerts
  • Online conferences
  • Exranet company meetings
  • Screensharing / whiteboard applications
• Record Video
  • Online Resume’s for job seekers
  • Online tutorials
  • Online Lectures
• Record Audio
  • Online music colaboration

Getting started requires a little work (you’ll have to install and setup the server on your machine). But once it’s running, you can try out the packaged examples for a taste of what’s possible.

If you’re just itching for the next big Web 2.0 idea to build, start thinking about user-generated, real-time, collaborative audio and video. Red5 makes it possible.

How many ways can you write the letter ‘M’? I can do about six (most are illegible, and I don’t count cursive, because I can barely write my name in cursive). But this post by Rabble (of Odeo fame) got me thinking; how many ways can you do a logo based off of the same letter? The MetroBits site has gone a pretty long way toward answering that question, check out this page:

Often, when I talk to people about new ideas (for businesses, applications, etc.) the common reaction is “Oh, that’s been done before.” I think this page of logos is a good example of why I disagree with that mindset. Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done again, or done again better. That’s the nature of evolution and innovation; the same processes get repeated over and over again, improving slightly each time, until the final result is much different than the starting point.

So if you’re thinking about building something, don’t let the fact that someone else has done it before discourage you. It should just motivate you to do it better.

Sneakology Updates

September 6th, 2006 / Ruby on Rails, Web2.0, Entrepreneurship / No comments

Just wanted to point out that I’ve made a few updates to Sneakology.com, the sneaker-afficionado social-networking site I helped build for RailsDay. I tweaked some of the copy and added a tips section that appears when you log in, all in hopes of lowering the initial barrier to entry and making the site a little more intuitive. Check it out and let me know what you think!

MinneDemo WrapUp

September 6th, 2006 / Ruby on Rails, Web2.0, Entrepreneurship / No comments

Last night’s first-ever was a great opportunity for business-owners, entrepreneurs, and developers to get together and share ideas. Organized by Dan Grigsby, and Luke Francl, the event drew attracted a diverse group of about 90 people who came to watch the six demos. A big thanks goes out to sponsors New Counsel, Ventera, and Slantwise Design for making the even possible.

The presenters were:

• Robert Metcalf of FlySpy.com, who showed us how visualizing the airfare marketplace can help people make better decisions about where and when to travel (I plan on using it to find a better airfare for my trip to RubyConf).
• JRuby’s Charlie Nutter, who (as always) wowed everyone with his guru-like understanding of how Ruby works.
• Jon Dahl, who talked about SaySwap, a video-game sharing site built in Ruby on Rails built by his company, Slantwise Design.
• Aaron Fulkerson of MindTouch talked about DekiWiki and Dream (sorry, I missed most of this one, anyone want to fill me in?).
• Garrick Van Buren showed off Feedseeder, a sweet-looking blog aggregator that tries to fix what a lot of other readers have gotten wrong. Best of all, Garrick told me he was able to learn a few things from looking at the Feedmarker source code! Go open source!
• Brian Huff demoed Bookmarkit.org, a free service that allows you to submit a bookmark to multiple social bookmarking sites with the greatest of ease.

I had the good-fortune of being asked to greet people at the door, so I got to meet more interesting peoplel than I’m capable of remembering (sadly). But it was definitely encouraging to see so many other entrepreneurial people gathered in one place; makes you want to get out there and do something!

Poor, poor mediocrity…

May 25th, 2006 / Ruby on Rails, Usability, Entrepreneurship / No comments

Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, here’s the 37signals’ Web site, um, way back in November, 1999:

I love most of the copy, although I can’t imagine many people would have time to read through it. And the dots are a little confusing. But it’s kind of interesting to watch the site’s progression over the years.

It’s also nice to note that a lot of this “Getting Real”, “Less is More/Less/Everything” stuff has been a long time coming: here, here, here and here.

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