One thing marketers don’t understand well yet is the idea of “screens.” Yesterday I spoke at a conference and the speaker before me was talking about “four screens.” (I thought there were three. Turns out tablets are the fourth screen.) I talk about one screen. In a cloud-based, hyper-connected, super-untethered world, the only screen that’s going to matter to the consumer is the screen that’s in front of them.

Think of it this way: Say you read a page in your Kindle. You put it down then pick it up again on the subway on your iPhone app. You come to the office and maybe you read another page or two on your screen. It’s asynchronous. As you move to a world where anything in front of us can become a screen — which is something else we are going to see — that changes the game! In the world today, I can see how you would say “four screen” or “three screen.” Mobile is not the same as an iPod Touch, which is not the same as a computer. That’s fine. But don’t you see that the smartphone looks a lot like the iPad? The interaction is very similar, and becoming closer and closer. And as TVs are becoming more and more web enabled, they will be operated by voice or touch. It’s all very obvious. So what are you going to do today as a content professional as we rapidly ascend to this one-screen world?

Via Content Marketing Institute

In a previous post, I gave a brief overview to Eric Ries’ book, The Lean Startup. In a nutshell, Ries advocates applying the scientific method to the practice of building a startup into a sustainable business. The concept of the pivot is one of the most difficult, yet most profound concepts for business leaders to grasp.

Here is how Ries describes the crucial decision to pivot or persevere in the Lean Startup cycle:

My goal in advocating a scientific approach to the creation of startups is to channel human creativity into its most productive form, and there is no bigger destroyer of creative potential than the misguided decision to persevere. Companies that cannot bring themselves to pivot to a new direction on the basis of feedback from the marketplace can get stuck in the land of the living dead, neither growing enough nor dying, consuming resources and commitment from employees and other stakeholders but not moving ahead.

…

Startup productivity is not about cranking out more widgets or features. It is about aligning our efforts with a business and product that are working to create value and drive growth. In other words, successful pivots put us on a path toward growing a sustainable business.

Why is it so hard to say goodbye?

Starting up a new business is perhaps one of the riskiest actions that anyone can undertake. On the other hand, there isn’t much worth doing that doesn’t involve risk. When there is something that we humans consider “worth doing,” where the possibility of a positive outcome outweighs the risks, we arrive at passion. It takes a strong, and often deeply personal, conviction/drive to face Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) without flinching.

For the stakeholders of a startup, the personal commitment required is not so different from what parents experience. We accept the responsibility of nurturing and caring for this fragile entity that would never have existed otherwise. And so it is for every startup business leader I have ever met. The business, and everything that entails, is their baby. And no matter how ugly that baby might be to others, we love it for what it is.

But alas, a business is not an infant child…

A for-profit business exchanges goods or services for money with the goal of having more money coming in (revenue) than is going out (expenses). The catch is that the marketplace determines value – something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Predicting the behavior of the marketplace is very difficult, because so many uncontrollable variables exist.

For the founder(s) of a startup, presenting a product or service to the marketplace requires a true leap of faith. If the offering is not well-received, founders tend to have an “all or nothing” atitude. Unfortunately this is not only a false assumption, but it is also dangerous. The choice that businesses face is not to persevere at all costs or to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

The choice is to Persevere or Pivot

Since the Lean Startup methodology is based upon the scientific method, Ries advocates basing business decisions, especially whether to persevere or pivot, on evidence. Are there any successful examples of business pivots? Here are just a few:

• Nintendo once sold playing cards before trying their hand at a variety of industries. In 1975, Nintendo took a chance on electronic games.
• YouTube started out as a dating site. After not gaining much traction, the founders decided to pivot towards hosting videos.
• Starbucks actually used to sell high-quality coffee beans and espresso machines. Not everyone wanted to learn the art of preparing fine coffee, and by offering products more conveniently to their clients, the Starbucks pivot proved quite successful. (Even though their coffee is reviled by true connoisseurs…)
• Speaking of coffee, Edward Lloyd ran a coffeehouse that catered to sailors, merchants and others in the shipping trade. His pivot towards offering insurance transformed Lloyds of London somewhat dramatically.

Edward Lloyd didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. He enjoyed serving his clientele and was a primary source of news and information for patrons of his establishment. While I’m sure that they enjoyed his coffee, he offered an even greater value by providing insurance for their business operations.

Life is one big Pivot after another

What many businesses fail to realize is that deciding to start up a new business is a pivot in and of itself. In life, change is one of the few constants. A startup’s first customer is making a pivot. So startups (and all businesses, in my opinion) need to embrace change. If your customers are willing to take a chance on you, don’t you owe it to your customers to take a chance on them?

According to Ries, the goal of a startup isn’t to create the best service/product, to win the most customers, or even to generate the most revenue. The goal is to create a sustainable business. The task at hand for the leaders of a startup, therefore, is to constantly evaluate whether the business model should persevere or pivot.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. But don’t let the baby drown either.

Image courtesy David Locke1

Initial tests indicate two of the rocks had phosphorus on them, Denise Fennessy, Orange County environmental health official, told The Associated Press.

 

Phosphorous can burn when exposed to air, Concepcion said. He said the rocks were 2 to 3 inches round. One had green specks and another had orange specks.

Via U-T

Desperate for new ways to connect with consumers, an increasing array of industries and organizations are paying Disney to teach them how to become, well, more like Disney.

Revenue from the Disney Institute has doubled over the last three years, according to Disney, powered in part by its aggressive pursuit of new business. Over the last two years alone, 300 school systems across the country have sought its advice.

Other clients range from very large entities — Häagen-Dazs International, United Airlines, the country of South Africa — to small ones: three Subway restaurants in Maine, a Michigan hair salon, a Boston youth-counseling center.

Via NYT

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries, is a book that leverages the scientific method to redefine entrepreneurship as the process of developing successful, innovative and sustainable businesses.

I just finished reading a book that will undoubtedly influence decisions that I make for the rest of my life. The book is called, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, and was written by Eric Ries.

Background

Here is what I have learned about Eric Ries:

• He graduated from Yale in 2001
• Ries was the CTO and co-founder of IMVU, a successful startup based on the framework outlined in the book
• He has received numerous awards and accolades from various business and tech publications
• In 2010, Ries was selected by Harvard Business School as an Entrepreneur in Residence
• He is equally well-versed in both the technology and business aspects of leading a successful startup

After being a part of a startup that failed in the infamous dot com boom/crash, Ries went on to achieve great success by applying the scientific method to the art and practice of entrepreneurship. Over the last several years, he has become the leader of the Lean Startup movement that has taken both new and existing businesses, inside and outside of the tech world, to sustainable models of growth. After years of speaking, training, consulting and blogging about these proven strategies, Ries published a book on the subject in September 2011.

The Lean Startup, in a nutshell

Too many startups begin with an idea for a product that they think people want. They then spend months, sometimes years, perfecting that product without ever showing the product, even in a very rudimentary form, to the prospective customer. When they fail to reach broad uptake from customers, it is often because they never spoke to prospective customers and determined whether or not the product was interesting. When customers ultimately communicate, through their indifference, that they don’t care about the idea, the startup fails.

via The Lean Startup: Methodology

The key to success of any business, is to offer the right product to the right people at the right price. But when you are developing a new product or service, how do you know if you are right? According to Ries, the answer is simple: get the product into the hands of customers as soon as possible, and learn as much as you can in the process. Obviously that is easier said than done. So Ries has developed a rigorous evidence-based approach to accelerating the product development cycle based on the following principles:

1. “Entrepreneurs are everywhere” – Even if you work for an existing/established firm, in order to continue to grow, innovation has to be fostered. In the book, Ries cites Intuit as an example of a firm that used Lean Startup principles to create new products and services. He refers to the entrepreneurial leaders at existing firms as intrapreneurs.
2. “Entrepreneurship is management” – Contrary to popular belief, creativity and innovation can be managed. The key is that new product development needs to be both simultaneously supported and held accountable by managers (and/or investors, stakeholders, etc.). Something most traditional managers are ill-equipped for.
3. Validated Learning – The paradigm shift that Ries advocates stronger than perhaps anything else, is that “[s]tartups exist not to make stuff, make money, or serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business.” That type of learning is something that is quantifiable and should be approached through carefully validated experimentation. The key is to identify the right types of variables to be tested in each experiment – no different than what we are taught in elementary science classes.
4. Innovation Accounting – Most new and existing business leaders are accustomed to what Ries refers to as vanity metrics, which are numbers such as total number of “hits” to the site. In other words, that number might sound impressive, but what does it really mean? Instead, Ries recommends using actionable metrics, which might focus on amount of revenue generated per customer, for example. The key is to establish clear methods of measuring progress, establishing milestones, and prioritizing work.
5. Build-Measure-Learn – When you are creating a new product or service, you are making what Ries calls leap-of-faith assumptions. The most important of those assumptions are the value hypothesis (will this product/service have value in the marketplace) and the growth hypothesis (what will fuel growth – long-term customer relationships, so-called viral growth, or paid advertising). To test these hypotheses, the lean startup builds a minimum viable product (“that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort”), measures response to that product release using the aforementioned actionable metrics, and applies the learning from that data to guide future development. The key is to move through the Build-Measure-Learn cycle as quickly as possible.

What’s The Point?

The Lean Startup isn’t going to tell you how to design a better mousetrap. But this book will help you to develop the successful business platform for developing better and better mousetraps. The old ways of doing things simply do not work anymore. Great ideas are born every second. But it takes a clear and cogent plan in order to develop a business around a great idea. And sometimes, the original idea that we have, may not be what customers want. By following the Lean Startup framework, it is possible to create a successful, innovative and sustainable business – whether you’re just starting up, or trying to transform an existing company.

You can purchase the book at Amazon:

Image courtesy The Lean Startup

My family and I are taking a much-needed vacation. On our way up to San Fransisco, we spent a day in San Luis Obispo. Strolling through town, we came across Creekside Brewing Company – a brewery and restaurant with outside dining overlooking the San Luis Creek.

I doubt we could have chosen a better place to eat. The food was amazing, and so was the beer. Try the Bock – we purchased a growler filled with a half-gallon of the stuff to accompany us on our travels.