I recently did an in depth interview with Jen Berkley Jackson of The Insight Advantage on primary research tools. Jen works with companies to help them make sure that they understand their customers better than any competitor or potential competitor. Her firm performs primary research for clients, using a variety of tools to gather information …
Primary Research Tools: Q&A With Jen Berkley Jackson Read More »
Ash Maurya rebooted his blog as “The Space Between“–experimental format where he is exploring the space between ideas–and has offered a number of short reflective posts. Here are excerpts from three where he explores the value of planning and reflection, and the need to prioritize learning over the illusion of progress.
Larry Smith is an Economics Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo who writes and lectures on Entrepreneurship, innovation, and Technology markets. What follows is part of a conversation he had with Alan Quarry in the AQ’s Blog & Grill series of interviews with entrepreneurs. His key point, that he makes in a somewhat cranky fashion, is that technology …
What seems natural, artificial, or supernatural is a function of familiarity. Nature is the background or context for innovation. The challenge is that we live in a world and culture formed by millennia of innovation so that some incredibly advanced technologies seem natural. The difference between technology and magic is not that one works more …
I got to know Edith Harbaugh (@edith_h) when she was moderating the Lean Startup Circle Group and published two guest blog posts by her: “It’s Your Execution, Not Your Idea” and “Managing Email Conversations With Customers.” I also invited her to take part in a webinar on Innovator’s DNA: Experimenting Skill. During the roundtable conversation …
Patrick Brady writes at “Red Kite Prayer” on cycling and related topics. His blog took a very personal turn in February of 2013 with a post entitled “Any Normal Person.” In reading the series I was reminded of a remark Irwin Federman made to MMI employees when were using four day work weeks (actually five …
Michael Fern, Edith Harbaugh, Steve Hogan, and Sean Murphy discuss the Innovator’s DNA experimenting skill.
Successful entrepreneurs are fueled by a passion to change the world tempered by prudent risk taking. Many risks have to be managed on an ongoing basis.
I found Janet Iwasa‘s Ted Talk on “how animations can help scientists test a hypothesis” to be extremely thought provoking. It’s worth considering how to animate your hypothesis to explore it’s viability and implications.
Things I have learned from my children: “fall down seven times, stand up eight”, athletic ability flows from practice, and patience.
SKMurphy’s Startup Stages: Idea, Open for Business, Early Customers, Finding Your Niche, and Scaling Up also map to Survive, Explore, Focus, Refine, and Grow.
Product-market fit is not a ratchet: competitive response, new entrants, changes in technology and customer preference require ongoing customer development. You will need to continue to do customer development–and customer discovery for that matter–even after you have a first prototype, an MVP, early customers, and an established niche. Markets and competitors don’t stand still, no …
Q: We Already Have a Prototype, Can We Still Do Customer Development? Read More »
I believe that Patrick Steyaert’s Discovery Kanban offers a critical perspective on how large organizations can foster the proliferation of lean innovation methods beyond isolated spike efforts or innovation colonies. I think Patrick Steyaert has come up with an approach that builds on what we have learned from customer development and Lean Startup and offers an …
Discovery Kanban Allows Firms to Balance Delivery and Discovery Read More »
While there are many challenges to master in building a new business, technology entrepreneurs have to balance three primary aspects: Team: can you assemble the talent required and keep them together and moving forward? Technology development: can you build a working product? Customer development: can you solve a problem that people will pay for?
What follows is a sequence of E-mails with an entrepreneur bootstrapping an EdTech startup around the challenges of doing customer interviews that have been recast as a conversation, with the original content edited for length and clarity. Entrepreneur (E): I am working with a couple of friends–we all have day jobs–on an idea for helping …
A Conversation With A Bootstrapping EdTech Startup On Customer Interviews Read More »
Distinguish between experiments and commitments with customers. Share prototypes and ask for feedback but keep your promises. The easiest way to keep a promise is not to make one, so take great care in what you sign up for.
Successful innovation results when entrepreneurs manage their own shortcomings, find a problem they care about, and approach it from different angles with small safe-to-fail experiments. Dave Snowden on Culture and Innovation Dave Snowden has a thought provoking post on Culture and Innovation where he identified three necessary, but not sufficient conditions for innovation to take …
Innovation Needs Starvation, Pressure, and a New Perspective Read More »
High availability is often expressed as “nines”, or the percentage of availability in a year. Six nines is 99.9999% uptime or no more than 31.5 seconds of downtime in a year.
