SOPHISTICATED FINANCE

How to Improve Social Outcomes

2013-05-17T15:30:10-04:00

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article, "The New Science of Giving", that focuses on the philanthrophy of Houston couple Laura and John Arnold. John Arnold is a former hedge fund operator who accumulated a fortune estimated at $4 billion and who now devotes himself to philanthropy. The difference is in the approach to philanthropy, which is illustrated with the quotes below. (The Foundation website is at http://www.arnoldfoundation.org/front.

The foundation's approach is to "focus on systemic problems without easy answers ". The Arnold's define this focus as "public-policy problems that led to ... "moral inefficiencies". Their methodology is to "spend a lot of time doing research and evaluating data, and then make a handful of big bets, even if they involve considerable risk" (similar to well run hedge funds). Areas of particular interest are K-12 education and the U.S. justice system.

What I like about the Arnold approach is the following:

Focus on the really big problems (the only one's worth working on)
Use a data driven, analytical approach to develop new solutions (don't follow the philanthropy crowd)
Focus on the project results and their measurement
Set aside the "feel good" part of philanthropy and look at the results produced

10 Fun Books for Entrepreneurs

2013-05-17T12:16:09-04:00

It's rare when I find a list of books on entrepreneurship or business where several of the books I have read and found worth reading. Inc. magazine has a new list out, "10 Eye-Opening Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read". These books are not academic type books like Jim Collins or Clayton Christensen write but rather more practical and perhaps easier to understand.

I have read 6-10 and 1 on the list. Great vacation reading. My most recent post on books to read is "Summer Reading-Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking" and all the other posts on books are here.

Design Thinking

2013-05-13T10:08:38-04:00

My thinking on the new business concept development process has changed over time. I now believe that the process has two parts:

the design process
the business model development

The two parts are really an integrated whole, but the design process starts with understanding the customer and their need and produces the product or service. The business model is the plan to commercialize the product or service. All of which is a hypothesis until tested in the market.

Design process probably dates back to the Romans, but it became formalized beginning around 2000. The concept of this process, called "design thinking", is perhaps most easily understood by this simple graphic below from the Stanford Design School. A full explanation of these concepts from Stanford is here.

Coincident with the emergence of design thinking as a formal process was the recognition that such an approach could be applied not only to products (physical objects) but also services (e.g. customer service) and customer experiences (e.g. user manuals). In fact I think formalized design thinking emerged in response to the increased scope of applications for design, perhaps motivated by the designers' recognition that their expertise had much wider application.. if they could only find a way to explain it or show its application.

The question I have been pondering is why formalized design thinking emerged when it did, around 2000. At that time the first Internet bubble was quickly approaching. That bubble demonstrated for the first time the wide spread acceptance and traction of the Internet. One of the things that the Internet made possible was a much closer relationship between the customer and the provider of a product or service. As the capabilities of the Internet grew (Twitter, FB, etc.) the potential relationship grew even closer. While historically the relationship was with the physical product, now the relationship was much wider due to the greater availability of information and the ease with which one could communicate a review or critique. These closer relationships demanded that companies have a much more developed understanding of the customer, what might be called empathy. Design was one of the few workable disciplines that incorporated such thinking about empathy..early in their process (Step 1 above). Therefore, design had the toolkit to assist companies to take a comprehensive look at the customer relationship that now included products, services and customer experience. This quote from Nelson Kunkel at Deloitte Consulting makes the point eloquently:

"The ultimate design is simple. It's the pursuit of transparency."

(If you are going to have genuine and comprehensive relationships, transparency is a requirement.)

Design thinking is a useful process in part because it has such wide application. I encourage the reader to better understand design thinking. If you prefer videos to reading, the video below from Cooper Hewitt is short and entertaining.

Note: After first publishing this post I found this article that shows even more explicitly how some people are thinking about the relationship between business model and design thinking, from Design Thinking Network.

My Speech at Honors College Colloquium at FIU

2013-05-08T15:33:54-04:00

Recently I was invited to speak at FIU where I teach. The forum was the Honors College Colloquium. I spoke about the relationship between entrepreneurship and design, ways to think about "impossible" problems and a little on OLPC. The hour long video is below.

MOOCs, Online Education and Universities

2013-05-07T07:50:54-04:00

I laughed at this story from The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Faculty Backlash Grows Against Online Courses". According to the story, philosophy professors at San Jose State rejected the administration's request to use an online course from a renown Harvard Professor. The SJS professors' argument was that this was the first step in a plan to reduce teaching positions in the Philosophy Department.

The President of the university is an advocate of reducing the time and cost to get a degree by increasing the use of online courses. Tuition has increased over 100% in the last 10 years for in-state students at public universities (such as SJS) and 60% for private universities, according to the College Board as reported by CNN. These increases are far in excess of inflation and suggest an "industry" likely to be disrupted. Looks like the President of SJS has a legitimate concern.

If we step back and look at the problem universities face, I conclude the following:

Few students benefit from lectures unless the professor is both brilliant and an excellent orator (George Polya comes to mind); this is a rare combination
Textbook reading is more efficient and effective than lectures for conveying basic facts and simple theories
Most students look to professors for help with applying the coursework in real world, practical ways
Problem solving and analytical techniques are the areas where students can most benefit from teacher involvement

Where I think MOOCs and online courses will end up at universities is as part of a two-tier tuition scheme:

Lower cost online courses with no live professor involvement
More expensive courses that combine in classroom time with a professor and online lectures

I know lots of motivated students who take Coursera courses in addition to their full-time class load. Given the choice, more students would opt for online courses without a live professor if the quality matched the best professors on Coursera or edX and the courses counted toward their degree. Maybe we should focus the problem on what the students prefer.

The views stated herein are my personal views and do not reflect the opinions of any organization, university or client with whom I am affiliated.

What the Economic Statistics Show

2013-05-06T07:43:08-04:00

In celebration of May Day, Business Insider reviewed three key economic indicators:

Corporate profit margins are at an all time high of almost 11%, levels not seen in the last 70 years
Wages as a percent of the economy have hit a 60 year low
Only about 58% of workers are working, levels not seen since the 1980s

There is no reason to expect these trends to change in the near future:

Interest rates will remain low, which helps profitability
Lax regulation and Washington gridlock will do little to change the playing field
Continued new applications of IT will disrupt industries and eliminate more jobs (e.g. university education)

Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek, poster boys for the left and right respectively, predicted today's environment. Strange but true, they both predicted a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, aided by a political system that protected them. Hayek's solution to the situation would be individual entrepreneurship as a means to control your economic destiny. Marx perhaps advocated revolution. With all the drones appearing in our skies, I recommend entrepreneurship.

This post, "How to Survive the End of the Industrial Age", may be of interest.

Summer Reading-Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking

2013-05-03T07:09:44-04:00

Everybody should try to read more during summer vacation. Some of the books I am considering for my new course "Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking" are below.

Marvin Minsky "The Emotion Machine"
Barbara Millman "How to Think Like a Graphic Designer"
Richard Hamming "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering"
CK Prahalad "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid"
Karl Ulrich "Design: The Creation of Artifacts in Society" http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~ulrich/designbook.html
D School Bootcamp Bootleg (Stanford) http://sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com/files/bootcampbootleg2009.pdf

Bonus reading: Ian Stewart "In Pursuit of the Unkown: 17 Equations that Changed the World"

Not page turners but 5 out of 6 are classics.

New Miami VC-Medina Capital

2013-04-29T14:42:00-04:00

The number of professionally run venture capital firms in Miami can be counted on one hand with fingers left over. This is one of the major reasons that Miami is a city of SMEs and few high tech startups.

A new VC has emerged in Miami, Medina Capital, organized by local Manny Medina who sold his Terremark business to Verizon for $1.4 billion. The new firm will focus on disruptive technology principally in cyber security, cloud computing, big data and storage. The focus is on early stage software companies. Typical investment is $10-20 million over the life of the investment. The firm's focus is not surprising given Medina's background in data centers.

I found the original story on PE Hub.

The Future of Business School Education

2013-04-29T07:01:00-04:00

This is a recent quote from Nicholas Negroponte in Spain at the IaaC Lecture Series:

"Design school is the future, business school is dead."

The point may be stated in the extreme, but the point to consider is the importance of design in the future of business.

I have heard Nicholas talk about design several times but my thinking on design began with some posts from Frog Design after reading Helmust Esslinger's "A Fine Line" (Esslinger founded Frog Design.) Frog helped me to see the parallels to entrepreneurship in design. I then found the Stanford Design School, which is heavily influenced by the thinking of the design firm IDEO, and began reading about their design processes. Lately I have been reading Karl Ulrich's writings on design. Ulrich is another alumni of MIT (Negroponte) who teaches a Coursera offering on design. He also advocates that design should be part of a general requirements university curriculum, like writing, calculus, etc.

All of this reading lead me to realize that design process is an excellent model for the first part of a two-part process approach to entrepreneurship, which I described in this post a few days ago. I think both Nicholas and Ulrich would agree with this concept that a formal design process is the foundation of entrepreneurship, or at least the foundation to develop the hypothesis to be tested in the market. (For the sake of completeness, let us assume that the design process is used for addressing documented large market opportunities.)

In this post, "How to Survive the End of the Industrial Age", I basically argued that the individual must control their economic destiny in the 21st century and that entrepreneurship is the best solution. Therefore, I believe that business schools, as one means to teach entrepreneurship, must change as follows:

Business school curriculum must be changed to use entrepreneurship as the principal theme of the curriculum, as opposed to the current focus on strategy, productivity and finance.
Design courses and the design process must be taught as a required course with several electives in the subject
Computer science must be taught such that every graduate has sufficient knowledge to program, understand the design of a computer or smart phone at the component level and recognize a business opportunity in big data and the technology required to commercialize it, to name a few courses to be offered
Every student needs to develop a new business with each course/semester helping the student to refine their concept and commercialize it. (Ideally the business school would provide the seed money.)
Adjunct professors with practical experience would teach a larger percentage of the courses

(All of my posts on design are here.)

Image credit: Systemtek

LEGO School of the Future

2013-04-25T07:18:02-04:00

Many experts are considering what a school should be in the 21st century in order to foster "21st century skills" in children. 21st century skills generally are described to include:

Creativity
Critical thinking
Collaboration
Communication

Some experts add problem solving skills to the list but I personally believe it is redundant if critical thinking is developed properly.

One company that has a long history in child learning is LEGO, the Danish company. They have a long history of innovation in toys and robots to foster participatory, hands on learning (as opposed to consumptive learning). LEGO has announced that the LEGO Foundation is opening a new school, which I believe is their first school. The Isbillund International School will serve children 3-16. LEGO describes the school as follows:

"Children are open-minded, curious and innovative. They are not afraid to experiment. These abilities will be nurtured in our school to help our pupils reach their full potential. We believe that all children have the right to become the best they can be. The school is based on Danish learning traditions, the IB [international baccalaureate] programmes and the creative approach of the LEGO Group."

School activities begin at 7am with breakfast and include after school activities til 5pm.

What I like about the school:

The LEGO philosophy of hands on learning applies to all courses and not just science and robotics
The International Baccalaureate is a rigorous curriculum that is used beginning in the primary school
The school starts for 3 year olds when children are in their most formative intellectual period

If LEGO were to ask for my suggestions, I would offer three ideas:

There should be no grades; students should be able to learn a subject or area of interest at their own pace.
The concept of a school building should be re-thought; instead of using classrooms as the core concept, the building should be designed to foster communication and collaboration between students.
Use teachers as mentors or guides and rely on e-learning to provide basic instruction; of course every child would have their own connected laptop computer.

My New Seminar-Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking

2013-04-22T07:26:14-04:00

In the fall I am going to teach a new undergraduate seminar at FIU--"Entrepreneurship, Design and Thinking". In many ways this course is the result of my thinking over the last three years on entrepreneurship. An important part of my thinking on entrepreneurship is that it is a process, a deliberate set of steps, that leads to better results. I now believe that this process has two parts:

The design process, in which the customer problem is defined and a solution is developed to fill the gap caused by the problem. An excellent book on the design process is Karl Ulrich's Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society, which is used in Ulrich's Coursera design course.
The business model process, wherein the five parts of a business model are systematically analyzed and the best choices are selected. (My book, Billion Dollar Company, deals with the business model process.)

However, neither of these processes individually or together explain the difference between great new business ideas and mediocre ones. What explains the difference is the quality and type of thinking that one brings to the development of the startup. Therefore, to provide a complete methodology on entrepreneurship, I have concluded that I need to teach about thinking, the alternative approaches to problem solving and other methodologies.

Fortunately, Marvin Minsky has written a lot on the subject of thinking about complex problems. One of Minsky's books that deals with thinking is "The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind". (Ulrich studied with Minsky at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, that Minsky co-founded.) The quote from Minsky that started me thinking about thinking is a remark he made at the 25th anniversary of the MIT Media Lab.

As I more fully develop the curriculum for the seminar, I will be posting on the readings for the course. I will continue to teach my courses on entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship.

The Wisdom of Hayek

2013-04-22T06:52:00-04:00

I really like this quote from Cafe Hayek.

"The ultimate ends of the activities of reasonable beings are never economic. Strictly speaking, there is no “economic motive” but only economic factors conditioning our striving for other ends. What in ordinary language is misleadingly called the “economic motive” means merely the desire for general opportunity, the desire for power to achieve unspecified ends." The Road to Serfdom F.A. Hayek

The beauty of this quote from Hayek is that it focuses on the social objective and makes the economic benefits secondary or more precisely a means to an end. This, of course, has been shown to be the pattern frequently in successful entrepreneurship at scale.

Like I always say, start with the theory!!

What Happens After All the Productivity Gains Are Gone

2013-04-18T06:59:00-04:00

Since the 1960s and the advent of computers, productivity gains have been a major driver in the growth of business profits. However, with little new computer technology on the horizon (see this post), the benefits of computing have probably been optimized by the large corporations that drive the economy. What choices do the large corporations have to drive profitability:

Focus on reducing government regulations, which is a considerable cost of doing business; however, with the growing concern about the morality of capitalism (see this post), this strategy may not be successful.
Commit significant capital to developing markets; this strategy only works if all the major competitors follow the same strategy and products are suitable for the bottom of the pyramid (see this post).
Focus on innovation as opposed to the safer line extension strategies; large corporations have had limited success with developing innovative new products and have some difficulty in recognizing the value of their innovations (Intel divesting their "ARM" chip business might be an example.)
More corporations could become lead investors in venture capital investments, following the example of companies such as Intel and Google; acquisition of the startups could become a source of future growth as Cisco demonstrates (a list of Cisco acquisitions is here).

None of these strategies are easy to execute, although number 4 may appear comparatively easier. A focus on innovation (3) is probably the best strategy, but few companies have a culture of true innovation and even fewer executives who have the risk profile and experience to successfully manage a business built on innovation.

More likely, we will have a 1960s like period of mega-mergers to hide the slowing growth of large corporations. Everybody knows how to do acquisitions :)

Meritocracy

2013-04-08T09:03:09-04:00

The NYT Sunday Review had an article, the Secrets of Princeton, in which they criticized the university for selecting upper class students over lower class students with higher GPAs and test scores. They went on to say that such an approach helps to undermine democracy and perhaps capitalism.

Princeton was founded in 1746 and has probably been selecting students the same way for the last 267 years. Yet the U.S. has flourished in that same period both politically and economically. Princeton's admission policy appears to have little effect. The admission policies of elite Ivy League schools do not undermine the meritocracy in this country. The policies merely point out that certain people could do more to foster a meritocracy.

It is No Longer about Jobs

2013-04-01T06:49:57-04:00

President Obama has been focused on short term job creation. While this has positive effects on the lives of the unemployed, it does little to correct structural problems in the system. The President should be focused on leading a national initiative to reform education for the 21st century so that people have the skills required to better manage their own economic well being. There are two powerful reasons for such an initiative:

The country badly needs a stated direction. Since the fall of communism the country has had no core focus, a set of beliefs and aspirations that unite us. The recent plague of congressional bi-partisanship is a symptom of such a lack of direction.
There will be fewer and fewer traditional jobs that were so plentiful after WWII. Outsourcing, offshoring and increasing labor productivity all point to the erosion of the traditional notion of jobs.

As Thomas Friedman so eloquently states in this Sunday Review NYT's article, there are only:

"high-wage, high-skilled job[s]".. “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge".

The job opportunities that remain will require the ability to add value rather than perform rote tasks.

No less a commentator than Clayton Christensen, the HBS professor, shares Friedman's view. Christensen believes that the education system is so endangered that even the continued existence of HBS is in doubt. Christensen believes that education must become more practical to meet the requirements of the 21st century.

Another group that shares the Friedman view is Education Futures, who advocates for Knowmads. "A Knowmad is a "creative, imaginative, and innovative person who can work with almost anybody, anytime, and anywhere."

My own views match very closely with Friedman, as shown in this post from January 2012 titled "How to Survive the End of the Industrial Age". For about the last two years in my entrepreneurship classes, I have been advocating that students study entrepreneurship as much for the skills required in a jobless 21st century as for learning how to identify opportunities and build large new companies. The skills required for entrepreneurs are detailed in this post and closely match Friedman's emphasis on critical thinking, collaboration and communication. These skills can, of course, be learned at a very young age. The original research on learning by Jean Piaget demonstrated this fact.

One may wish to point out that a dramatic change to the education system does not require federal government leadership. However, the private sector appears as disinterested as the governemnt in reforming education to produce 21st century skills. The non-profit sector lacks the resources to really take on the challenge. Most likely the U.S. will just muddle through to mediocrity by never vigorously considering the skills that children need for the 21st century. The Bush initiative for "no child left behind" would appear to support my view on the future of U.S. education.

To reform education requires four key parts:

Education must be focused on student centric learning to match the need in the 21st century for individual responsibility for economic well being; self-paced learning as opposed to grade-based classes is probably a natural outcome of such an approach
Education must be managed at the local level rather than by the federal government in order to encourage community support for the initiative; community/parental support greatly improves educational outcomes
Teaching of entrepreneurship needs to be started at the middle school level to reorient the next generation of children to the concept that they must manage their economic well being
Online resources need to be meaningfully integrated into the curriculum to free up resources for the new educational environment, which means that teachers likely will need training to successfully work in the new environment

Do five year olds need to manage their own fate. Probably not, but they need to be raised in an environment that encourages individual initiative and not rote memorization of facts that are better explained by an online lecturer.

Addition: This post from Edudemics advocates four activities for students to foster learning. Number 3 is startups.

Image credit: www.nche.gov.mt The irony is noted.