I’ve met a dozens of budding entrepreneurs over the last few years. Many of them either have or want to write a business plan. To some extent this is not surprising.

Many of the entrepreneurs are students and there is no shortage of academic courses which teach students how to write a business plan. This spans both undergraduate and postgraduate courses – most MBA programs have it as a core competency.

The problem I see is that a business plan is as much use to an entrepreneur as a chocolate teapot! Quit avoiding the issue by churning out a dead tree of static and waffle and DO something useful instead. Something like talk to an actual or potential customer.

Steve Blank captures my thoughts about this well in a recent post.

The business plan is a wonderful document for organizing and planning for existing companies to launchfollow-on products. In an existing corporation, the business plan is theexecution document for sustaining innovation.

But for startups, business plans fail to match the chaotic reality they encounter in the real world.

The reality is that startups needed anew class of management tools. Tools to help them manage the search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Alexander Osterwalder’s 2010 book Business Model Generation is now the definitive text on Business Models.

It introduces the business model canvas – a one page picture of your business model and to a large extent your business. I’ve used it countless times over the last couple of years and learn something new every single time.

As an aside there is a new book called Business Model You which takes the original idea and applies it to your life. I made a small contribution to this book which gets my name in print. Now I need a business plan to really make this work for me!

Next week I will be running a workshop on presentation skills and pitching for our clients at SFU Venture Connection. For many entrepreneurs pitches and presentations revolve around the slides. Whilst I will be talking about slides during the workshop the real focus will be on the story.

Slides are merely a tool which should, to paraphrase Seth Godin, reinforce the story the presenter is telling, not repeat it. Many entrepreneurs struggle with the whole pitching, presenting piece. However, contrary to what many of them think, this is not because they have poor slides. It’s because they don’t know their own story.

Garr Reynolds has been talking about this for years, but his latest book gives the game away in the title! The Naked Presenter . In other words, what would your pitch/presentation be like if you didn’t have any slides? Can you still communicate your story and get the key points across?

When it comes to presentations one of the old favourites is practice practice practice. Practice is important because it really helps you learn your own story and learn it in a form which is hopefully more digestible to your audience. With the right structure you should be able to clearly tell your story. You can use the word ‘message’ for ‘story’ if the language isn’t working for you.

This means you can use your slides in a very different way. They can be used connect with your audience. Done well, this is emotional and nearly always driven by image. This is applies even when the audience has a clear expectation for slides – telling your story is going to be the most successful approach.

Ultimately, investors are looking to invest in you. Some may be impressed by your ability to deliver slides but it’s more likely they are looking for a compelling reason to buy into your story, and make it part of their own.

Whilst scanning an old blog post today I realized that I’ve been using Google Reader for over 5 years. That same post talks about the 50-60 RSS feeds I followed then. It turns out I still follow 50-60 feeds today. The list, I suspect, is somewhat different. Comparing what I followed then compared to what I follow now could be interesting if only I’d kept a note back in 2006. Be that as it may, the raw numbers do tell a story.

At any one time I like to have 50-60 sources of news and information available.  I have experimented with more from time to time, but the experiment always seems to fail. I like to pick and choose my sources, relying on serendipity to identify new content and my own instinct to make deletions.

Recently a couple of tools have popped up and surprised me. The first of these is Summify. It imports your google reader feeds as well as activity on Twitter and Facebook to deliver a short list of the top stories every few hours. The number of stories and frequency is up to you..

To my surprise and to challenge my cynicism, Summify does actually deliver stories I find interesting and want to read. Not all the time of course, but often enough. It does this without asking me to do anything. If I’m honest I would say the Summify helps me get more out of some of the more active feeds I follow and share this easily on the same three tools. Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook.

Although this doesn’t capture everything I want to read, it’s a good start. I still go off to my Reader account and look at other sources. Generally these sources don’t post as often, but give tremendous value when they do. From time to time I look at my twitter feed still, especially when it comes to my @ourbirdfeeder account but I’ve never really used Facebook for this purpose. This despite cool apps like Flipboard which present every thing is a more pleasing way.

A couple of days ago @brucesharpe mentioning Zite. This, like Summify, is another service being built in Vancouver, BC. Initially I was confused by Zite: I did not see any of the feeds I thought I followed. Then I realized that’s the point. Zite uses what I’ve specified elsewhere to find new stuff for me to read and most importantly, from new sources.

There is a thumbs up and thumbs down option which is supposed to help me help Zite improve the relevance of what it delivers. The thumbs up is always easier than down however, so not sure how this will work. I seem more willing to show my support than my disapproval. Inaction is my but dominant form of this.

It’s great that entrepreneurs are creating interesting and valuable tools around a part of my online life which has been pretty consistent for the last five years!

Over the last few months I have been reading and learning more about the business of presentations. A have a number of go-to resources, rich with ideas and suggestions. There are number of these which have struck a cord with me recently, so I thought it was time to share.

Chris Brogan is one of those A List bloggers whose output is truly amazing. So much so in fact that most of the time I can’t keep up. What I do manage is a regular scan of his posts and quick read of those that grab my attention. One such post came up a few weeks back when he did a short video interview with Nancy Duarte.

Nancy is the Principal of one of the largest design firms in Silicon Valley, Duarte Design and a very accomplished author. Her first two books slide:ology and resonate are included in my go-to resources.

As I write this post I realize I have a bunch of post-it notes in front of me with various notes. So instead of trying to figure out all my sources I would like to present a collage of presentation ideas and tips. Consider it a buffet of thoughts from which you can choose what works for you:

Often people think of the public speaker or presenter as a heroic figure. The speaker is who the audience has the expectation about, the speaker who has the responsibility to deliver. Equally as often this is enough to put the speaker off ! That’s a lot of responsibility. So try this instead. The Audience not the speaker is the hero. The job of the speaker is to mentor the audience through the STORY and ultimately take them where they want to go.

A slide deck shared without the presentation is a document.

Q&A Sessions after a presentation or speech are a golden opportunity to build and reinforce the relationship with your audience. It’s natural to breath a sigh of relief at the end of your prepared speech, but the most important part is only just beginning!

If you are nervous imagine some you love and trust is sitting in front of them and present to them.

From Nancy, Simply; Lose the cliches, emphasize Information, Designate elements – i.e. loose the clutter, Empathy for the Audience. Do you want to sit through your own presentation?

Again Nancy: STAR – Something They Always Remember. Bill Gates did this at TED by letting loose a mosquito. I did it by getting my audience to stand, put their hands to their heads and roar like a Moose! 

Lastly, don’t present Data, present Meaning. Apple did this years ago when they started talking not about gigabytes but about how many songs an iPod could hold.

There. That feels better. Maybe some of the above ideas will spark something new in how you present. If it does, come back and share your experience in the comments below!

I was introduced to Johnson’s work through his masterful storytelling at the TEDGlobal 2010. That video connected the renaissance coffee houses of London in the 17th Century to the modern day Starbucks. His story took us back to the dawn of the Space Race and Sputnik, through the Cold War and the creation of GPS to the Apple iPhone. I simply loved the way Johnson sprang a classic storytelling reveal on the audience; one I’m sure you will enjoy.

I realised Steven Johnson had far more to say about innovation than he could fit into a 17:46 minute video. This book begins capturing his ideas and encourages you to actually read those footnotes, appendices and references. If I were to take this one book as a source, it would lead me to a lifetime of reading about innovations, inventions, cultural changes and inspiration. Amazing.

So, what’s it all about? In writing this piece I found myself overwhelmed by choice. This book is about many things. Johnson pokes hard at the myth of the solitary genius and eureka moments. He uses metaphors from natural history (coral reefs) to illustrate his thoughts and then backs it up with an almost MBA style 2×2 grid analysis. Along the way there are many many stories of specific innovations which on their own are worth reading, as well as discussions of political and social dogmas!

If I were to express some kind of conclusion it would be that innovation comes not from single moments or individuals. It is far more likely to come from collaborative open networks where there is no economic motivation. It almost sounds bit too ‘twigs and nuts’: everyone working together, sharing ideas and inspiring each other to take what they have and build on it!

However, I have to agree. In my own experience much more has been achieved in the way Johnson describes than by hoarding secrets and creating conspiracies about the guy over there who is secretly trying to steal your idea! Johnson puts it best himself:

Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent. Build a tangled bank. – Steven Johnson

Early last month, I gave a storytelling workshop to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in Vancouver. Organizer Etienne Laliberté sent me the video below, from Ignite Seattle. It’s a wonderful, 5 minute ‘how-to’ on impromptu speaking — or at least giving short speeches. Scott Berkun explains that this is all about story. This in turn reminded me of Kathy Hanson‘s recent post about her Toastmasters experience.

When you start Toastmasters, the prepared speeches you give are between 5 and 10 minutes long. Ignite speeches are 5 minutes, Pecha Kucha speeches a little longer at 6 minutes 40 seconds. Impromptu toastmaster speeches (Table Topics) tend to be 2 – 3 minutes long. So Scott’s advice is very well suited. However, I am not going to stop there! I believe that formats such as Ignite and Pecha Kucha can be great  opportunities to help you improve your speaking skills.

Prevailing wisdom suggests that a short sub-10 minute speech should be made without notes and probably without slides. In Toastmasters there is a prepared speech which requires some use of slides, but successfully using audio visual technology at the same time as remembering what to say, is not easily mastered. My own Toastmaster speeches focussed very much on me, the storyteller, without any visual distractions.

I’ve attended many Vancouver Pecha Kucha and one Ignite Vancouver event. I have used variations of the format, 15 or 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 or 20 seconds in a number of workshops and also in classes for students. In the teaching mode I’ve found great example speeches which help me demonstrate how story and image can be used to get your message across. Although I do touch on presentation skills and public speaking, these are rarely the sole purpose of my own speeches. In the audience mode, such as when attending Ignite or Pecha Kucha Nights, I’ve found the entertainment side stronger.

I have suggested that the Ignite/Pecha Kucha format can be a great way to communicate ideas inside an organization like the DFO or any business. I realize now that this is all about the application of a format once you have mastered it. What I have not yet emphasized enough, is that the format can actually help you become more confident about giving presentations and public speaking.

When I first went to Pecha Kucha I was in awe of the speakers and remember thinking, “I wish I could do that!” The more times I attended, the more I noticed variations in how speakers approached the task and found that my own presentation style began to shift as my confidence grew. Later I found a lot of support for my own direction in the work of Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte, to name two. It looks like I will be adding Scott Berkun to that list.

What about you?

Last night my wife and I went to the cinema to see The King’s Speech. This stars Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush and covers the period immediately before and just after King George VI came to the throne. I’m not going to offer a detailed review so I will settle for one phrase: Go and see it!

Although the time and the circumstances were very different, I believe the majority of people who have done any public speaking will relate to the story. Indeed, if public speaking does trouble you, this film should be required viewing. The fears, struggles and frustrations of speaking in public are well covered as is the anger  that can come from a lack of confidence.

Personally I was reminded of my late Dad. Maybe it’s the time of year but there were two other reasons. One trivial, one more serious. The first is simply that Mr. Firth and my Dad share the same first name – that happens way less often than I would expect. The second memory was the eulogy I gave at my Dad’s cremation. Like King George VI I was giving a speech which the majority of people I suspect, thought I would struggle with. Like the King, as I spoke I became stronger. It’s not everyday I get to compare myself to a King! For that I thank the power of story and the incredible performance by Mr. Firth.

Watching the trailers of upcoming movies before the film started it struck me that too many movies seem to be about special effects. To me they  look like a montage of loud and pointless console games. The King’s Speech on the other hand, is basically about the relationship between two people. That’s it. Nothing more.

Of the two, which one do you prefer?

A couple of weeks back I attended the 2010 SFU Student Entrepreneur of the Year Competition at SFU Harbour Centre in Downtown Vancouver. This was a kick off to Global Entrepreneurship Week. Four Students pitched their businesses in an effort to win the BCIC Student Award forTechnology Entrepreneurship and the big prize of Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

This year I had the pleasure of being a spectator, having been more involved in prior years although earlier in the week I had given a workshop for the finalists on how they could pitch to the judges. It was fascinating to see how they applied my suggestions and the impact they all made on not only the judges but also the rest of a packed audience.

The finalists who presented were Kelvin Chiu from Quake Aware, Juan-Pablo Leal from Artesano, Jack Qiao from ParkKart and Jordan Gutierrez from Libreria LEO. In the end Jack Qiao picked up the Technology prize and runner up. The SFU Student Entrepreneur was Jordan Gutierrez from Libreria LEO.

Although only a spectator, I couldn’t help making lots of notes and I’m looking forward to meeting all the finalists again in the coming week or two. A couple of the Students are already Venture Connection Clients and I hope to engage with the other two quickly. The final part of the story for me will be hearing how they feel the whole thing went for them!

Below is a little video I shot of the prizes being awarded:

Social Media is often associated with the trivial aspects of life. What someone had for lunch, how many friends ‘like’ them and so forth. Whilst there is a role, some would say a super important role for the likes of Twitter and Facebook to play in our personal social lives increasingly the tools are finding more weighty applications.

This week is a case in point. There have been two significant events in the last week which illustrate this. The first was the election of Naheed Nenshi as the next Major of Calgary, the second the conviction of Russell Williams for the murder of Jessica Lloyd, Marie-France Comeau and a staggering 86 other charges.

Given the nature of these events It is important to remember that the social media aspects discussed below are put in context. In both cases, for reasons that could not be more different, social media is definitely NOT the most important aspect of the story(ies). It is true though in each case that there is a social media element which can be explored.

Starting with the Russell Williams case, the social media piece comes, unsurprisingly perhaps, from the courtroom. More specifically it comes from the gallery. In addition to the families and friends of the victims the gallery had lots of reporters. It would seem that whereas in the past there would be the scratch of a reporters pencil, now there is the almost silent typing of 140 character Twitter messages (tweets). The Williams case is not the only example as illustrated by this article from the New York Times.

I was encouraged to see the reporters exercising caution in what they were reporting. Social Media gave the public the opportunity to be in the courtroom and experiencing events as they happened. Many of the details of the case had to be aired as a matter of public record. However, blasting the horrific details all over the internet was not necessary and I’m pleased the tweets from the gallery reflected this.

Turning to the newly elected Calgary Mayor: Naheed Nenshi, social media was an important part of his election campaign. And that’s the point – it was part of the campaign. He identified, correctly as it turns out, that a big proportion of people who don’t normally vote are the same people that use Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools. By engaging them on their own turf he managed to increase voter turnout with the ultimate effect that he ended up being elected.

However, whilst Nenshi demonstrated what can be achieved in politics when social media is used well. In the UK, even the Prime Minister’s warns that twitter makes it easy for public figures to make ‘ill-advised’ comments. Sadly Gareth Compton failed to heed this and ultimately his political career paid the price. Admittedly anyone who wants to suggest publicly the stoning of another individual is asking for trouble!

The stories above demonstrate that the use of social media is quickly being absorbed into our culture. It is no longer seen as the ‘next thing’ but has arrived. Discussions have moved on from whether it can or should be used at all to discussions about the actual content it covers. In other words, the tool has stopped being the point of interest and whether it’s court cases, mayoral elections or any other serious subject this has to be a good thing!

Last night Leftantler and I had the pleasure of attending a public lecture by SFU Visiting Fellow in Urban Sustainable Development, Ellen Dunham-Jones. Dunham-Jones is Professor, School of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also the co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs which was also the subject of her lecture. There was a very healthy audience in the theatre at SFU Surrey, a site which features in her book as the only example of a new development placed directly on top of an existing shopping mall.

Dunham-Jones talked a little about why surburbia should be refitted and then classified such developments into a number of different types. These included refurbishing existing sites, mainly dead malls, building on the huge open parking lots and even tearing them down and introducing completely new street layouts and buildings. The essence of the lecture is nicely captured in the TED video below which I thoroughly recommend.

A few things stick out in my mind. First the fact that in the last three years the number of new enclosed malls built in the US stands at zero, or close to it. In retrofitting there is still a huge component of retail in the new schemes. I agree this is more agreeable than the dead malls it replaces but I still struggle with why we need so much retail? In creating new places for us to live our lives why are we so dependent on shopping? There was mention of a library in one of the developments and some artists space in another but my impression was that these were the exceptions.

I was also struck by the support for higher density living. I accept that environmentally there are clear benefits. However, my own experience of close proximity living tells me that generally the building standards fail to keep pace with how selfish people are. The new towers and housing developments seem to be built as cheaply and poorly as some of the post-war monstrosities they replace. It should be possible to live closely with other people without having to hear their television blaring or their footsteps on the ceiling. In some cases I could even plot the bathroom habits of my neighbours based on the feedback through the plumbing!

This worries me partly because the successful examples of suburbia date from the 1920s. Basically the building in the post-war era was for the short-term, although in the case of the architectural style, this may be a good thing. Dunham-Jones talked very eloquently about what is possible and I support almost all of what she says. However, urban planning is part of challenge ahead, peoples behaviour is another and it’s this that is to me, the biggest problem.