Don't Skin the Turkey

It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, it only matters that it catches mice. Deng Xiaopeng

I came across a variation of a common question the other day on the Front End of Innovation LinkedIn Group.

"What is more relevant for a start-up? 1) creating a prototype, test marketing and modification of prototype, or 2) extensive market analysis prior to prototyping".

Variations on that question often ask about timing of intellectual property filings, when to raise money, what type of financing to obtain, etc. 

The root question is 'what is the best way to bring a new product to market'?

As I read through the well written responses, it brought back memories from my academic days studying entrepreneurs. Over a decade I had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of innovators in dozens of industries. Here's what I found:

1) Their conviction that the best way to do it was the way they did.

2) Their condemnation of other peoples' approaches

3) There was no (obvious) common path to all and little in common between any two.

I considered that there was more than one way to skin a cat. Upon further reflection I decided that everyone was skinning a different animal. Finally, I decided that each innovation, each business, is it's own, unique monster, some in need of plucking, others in need of skinning and most defying stupid metaphors.

To take extreme examples: The regulatory issues of a new therapeutic drug create different obstacles to prototyping than a new smart phone app. A new weapons system requires a very different approach than a new house paint.

Even potential products that on the surface would seem to be very similar will follow different commercialization pathways because of competitors reactions, intellectual property landscape, production input costs, government regulations, corporate ownership structure and strategy, cannibalization of existing business, technological weaknesses, availability of capital, structure of capital, human capital availability, existing customer relationships, etc...and, importantly, luck.

Perhaps, at some very high level, one can argue that all innovation pathways have something in common. Some type of generic model that can be packaged and sold as a model by a consulting guru. 

However, at the level of execution, the only common denominator I can find is the very human factor of sifting through hundreds of inputs, identifying those more important to solving the problem at hand and making a decision.

In the end, it requires a human to make a decision and be committed to the belief that it could BE different.

Copyball

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.  Herman Melville


When it comes to cinema, I take mine late and free on the home TV (unless there are lots of special effects). So, I finally got around to watching Moneyball yesterday.

There's not a more appropriate movie for a blog on change and innovation than Moneyball. If you have not seen it, stop reading this and watch it.

It was so obvious to write about Moneyball that I assumed lots of other people had. A quick google search proved that to be the case. Everyone cheered Moneyball as a model for innovation. They could be paraphrased as 'Just adapt these half dozen lessons from the movie to your organization and, BOOM, you get innovation.'

Don't do it!

While innovation played a role in Moneyball and anyone who has tried to change an organization will see the patterns of resistance that were displayed on the screen, I certainly would not use Moneyball as a template for innovation.


The simple reason is imitation - the A's had a great season, or two, and a few OK seasons, and then returned to the bottom of the bottom as others copied their actions.

The inability of the A's to protect their intellectual property, a new process for assembling a professional baseball team, was disappointing. They could have hidden their selection criteria creating a trade secret or filed for a patent on the process for assembling a professional baseball team. I would have copyrighted computer code for determining the optimal players and licensed it.

They also failed to continue a process of innovation which could have maintained their advantage.

Now, maybe, these attempts to protect the intellectual property and continue to innovate would have failed. That certainly does not mean that the A's should not have undertaken the changes shown in the movie. It does, however, mean that as a model for innovation, it could BE different.



(I don't know if Moneyball is an accurate accounting of what happened to the A's. It's Hollywood, so I assume it has a lot of embellishments. But my point is the same either way).

PEDalling Change

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Timothy Leary


Two Armstrongs have been in the news recently and both have been central figures in changing our world view.

I don't have much to add to Neil Armstrong that wasn't covered in my article on Yuri Gagarin (my second most popular post, read it after this one and push it to the top).

As for Lance Armstrong, I have also posted on him, in an argument that he wasn't the greatest cyclist ever because his impact on the sport was not as great as the changes forced by Greg LeMond.

But maybe I've sold Lance short on his global impact over the next twenty years. He has taken the debate over performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) to a new, truly global level.

This debate is not all that important if it is limited to sports, but becomes very important when broadened to other professions. Once again we need to not ask the wrong the question.

Imagine (and it shouldn't take too much imagination) that performance enhancing drugs will exist for improving cognition, speed of thought, memory, focus, logic, creativity.

Should we ban the use of such drugs in all professions? Should we limit human performance?

It is hard to imagine how such a ban could succeed. I would certainly be prone to taking these futuristic PEDs on the assumption that other professionals would take them. I have to feed my family. I can't afford to lose. We can't stop people from obtaining harmful drugs then we surely can't stop even more from obtaining helpful drugs.

Perhaps, instead of making PEDs illegal in sports, we should start developing ways to regulate their safe use. After all, it is only a matter of time before we will have to do so for all professions. Sports could become the model for how we implement PEDs in all walks of life in a responsible manner.

When it comes to PEDs, there is little doubt that it could BE different.

Patents are Worth Less

Never confuse motion with action. Ben Franklin


Leonardo da Vinci - painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, anatomist, cartographer, botanist, geologist, writer and...

Inventor!?!

Helicopter, parachute, machine gun, musical instruments, stream cannons, scuba gear, robots, tanks and so much more are attributed to da Vinci.

But what did he really invent? I spent some time trying to find an actual da Vinci invention, one that existed outside of a drawing and functional in his day. It seems there were either none or they were unremarkable in history.

I did find one example of an attempt to reduce his drawings to practice. It seems he had a variety of ways to improve kitchen productivity. In implementing this vision, he installed conveyor belts which never could be timed to the actual needs of the cooks so that food piled up or arrived too late. He also built an oven which operated at a much higher temperature with the vision of cooking food faster but simply resulted in burnt food.

Now, much to da Vinci's credit, his conveyor belts and oven worked exactly as he planned, but the result was not the desired improvement. And this is the stumbling block of many inventions. It is not enough to be able to solve one aspect of a problem, but rather the solution must be made into a functioning part of the whole.

An invention must be more than a drawing and a few words on a piece of paper. It must add real/practical value to its user, must be manufacturable, must meet government safety regulations, must integrate into the way people want to behave and, of course, must conform to the laws of nature...and, must be significantly better than the existing alternative. Collectively, accomplishing all this is often called commercialization.

But, perhaps you think, that da Vinci provided us with the first ever vision of such possibilities. This, however, is not the case. All of his drawings evolved from prior art. Not to argue that da Vinci had not proposed more elegant and perhaps more pragmatic solutions, but simply that he was not the sole visionary.

In the most important ways, da Vinci's drawings are equivalent to the modern day patent. Much like da Vinci's drawings, for all their beauty, originality and vision, these patents are economically valueless until someone has commercialized them. (For more on this, see my blog on the master of commercialization, Thomas Edison.)

While a patent can be important in protecting the economic viability of an invention, it is important to remember it is only a part of the invention and that in the process of commercialization, the vision of the patent must often be significantly modified.

Certainly, da Vinci had a beautiful vision for the future, but it took far more than that vision so that it could BE different.

Sex and the Arab Spring

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Helen Gurley Brown

Burning bras, 'Maude', and Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King are my strongest memories of the second wave feminist movement. They weren't THE movement, but, like a less tragic version of a burning Mohamad Bouazizi launching the Arab Spring, they provided powerful symbols which invited the commoner to the debate.

These symbols were powerful motivators, but they left the motivated wanting for an action to take. By definition, these were people with no individual political or economic power and they lacked an education for self directed action. They knew what they wanted, but lacked the knowledge of how to get it.

In the Arab Spring, Gene Sharp's 'From Dictatorship to Democracy' provided these actions. In general, these were simple things that required no resources and minimal coordination.  Boycotts, sit ins, strikes and other actions focused on attacking the establishments weakest points and shifting control of power. Perhaps most importantly, he gave those who followed his advice confidence and a feeling of power over their own lives.

The feminist movement had its guide too. Helen Gurley Brown's 'Sex and the Single Girl' with its follow on monthly guidance provided by 'Cosmo'. Like Sharp, Brown pointed out to her readers the weaknesses of the establishment and provided mostly simple steps that could be taken to exploit the weakness and shift the control of power.

Just as Sharp's guide was not accepted by the more militant minded, Brown's guidance was (and still is) scorned by factions of the feminist movement.  Whether owing to the peaceful methods of Sharp/Brown, or militant efforts, or most likely a combination of the two, the efforts ended with shifts in political power that enabled the lawyer/politicians to codify change.

And so, today, in the shadow of Helen Gurley Brown's death, it's worth acknowledging her contribution to humanity, and that she knew it could BE different.

Smart Enough to Not Know Better

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. Leo Tolstoy


I have had the good fortune for the past seven years of gathering with the same nine friends to play cards every few weeks. The group as a whole is excessively educated, always current on events and, by any standard of measurement, intelligent. They're also good men, engaged equally well with their families, businesses and communities.

While our conversations are most typically around poker, sports, cars, guns, fishing, music and women (in that order as we are a fairly old group), it is rare for the political issue of the day to not be the first topic.

So I wasn't the least surprised that Chick-fil-a's CEO was at the center of discussion this past week. The arguments fell along the general lines of freedom of speech versus gay rights (and the irrelevant to this blog arguments that Chick-fil-a should be boycotted for reasons more relevant to food quality).

Replace Gay with Black, or Jew, or Irish, or Native American... and it is the same debate that has been held since the founding of the US. 

Setting aside the merits of the arguments past and present, they provide a recurring model of change which makes them of interest to this blog.

We intuitively think that it could BE different if only we could get the slow-witted people out of the way. But, whether for good or bad, it is often the most intelligent that truly stand in the way of change.

That Location Thing

When I'm shooting on location, you get ideas on the spot - new angles. You make not major changes but important modifications, that you can't do on a set. Satyajit Ray

A few decades ago, when the implications of the internet were first being discussed, many thought it would be a great equalizer to location. This belief perhaps peaked with the critical acclaim of The World is Flat in 2005 that argued location is increasingly irrelevant to economics.

After six years of trying to grow a medicinal biotechnology company in Hattiesburg, MS, I can attest that the world is less flat today than it was two decades ago.

The 'new' industries (information technology, nanotech, biotech, alternative energy) rely, almost exclusively, on intellectual property to be successful. And that equates to one thing - people. Smart, creative, well educated, highly experienced people.

This monster.com job posting - wanted, researcher with ten plus years of experience in gene silencing, oligonucleotide delivery or chemically controlled drug release, must have track record of NIH funding and experience working in a corporate environment, PhD in life sciences preferred - resulted in one marginally qualified applicant when the location was listed as Hattiesburg, but more than thirty overqualified applicants when listed as Baltimore.

Employes are crucial, but so are suppliers, customers, partners, financiers, consultants and service providers. They all contribute to the creation of intellectual property.

When you can walk across the street, have a beer, or coffee, or lunch with someone, it is different than talking to that person on the phone or exchanging emails. How easy is it to not respond to an email?  or say yes on the phone and then never answer again?

How hard is it to say no when face-to-face? and how hard to not live up to the promise when face-to-face everyday?

For me, it could BE different, and that is why my future writings will come from Baltimore.