Though I am only half way through, I can honestly say it has been one of the best things I have done for my creative journey. When I decided to finally step in and take the challenge, I knew it would be a commitment. And that it would pay back in some form. I just didn’t realize how much I would learn and benefit from it. With that, here is what I have learned about creativity and myself through my 365 photo project.

Creativity is a commitment

Regardless if you have natural talents or not, creativity requires dedication and time. You need to manage your creative activities as a project, and you need to make time for them within your busy day, from taking pictures to evaluating, processing, sharing and learning from them. And, you need to manage and organize your workflow, so that you are spending less time on the mundane and more time on your creativity.

Creativity is a process

Your output is what you share with others, but creativity is a process. It starts with seeing what is ordinary in a new light, and blossoms through your imagination, experience and perspectives. It continues by seizing, shaping and sharing that vision with others, in order to strengthen the learning cycle. The better you understand that process and workflow, nurturing and reinforcing it, the more successful you will be at growing and deepening it.

Creativity is about the mastery of your tools

Yes, creativity is learning to see and capture beyond the ordinary. But, it is also about learning and understanding how best to use the medium and tools that are available to you. To be effective, you need to have mastery of your tools: understand their interactions and limitations within your environment that will enable you to express your vision fully.

Creativity is about understanding self better

In the process of learning about digital photography, I have read several books that emphasized the importance of having a vision. How does vision apply to becoming a better photographer??!! Isn’t it just about seeing and clicking?! The reality is that our creativity comes from our insights and perspectives that are unique to us. Knowingly or unknowingly, we apply a filter to what we see. And, the better we understand ourselves, the better we can seize and share that unique voice and vision with others.

You may wonder what my vision is… For me, I realized my voice and vision boils down to contrasts. I love exploring the contrast in light, in life, in technology, and I plan to bring out more of that my writing as well.

Creativity is about details

It starts with noticing what is different and moves to capture its uniqueness. This process is all about deciding what (and how) to include, exclude, emphasize, so that you can highlight the mood and evoke emotions in the story you are sharing. Details matter, and how you exploit those details matter even more.

Creativity is a lonely process

Don’t get me wrong.. I have many supporters, especially my family. They not only remind me about my picture of the day, but are willing participants when I need a last minute photo idea, model, or just by being my pod-boy

But, in the end, I am the one with the camera and the vision. Yes, I share what I capture on flickr. But, when a tree falls alone in a forest, does it make a sound? Yes, I do get excited when my view count increases; trust me, I am a metric-oholic… My point is, unless you are doing this for yourself, you will not have the motivation to keep going. Remember, many exceptional and famous artists died poor.

Creativity requires inspiration

I lost count on the number of photo books I have borrowed from our local library, or the blog posts I have read on photography. Each one gives me yet another insight, from deepening my understanding and knowledge to inspiring me try and see things differently. In order to keep nourishing your creative juices, you need to identify and bring in new inspirations.

Creativity is diverse

I may be focusing on my photography, but in the past 6 months, I have also been spending more time reading about art history, perception, design, semiotics and more. Creativity is a multi-disciplinary process. All these filter into what I see and how I express my vision.

Creativity requires the beginner mind

It requires one to willingly see things in a different perspective and ask: what else do I see here? It is not just an old, sagging barn, but an exploration of rusty locks, the feelings it reflects and more…

Creativity is about trial and error

Some shots I still can’t get; but, eventually will.. With each click of the shutter, I get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. This process teaches me about the importance of letting go. Yeah, I might have really worked hard on that shot, but if it is not capturing my vision, I am not afraid to trash it.

Creativity can fuel and can drain

There are days that I just don’t feel like pulling my camera out… And that is ok. Not everything I do has to be creatively done. When I walked through Seattle Art Museum’s Picasso exhibit, I was amazed at how Picasso kept working his themes using different materials and styles. It is all a process that feeds into the creative habit.

Creativity is fun

Creativity is a challenge and it is challenging. It is about constantly trying, developing and learning. It is about you, and what you are interested in. It is one place where you can be selfish freely!

Will I do another 365? Very likely.. But, I will be more purposeful on the next one… In another 6 months, once I am done, I plan to revisit these learnings.

Recently I had the pleasure to attend Deploy 2010 hosted by Seattle 2.0, and I watched several startup pitches. I know there are millions of ‘how to pitch’ articles out there, but it prompted me to revisit and update my previous article on putting together a winning startup pitch.

My previous article, Lights, Camera, Action!, highlighted what to present and communicate if you were given 15+ minutes for your product and technology. In contrast, Deploy pitches were about 3 minutes, in front of the entire audience. In other words, they are intense. How do you send out a clear signal, when the noise level is high in such environments? That is the focus of this article.

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
—Mark Twain

As Mark Twain’s quote captures, the less time you have to deliver your message, the more time you need to invest in your pitch. It is difficult to use just a few words to boil down the essence of your idea… So, where do you start when you are so short in time!? For that, I like to reflect on Chris Orwig’s thoughts on poetry and photography from Visual Poetry: A Creative Guide for Making Engaging Digital Photographs.

“What the novelist says in 20,000 words, the poet says in 20. And, after reading a poem we don’t just have more information, we have more experience. A good poem isn’t about reductionism. It is about reducing, simplifying, and deepening. A poem always gives more. And poems are spare. With so little space, they require a distillation, which concentrates and intensifies their meaning and effect. Like evaporating seawater, where only the salt remains, those few lines communicate more.”
—Chris Orwig

Distill your poetry

With the frame of mind of a poet, you need to distill your startup pitch and demo to:

1. create awareness;
2. intensify meaning;
3. spawn engagement;
4. provoke action.

Just like a spiral staircase, you need to build on each separately, while weaving their effects jointly. To do that, you need to pull together pieces of your product; your vision; what is here today while hinting at future possibilities; what is it that you do that no one else does; and who will benefit from all this hard work and how.

Of course, this all depends on the action you want to provoke. If your focus is on creating partnerships, you need to twist your story a bit. You need to do all that, but also add the tangent as to why the potential partner would want to be hitched to this brand new bandwagon.

And, unlike the line from Jerry Maguire: You had me at “hello!”, it is way too easy to loose your audience in just a few minutes. Remember, you don’t have the luxury of time to win them back. Once you’ve lost their attention, that is it… No soup for you! Next!

Create a flow

To create and maintain an engaged audience, you need to have a steady flow through your presentation. As a poet, at each step, as you reduce and simplify your message, take the opportunity to go back and deepen your audience connection using your product features, competitive differentiation, customer stories and such. Keep working to close the circle between awareness to action, while leaving room for curiosity and interest with your audience. If nothing else, make sure your energy, excitement and passion is contagious!

Your ugly duckling is beautiful

Words such as amazing, gorgeous, beautiful are not the exclusive sayings of Steve Jobs about Apple products. After working so hard on your product, why not take the time and share how amazing it is! Even the small things, such as readability of fonts and balance of colors can make a difference to your audience. Remember, first impressions do count!

Streamline your product demo and weave it together with your pitch. Show the most exciting features of your product that you want to leave your audience with, which are also aligned with the action you want to generate. It is important to leave something to the imagination. Practice until you release the poet in you, so much so that when something goes wrong (and it will), you won’t lose a beat and your audience will stay with you.

Don’t ramble, don’t use buzz words, but be human and humorous. Realize that, without sufficient background as a foundation, your product will not make sense. So, keep weaving the concept together, and layer it until it is simply clear.

And, if you want to stand out from the crowd…

Understand your audience, and use whatever you can to keep their attention. Make sure to have your female counterpart present at the pitch, and include her in your presentation. That is, unless you are pitching at Women 2.0…

Rethinking Design Thinking – Paul Pangaro – PICNIC ’10 from PICNIC Festival on Vimeo.

Paul walks through the history of design thinking and design thinking process, as he questions if it is enough to solve today’s wicked problems. He highlights that, design thinking, as defined today, doesn’t allow us to judge what is better, and proposes using human effort and design process for measurement.

As he rethinks the design thinking, he offers design as conversation as its evolution: process of design as conversation rather than thinking. In return, he hopes, it will create a repeatable, transparent, directed and measurable results.

Going back to my argument for better thinking, I can’t say design as conversation is really that much better, clearer or any more valid than design thinking is. I felt, some of his arguments around how design thinking is lacking an engineering process is knit picking. I believe, this is more of the case, because the design thinking advocates have been spending more time selling the idea, than making it an engineering process. But, is it really meant to have an engineering vigor?!

No doubt conversations are a must in design, but also in any act of creation and change. Innovation is a definite change, and it emerges with its own language. And, as my son suggested, we might have peace IF the words really had one and only one meaning, with no concern for misunderstandings. Yes, we do need conversations, but more importantly, design conversations in order to take a step towards addressing our most wicked problems.

Let me be honest… This post was inspired by my quest to better understand design thinking: what it is, how it is different, why it matters, and most importantly how is it going to save us all!? I don’t believe in silver bullets, and question deeply when a new buzzword starts floating around. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized my question is irrelevant — design thinking merely represents another way of looking at the world, and I should add it to my toolkit. Here is an old Zen story to hammer my point.

A wise farmer’s livelihood depended on his horse. But, one day his horse ran away. His neighbors said “Oh, how bad for you!”. The farmer responded,  ”What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?” A few days later, his horse returned with a herd of wild horses. Of course, the neighbors were the first to congratulate his good fortune. Again the farmer responded, “What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?” But then, the farmer’s only son broke his leg while taming one of the wild horses. And again, the farmer responded to his concerned neighbors with, “What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?” When the army came through the village conscripting all the young men, neighbors congratulated the farmer that his only son was spared. And again, the farmer said, “What’s good… What’s bad… Who knows?”

What matters is that we live in a complex world, where everything is interconnected, in ways we don’t understand. And, we continuously need to look for ways to improve and expand our approach to problem solving, and add them to our toolkit for big picture thinking. From the context of technology and product management, this article will highlight a small subset of better thinking methodologies that I utilize often and would like to learn more about.

There is so much to ‘thinking’ that just thinking about it can be overwhelming — to see what I mean, spend some time browsing Wikipedia’s Portal:Thinking. Individually, each of these tools adds diversity and unique perspectives to my thinking; collectively they make me a better thinker. I look forward to hearing about your processes and insights on our journey towards better thinking. For a list of my favorite resources on becoming a better thinker, check out my bookshelf.

“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within our range of visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.” — Henry Thoreau

Critical and Creative Thinking

Critical and creative thinking are the must have foundation for better thinking. They are two sides of the same coin. The problem solving process goes something like this:

Critical thinking, the left-brain function that emphasizes logical thinking and reasoning, is all about objectively assessing, judging and evaluating. Creative thinking, right-brain function, targets originality and curiosity to discover hidden connections and generate new ideas. With that, we not only produce unique ideas and connections, but also apply rigor and discipline to our thought processes.

It is also crucial to realize that our thought processes are fallible. We are not only emotional, but our brains work extra-hard to maintain and protect the natural order we come to believe and expect. With that, critical and creative thinking require:

• willingness to step away, question and experiment;
• curiosity to explore possibilities and connections;
• openness to dive into the new, unknown and uncomfortable;
• skills for effective communication and sharing.

Systems Thinking

As our technologies evolve, our behaviors evolve; and as our behaviors evolve, our technologies evolve. Simply, as a closely coupled system, we coevolve. So, as neo-Darwinism highlights, when we change the way we do things, or when a new technology enables activities, the result is a natural selection of new technologies and behaviors which best fit with the change.

Systems thinking acknowledges the fact that we are a complex organism, embedded in systems within systems, with many connections and interaction points. While a few of these interactions and interdependencies we may be able to control, there are many we cannot control, but could still influence. The result is patterns of behavior and structure that are developed through various feedback loops which are inherent in the system. In summary, systems thinking emphasizes that:

• the whole is more than its parts and cannot be deduced from studying its parts alone, much like the story of blind men and the elephant;
• behavior of the system can only be understood in the context of its environment;
• purpose and function of the system is critical to answer the question of why they do what they do, while interconnections in the system and flow of information answer how they accomplish what they do;
• through understanding the interactions, interdependencies, relationships and the system’s purpose, we can influence the system behavior.

Systems thinking is valuable at understanding behaviors, and how change of behaviors would change the performance of the system. This understanding can help us drive change, test how the system would adapt in response to feedback, or what is needed to maintain stability. Given that, our results are only as good as the models we develop, and not surprisingly, our models fall short of representing the real world fully.

Design Thinking

Here is my boiled down definition: applying design principles and methodologies to our thinking. For some, this definition may fall short as design thinking seems to be positioned as the next Holy Grail.

With its origins rooted in design process, design thinking emphasizes human elements: empathy, design for emotion, embracing constraints. As a social and inclusive process, it highlights just enough prototyping for learning, where we pick what we want and need to learn. It also aims for balance through desirability, viability and feasibility.

Design thinking can help strengthen our world model. For insight into real-world challenges and applications, take a listen to TEDxChange: The Future We Make webcast.

Visual Thinking

A big part of being a better thinker is about learning to see and learning to communicate. Isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? We live in a world that is highly visual, where meaning is generated and communicated through signs, symbols and what we choose to share and sometimes not share.

Visual thinking tools push our creative side and enable us to look for unrelated connections, boil down complex ideas to bite-size concepts, connect through storytelling, facilitate learning and imagination. Visual thinking strategies (VTS) are used to improve our critical thinking skills through discussion of visual images to develop thinking skills that use detail in order to enhance understanding. For more on VTS, take a look at their VTS in action videos.

I have been doing a 365 digital photo project on Flickr. It has been a great tool for me, as I dive deep into the technology and science of photography, while I learn first hand about seeing and making meaning. Mind maps are well known for brainstorming, generating and organizing ideas. Along with mind maps, sketching, sketch-notes, storytelling, data visualizations, storyboards, wireframes are tools that are used often in our visual thought processes, and they are great tools to pull together quick prototypes.

Lean Thinking

Inspired by Japanese manufacturing concepts, and agile software process thinking, the basic premise of lean and agile thinking is to maximize value while minimizing waste. At a high level, both look at how to best structure pieces and parts in a way that would deliver rapid value.

In our complex world, agile and lean thinking enables us to understand the system in small steps, build in frequent feedback utilizing lightweight processes to make continuous refinements to our big picture view, and be adaptive as change is inevitable. Whether you have a blank canvas or an existing system to start with, these thinking tools help you focus on what matters.

Last thoughts… Strategic thinking

I would not classify strategic thinking as yet another thinking methodology. To me, mainly used in the context of business, strategic thinking is about applying our best thought processes in order to identify and implement unique opportunities to create value for a specific objective. Again, it is about analyzing/formulating AND implementing/driving change.

McKinsey Quarterly’s “Thinking strategically” article highlighted the following strategic thinking rules:

• Strategic thinking seeks hard, fact-based, logical information.
• Strategic thinking questions everyone’s unquestioned assumptions.
• Strategic thinking is characterized by an all-pervasive unwillingness to expend resources.
• Strategic thinking is usually indirect and unexpected rather than head-on and predictable.

These thinking methodologies that I highlighted, and many others I have not, will help support your journey towards being better strategists. And, I invite you to share your own gems with us.

Just show up

As with anything in life,  showing up is the first step. You need to prioritize and schedule your creative time. This may not seem like an inspiration strategy, but what came first: the chicken or the egg?! With that said, you do want to tune into your natural creative rhythm to avoid swimming against the current. For me, trying to engage in anything before my morning coffee is a futile exercise (i.e., I am not a morning person). However, by mid-afternoon my creativity starts to flow and by early evening I feel intense focus. My challenge is to work my life around my creative rhythm; like weeding the garden, it’s never ending work…..

To discover your natural creative rhythm, you just need to pay attention. Pay attention to when you feel most creative, when ideas are flooding out and when you can tap into that energy with ease. Once you find that rhythm, figure ways to arrange your life around it, however you can. Your creativity and productivity will thank you.

And listen…

Curiosity, observation, reflection, and acceptance are part of the creative process. To inspire your creativity, you need to give it space and time to process itself. Write it, shape it, mold it, but let it germinate itself. My out-of-this-world ideas are not always that hot when I write them down. However, with time, they usually morph into something new, sparking new thoughts and taking new forms. So, listen without judgement, explore without constraints, share without attachment and use your intuition to shape and mold (more on this, see Meet your idea critics.)

Know your Achilles’ heel

Our strengths can also be our greatest weaknesses. In my case, my ability to focus on a specific area to the point of obsessiveness (such as the case of making time for writing) pushes my creativity to the back burner. Recognizing this, I have to consciously make time to show up, to reflect and to explore in order to fuel my creativity. This is a case where it is not the quantity of time, but the quality of time that really matters.

My variety of interests (including design, sustainability, creativity, innovation, technology, startups, digital photography, cooking, Zen Buddhism, travel, music and even some gardening) seeds my ideas from independent and unrelated sources. As I enjoy learning, I get curious about connections and inspired by possibilities. This is why ‘focus’ is my Achilles’ heel; when I focus on results, I loose touch with this exploration cycle that inspires my creativity.

I can’t comment on how to establish the perfect balance in ones life. I think that is very personal. Take work-life balance for example. For some, this means the complete and total separation of work from life. For me, I am most at ease when they freely flow and mix in and out of each other.

Creativity is a state of mind

Each one of us are different in what inspires our creativity and motivates our desire to produce. However, just like a faucet controlling water flow, our surroundings (light, color, sounds, …), our purpose, our boundaries, our own sense of urgency, … can positively or negatively influence the flow of our creative energy. When I want to inspire my creativity, you will find me in open surroundings, with lots of light and warm colors, usually listening to classical music or Last.fm‘s opera radio.

However, I have to develop that mind set, that urge to create, and enable the right environment to maximize my energy flow. It is not about proving if I am creative or not, as we are all creative. But, it is about taking what is locked up in my head, capturing it in a way that is sharable, even if it is just for my own consumption. This process alone, enriches life, adds beauty, clarity and at times simplicity.

Be authentic… Be true to yourself. And trust the process

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.

– Abraham Maslow

Lets get this straight, only thing your creativity wants is for you to be authentic, be true to yourself. It has no judgement, no expectations. It has no preconceived notions of what is good or bad, right or wrong. All these judgements are in your head; you bring them with you to the table when you sit down to create. For you to be inspired, you need to remove these artificial blockages from the system and just trust the creative process. You can’t drive across the city if you are constantly hitting the brakes!

Avoid sensory overload

We live in a world where distractions and interruptions are everywhere . Email, instant messaging, SMS, Facebook, RSS, google, reality shows, YouTube… are all fueling our information addiction. “You got mail.” is the new hit, giving us an instantenous rush, even though we know there are 57 channels (and nothing on.) Worse, this constant context switching is hurting our creativity and productivity. So, for creativity and productivity sake, put on the stop information addiction patch for a set period of time. Set clear boundaries: no browsing, no email, no messaging, no google, … and focus on your creative side. And enjoy the Sounds of Silence.

Build your treasure map

Ok, you are stuck. Now what? How about building your treasure map. In this case, your treasure is your purpose, it is what you want to achieve. The landmarks could be your milestones, and paths reflect where you need to grow and develop. Mind maps are also great tools for capturing your thoughts and ideas creatively. But, if you don’t know where you are, how do you know where you are going? And if you don’t know where you are going, this is a good time to get realigned. In the process of developing your treasure map, you will be inspired.

Don’t be blinded by your habits

Recently we stepped into the GPS age. It is a great device to find locations for soccer fields, coffee shops, and anything else that we may want to know that is around us. However, it can also be limiting, as it results in journeys from point A to point B in the most efficient manner. And in addition to eliminating the discovery of a wonderful point C (by getting lost), GPSs could also cause temporary blindness… Why would I need a GPS to tell me my coffee store is less than half a block right in front of me?! Because we give the GPS our complete focus, disregarding the rest of the journey. And, that is a true story

Our habits can become routine, automatic, and compulsory. So, shake things up a bit. Take a different route, leave the iPod at home during your run, pick up a new book, ask for a job rotation, get to know a new person, … As I am hanging around the university, I am learning from the youngsters how to carry my iPod, how to ignore public service announcements, and how to follow my own rhythm. See what I would be missing if I didn’t shake things up a bit!? And, who knows what that might lead to one day…

Love the process

See yourself as a creative being and enjoy the process. With apologies to Stuart Smalley of Saturday Night Live: “I’m good enough, I’m creative enough, and doggone it, I’m inspired.”

Technorati Tags: creativity, inspiring creativity

“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”

–Buddha

We all have ideas… They come out of nowhere: in the shower, while driving, over coffee, reading newspapers… But, without taking the time to develop your ideas, they are nothing but a thought, a blink in time.

In this blog, I’ll share my 5-step process of taking an idea and transforming it into a business concept blueprint. The goal of this exercise is to engage your thinking muscles. Here is a quick overview of the steps.

1. Dive into your problem space to refine your vision
2. Chisel out your opportunity and state your mission
3. Map out your product/service concept and strategy
4. Explore the profit potential
5. Write down your next steps and action plans

Step 1 – Dive into your problem space to refine your vision

Tim Hurson (Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking) emphasizes the importance of using divergent, creative thinking to make long lists and then using convergent, critical thinking to make choices.

“You have to get the first third ideas out of your head to make room for the second third and third third ideas to come.”
– Tim Hurson, Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking

As Tim points out, pushing for third third ideas help us break out of our learned patterns and explore a new wave of thinking. Using his set of questions, I further explore my problem space and identify potential opportunities.

1. What is the itch? Why change is needed?
2. What is the impact? Why it is important?
3. What is the information? What do I know about the causes and how can I learn more?
4. Who is involved? Who are affected and influenced by it?
5. What is my vision? What do I see as the future if this itch was resolved?

These questions are targeted to focus your thinking to understand and choose a problem area that you feel passionately about with a vision for a better future. For each sub-step, complete your brainstorming activity by reviewing your lists, then clustering similar themes and concepts together. Finally, choose the most important clusters you want to work on. And then, move on to the next sub-step in the process using your choices from the previous sub-step.

At the end, you will have a set of potential vision statements for your ideal target future. Using Tim’s I3 (Influence, Importance, Imagination) method, you can further evaluate each of the potential target futures.

• Influence — can I control and/or influence the target future? If the vision is outside of my control and influence circle, it might be futile to work on it.
• Importance — am I energized by the potential of solving this problem? If it is something I don’t care about, it will be hard to get excited day after day to work on it, too.
• Imagination — does the problem require creative thinking to solve? If exact solutions already exist, it may not be worthwhile to put in effort.

After your evaluation, select the 3-5 most compelling vision statements that meet all the I3 criteria. Review and choose one (or a combination) ideal target future you want to work on. At this point, it is important to restate this vision statement so it is energizing and motivating for you. Vision describes your desired future in clear terms, providing focus to your mission. Otherwise if you don’t know where you are going, anywhere will do.

“We started with a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home… Every day, we’re finding new ways for technology to enhance and enrich people’s lives. We’re really just getting started.”

– Bill Gates

Now that you have your vision and ideal future, you are ready to move on to the next step.

Step 2 – Chisel out your opportunity and state your mission

While the vision is all about our ideal future state, mission is the purpose of existence. It answers the question of what we do and why this organization was formed. When we achieve our mission, we bring our vision, our dreams, to reality.

Identifying that key question to focus your resources in order to create your ideal future is a good way to get to your mission statement. Again, I use Tim’s HMW (how might we) or HMI (how might I) exploration processes to list out various burning questions as part of my brainstorming process. As with previous step, by clustering, clarifying and then choosing, I identify the key opportunity that I want to work on and solve.

• “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
• “At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.”

This is also a good time to outline what success means to you. Your success criteria could be a list of financial, strategic, constraint-based as well as value and brand related items.

• Capture X% market share within Y months.
• Achieve positive cash flow within Y months.
• Have X positive product reviews in trade journals within Y months of introduction date.
• Proof of concept within Y months.
• Don’t alienate existing customers with new pricing model.
• Use sustainable business strategy and green manufacturing.

With my vision, mission, key opportunity area and success criteria defined, I am ready to capture my product/service concept and strategy.

Step 3 – Map out your product/service concept and strategy

You can continue with your brainstorming approach or you can add a little more creative zing to your thought process using other creative methods such as from Creativity Today by Igor Byttebier and Ramon Vullings; Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition) by Michael Michalko; The Innovator’s Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth by David Silverstein, Philip Samuel and Neil DeCarlo; and many others. Here are some of my favorites:

• Identify existing presuppositions and eliminate or reverse them. If existing solutions are complex, how would you go about simplifying them? If they are boring, how would you make them more engaging?
• List out your superheroes and their attributes, and imagine how they would go about approaching your problem.
• List out key objects in the system and use personal analogy to explore solutions to problems. If you were to improve collaboration among virtual teams, how would a document feel in that system? Lonely, confused, static, out-of-date? How would you go about changing that?

You may come up with several potential approaches for your product/service concept. That is great! Evaluate each of these ideas against your success criteria as well as set of key attributes that is important to your product/service.

Any important attributes and factors you identified during your brainstorming in step 1 can be used to develop your preliminary strategy canvas (Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant). As W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne highlight, strategy canvas enables organizations to understand the current state of the market by mapping out key factors the industry is currently competing on as well as consciously deciding what value the organization plans to give the customers and differentiate its offerings. As this is a preliminary stage, instead of mapping out specific competitors, draw what you know from the industry and others for the initial map. You can find more information strategy canvas here.

At this point, you have a rough idea of your product/service, its competitive differentiation and perceived benefits and value. The next step is to analyze the profit potential.

Step 4 – Explore profit potential

Again, this is an exploration process without doing any in-depth market research study. The goal is to roughly identify set factors and metrics to achieve profitability.

• What would be your startup costs? How about your burn rate?
• What would be your pricing strategy? What would you expect as a per-customer profit margin?
• How many do you need to sell to make a living?
• What would you need to support your customer base?

“Too often we measure everything and understand nothing. The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If you’re growing customer satisfaction, your global market share is sure to grow, too. Employee satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the pulse — the key vital sign of a company.”
– Jack Welch

You might end up with different product/service concepts with varying go-to-market strategies. Using cash curve analysis (Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation), evaluate your revenue and cost projections. For insight into cash curve analysis, check out Reaping The Rewards Of Innovation in InformationWeek. Make sure to capture your assumptions which would influence profitability, such as first to market, achieving de-facto standard, etc.

As you are evaluating revenue/cost potential, be sure to utilize the customer life-cycle to explore potential dynamics from customer acquisition all the way through support and disposal. Innovation life-cycle is another tool for guesstimating revenue/cost projections from development through decline phase.

Step 5 – Write down your next steps and action plans

This process was meant as a starting point for your business plan. If you are interested in taking your idea further, make sure to capture any next steps and action plans using SMART (Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely) goals.

Putting it all together

You may decide at this point that you do not wish to follow up on your idea. Either way, I am hopeful that you found this process to be valuable. If you are looking for other sources of information, please check out my bookshelf.

Technorati Tags: business plan, developing ideas

Sharing is risky. It generates conflicting emotions… What if someone steals my idea? What if I make a fool of myself? What if they don’t like it? What if? Yet, sharing is a must in order to prosper, to thrive, to evolve … A story comes to mind that I read recently about the difference between Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee.

…. The Dead Sea has no outlet. Both are fed by the same source but the Dead Sea can only receive an inward flow. The Dead Sea is prevented from flowing outward and the accumulation of salt has killed it. The Sea of Galilee is alive, only because what flows in can also flow out.

Cycle of Creativity

Creativity works the same way: you need to share and create a constant flow of ideas in order for them to thrive and grow. Otherwise, your ideas may share the same destiny as the Dead Sea.

Building a constructive feedback and critique loop can be a challenge. In today’s collaborative environment with diverse cultures and customs, it is not just about establishing a safe, transparent environment. But, also about creating a new cultural norm and values that everyone will understand, adopt and operationalize.

Staying objective is perhaps the biggest challenge for individuals receiving feedback. It requires a balance between ownership and detachment. It is important to show that you care and want to hear feedback so that you can improve. Yet you don’t want to be too attached to your idea, as it will be difficult to really listen and understand the feedback. Remember, a negative input on your idea is not an attack on you personally.

For the rest of the post, let’s look at various critics in your feedback circle. Being aware of your relation to your critics will help you understand the feedback you are given, and create a constructive and positive environment for everyone. Please critique this list and add any ideas and experiences you’d like to share.

Self: the inner voice

For me, my inner voice can be my worst enemy… We have too many demons to fight. Some we may be very familiar with, while others might be lurking in the darkness. When we share, our fears, desires, motivations, and inspirations all surfaces and we become vulnerable. Regardless, acknowledging those demons and moving forward by putting your idea on paper is a must. The first step in sharing is to get it out of your head.

Here are some tools that could help if you want to polish your idea further before sharing with others. What other tools and techniques could you use?

• Stories can create an emotional connection. Whether it is your vision story or your teaching story about how it can be done tomorrow, stories can create a shared understanding.
• Symbols and metaphors can be an effective means to express ideas and abstract concepts. They can support thoughts, feelings and actions, simplify complex ideas and provide opportunities for sharing and listening.
• Six Thinking Hats can be a valuable tool to examine your idea from differing perspectives. For more on Six Thinking Hats, check out de Bono Thinking Systems.

Family and friends

Your family and friends are a great resource and readily available. They are also supportive and want to help. However, they may not be as objective as you want them to be. You can help overcome this by clearly assembling a set of questions to ask and being very sincere about the fact that you want honest and objective feedback.

Work group

This group would includes your boss, team members, colleagues, subordinates, … Usually they bring varying perspectives to the discussion:

Idea Feedback Circle

• What is in it for me?
• How much extra work would this be?
• How will this help or hurt me?
• Is this being done already, if not why not?
• …

As individuals, we approach problems and ideas from different value points. Understanding this can help reduce confusion and conflicts. The following Characteristics of Value Approaches framework is from Conversant. Start with yourself, analyze how you approach problems, and rank each of these items from 1 to 5. You can do the same for others you are interacting with or ask them to do this exercise. As a note, my value approach is: resilience → inspiration → intimacy OR intimacy → inspiration (depending on the situation) → workability → integrity in action

• intimacy — this is about people and emotions. Where the individual is sensitive to others’ feelings and experiences, and shows compassion.
• inspiration — ideas, creativity and vision comes before the potential for success. It is all about what is possible in the future, as anything and everything is possible.
• workability — focuses on if it can be achieved, what is needed and if those conditions are present to be successful.
• integrity in action — evaluates the relationship between the walk and the talk: “if you’re going to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk”. The individual looks to achieve alignment and action to get to results, and holds people accountable.
• resilience — the individual tends to learn from failures and move forward. Enjoys exploring unanswered questions and is intrigued by what makes things work or not.

As an example, if your #1 approach is inspiration and your boss starts with workability for problem solving and evaluating ideas, there is an immediate mismatch. This understanding can help you determine how to present your ideas, but also how to interpret the feedback.

Support group: mentors, champions and sponsors

Learning can be a messy and frustrating process. Mentors, champions and sponsors can be invaluable by providing insights into their own experiences. Honest, tactful and at times forceful feedback can provide invaluable professional development experience for anyone.

• Mentors share their experiences and insights in a way that help connect and guide the individual. They create a safe environment where learning and feedback can happen comfortably. The role of the mentor is multi-faceted: a big sister/brother, role model, friend, teacher, …
• Champions have personal interest and ownership in your results. They believe in your ideas, understand and support the project. They work at breaking down barriers, actively promoting and cheering for you.
• Sponsors provide the support needed to help clear obstacles and gather resources. They may or may not be the same as champions. They are focused on aligning business purpose and goals with the overall organizational strategic goals. Ultimately the sponsor has the power and influence within the organization to make things happen. And, they are accountable for the final outcome.

Users and customers

Your users and customers are invaluable at providing insights and test driving your concepts. The theory of diffusion of innovations could help explain the characteristics and expectations on each customer segment. Your goal is to avoid asking the right questions to the wrong group.

Innovation and Adoption Life Cycle

Random strangers

Randomly chosen strangers can provide interesting insights. The selection could be a completely random sampling, such as by approaching shoppers in a mall, or it could be randomly selected experts from the field, or those attending workshops and forums… As they don’t know you, they can give straight responses, without any preconcieved history, circumstances, politics, … Group settings could encourage feedback and stimulate interesting discussions.

And finally…

Now that you know who your critics are (or can be), get out there and be criticized! Your ideas will thank you.

Technorati Tags: feedback, constructive feedback, idea critiques

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From birth, we start building a view of our reality, our own “Matrix”, completely driven and influenced by what we see, touch, feel, think, value, experience… As a survival mechanism, we are programmed to classify and sort everything we see in terms that are familiar to us: too liberal, very conservative, too skinny, fake blond, risk taker, risk adverse, real thinker, open and approachable, too talkative, stuck in his ways, … As bad as this may sound, it is natural and it is human. Other than our past experiences, our values that have been developed through the society we interact with, we have no additional reference for what we see and hear.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”
–Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
–Harry M. Warner, president of Warner Brothers Pictures, about 1927.

We like to believe we are open minded. But we seldom realize this is an illusion, a paradox. We are social creatures. We look for ways to belong and be accepted. So we seek people that share our beliefs, values and opinions. We look for evidence to support, to confirm our opinions and ideas. But we neglect to search for contradicting evidence. As much as we try, we can’t escape this natural law of humanity. However, if we recognize and accept that we are feeble and fallible, then we can establish practices to balance these natural biases that are inherent in every one of us.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
–Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
–Steve Jobs, 1996

“Spam will soon be a thing of the past.”
–Bill Gates, 2004

These internal biases, whether we recognize it or not, are everywhere: the political party we support, political candidates we defend, the government policies we support, the jokes that we laugh at, the interviews that we have done, peer groups we hang out with, how we measure success and failure, to fund which project and how much, … Sometimes, we even name these biases: media bias, workplace bias, gender bias, anti-intelligent design bias, … The optimism bias, where we over-estimate the likelihood of positive events and under-estimate the likelihood of negative events, is openly acknowledged by the UK government. So much so that the Treasury’s Supplementary Guidance on Optimism Bias recommends for project appraisers to make explicit adjustments to the estimates of project costs, benefits and duration based on empirical data to inform project decisions.

Below are some of my recommended practices to find the balance we must achieve in order to effectively deal with our inherent biases. Recognize that this is a departure from holding onto the status quo, and with that it is a change. Inherently, we also resist change. However, as Einstein pointed out: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

• Question everything — This seems to be one of those skills that we lose at an early age: why, mom?. By questioning, we open ourselves to freely explore beyond the path that has been laid out. This creates opportunities to change the playing field from what is known and accepted to something new and potentially controversial. If nothing else, learn to play devil’s advocate.
• Listen and observe — Our minds are an efficient pattern recognition system that create, store and recognize patterns. This process enables us to create connections between seemingly unrelated things; connections that didn’t exist before. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of our minds also work against us. We can be quick to judge and jump to conclusions based on previously stored patterns. By purposely moving ourselves into listening and observation mode, we force our awareness to take over. With that, we can focus on the need to learn and understand, instead of analyze and process.
• Seek the beginner’s mind — From Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi’s wisdom: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” We may not realize it, or our ego may not want to admit it, but living in the world of “I know” is a real handicap. It keeps us in the past, and closes our minds to exploring and learning from the present. In contrast, a beginner’s mind is about recognizing that “we may not really know“, as we have the capability to distort and block things from our view. We all should practice a beginner’s mind by stating that “I don’t know“, and putting all preconceptions, preconceived ideas and judgments aside, and letting go to fully experience our environment.
• Harness collective wisdom — It has been said: two heads are better than one. By pulling together a relevant, yet diverse group of people, it is possible to filter out the biases of individuals. However, as James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds) indicated, there is a paradox to be watched for: “The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that the best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.” He defines four key qualities that make a crowd smart: diverse group, decentralized structure with no dictatorship, facilitation to pull together the collective verdict, and independent to ensure individuals can focus on own information. So, before jumping to harness that collective wisdom, make sure you take time to analyze the group’s qualities.
• Remove ambiguity — As I mentioned before, we process information based on our own experiences. With that, it is quite understandable for two people to walk out of the same room with completely different interpretations of what just happened: who won the political debate; is the product ready to ship; what defines quality; how do you measure success; … So, instead of leaving important things to interpretation, remove ambiguity by clearly defining things in understandable and measurable terms.
• Re-frame questions and situations — In many cases, how we interpret and analyze information has to do with how it was framed. Re-framing is frequently used in conflict situations, where communication misunderstanding are quite common due to biases. By re-framing, holding onto the facts while restating opinions, beliefs and values, it is possible to change a person’s perspective of a specific situation, and thereby initiating a change.
• Change perspectives — Leonardo da Vinci suggested three different ways of looking at your creative work to achieve objectivity and ignite curiosity. Start with detaching yourself from your situation by envisioning that it belongs to somebody else, and think how would you approach it, and make recommendations to them. He then suggests that you walk away from your situation, so that when you return, you come back with fresh eyes. This also allows your subconscious mind to work with it. Finally, he recommends studying the situation from a distance (the top of a great mountain, the point of view of competitor, lagger or leader in the market, …) Again, the goal is to ignite curiosity and interest to see things from a different perspective.

Technorati Tags: bias, creative thinking, decision making

You might have heard about the cotton farmers in India. The ones that are committing suicide as they can’t pull themselves out of the perpetual debt cycle created by the seed and pesticide industry. Recently, Asia was also in the news as they are experiencing a shortage of talent and lack of skilled staff in environments that expect high growth. As you might have guessed, this growth is coming as more layoffs are occurring in the US.

Our measures for economic prosperity are certainly broken. Today, we mainly measure economic growth in terms of consumers’ buying power. Yet, Adam Smith argued that the benefits of the free market should not be limited to individuals, but inclusive of the society as a whole: The Wealth of Nations (Bantam Classics). Unfortunately today, over-consumption is one of the biggest threats to our environment and society, as The Story of Stuff highlights so well.

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) established the following definition for sustainability: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This implicitly captures that our decision making process has to be global, taking into account any present and future implications to our renewable and non-renewable resources, including our ecosystem.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development points out that “sustainable development is good for business and business is good for sustainable development.” For me, this is common sense. Companies that think about and respect their environment, their society and their employees before they act tend to be well managed firms. Eventually, this also reflects in their financial performance. As popularity, transparency and awareness of green energy, fair trade, organic produce and socially responsible firms grows, your customers will expect sustainable business practices from your firm.

The truth is that concerns over sustainability are sprinkled across all aspects of our lives: our newly established exercise regiment, the weight-loss we recently achieved, striving for a certain living standard or wondering how much longer you can maintain your hectic work schedule, … At the same time, sustainability is about your values and the evaluation of your actions against those values.

For me, the concept of sustainability is very personal. It is as much about achieving well-being for myself and my family as it is about reducing or eliminating the overall stress and impact I have on my ecosystem. It is also about recognizing the cause-effect relationship of my every event and action, and realizing that each outcome has an impact to my sustainability goals which should be incorporated into my planning. With that, here is my definition of sustainability and what it means to live a sustainable life:

Achieving outcomes that can be maintained indefinitely without depleting the support system or endangering present and future needs.

Implicitly stated, ecosystem, society, self/individual and economy are intermingled and need to be carefully balanced to achieve my vision of sustainable living. At the same time, simplicity, self-renewal, incremental improvement and innovations are needed to maintain the process indefinitely.

Perhaps the most challenging part of sustainability is in its operationalization: what should be your sustainability goals, how do you know if you are on track, and what should be measured? As always, this will be based on your definition, your situation and your goals.

I urge you to reflect on your own definition of sustainability, what it means to you and if you are living true to your values. Yes, sustainability may seem like the latest fad, especially with the way firms are embracing it for their marketing. But, starting with sustainability and designing it into your life, your products and processes is a sound business practice. Whether it is idealistic and achievable or not, the road to achieving a sustainable future starts with you.

Technorati Tags: sustainability, sustainability definition