JACK MIXNER STRATEGY

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Two ideas (Harford, Flipping) to make innovation happen faster (maybe, on a national basis): 1. Reward innovation with big contests, 2. Research funders set aside a portion of their funds for high risk ventures.

Seemingly, these are contrarian ideas. Spend more money - more risky money - on unproven ideas. Good idea? The statistics say yes. The X Prize spurred private developments in space. Netflix paid $1 million to independent developers who came up with the perfect way to offer folks movies they'd be interested in.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the NIH are more likely to fund crazy ideas (Harford, Positive).

Reference

Harford, Tim. Flipping the Switch: We're running out of bright ideas. Here's how to fire up the innovation machine. Wired. June 2011. 26-27.

Harford, Tim. Positive Black Swans. http://www.slate.com/id/2293699/pagenum/all/#p2

Harford, Tim. Why Success Always Starts With Failure. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011

Posted by jackmixner at 02:48 PM | Permalink

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I sat through six start-up company funding presentations at the OCTANe VC in The OC event [ www.vcintheoc2011.com/main.html ] last week. I am glad I did as I refreshed myself on what it takes to have a fundable deal. Each of the presentations, to varying degrees, was fundable because of two main attributes, the status of their product/service and the status of their management team.

Rich and Gumpert's system lays it all out on a simple one page graph with product/service status on the y axis and management status on the x axis (Rich, 169). Each is labeled one to four with a 1:1 deal having a "single, would-be founder-entrepreneur" and a "product or service idea, but not yet operable," with the "market assumed." The "most desirable" deal, a 4:4 deal has a fully developed product or service, many satisfied users, an established market and is fully staffed with an experienced managegment team.

Chuck Copin's presentation at OCTANe [ Renewit http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/1e6/180/1d6/Renewit.pdf ] is a good example. Renewit has sales, which also means the product is fully developed and, basically, embraced by a market place. As importantly, they've taken the time to figure out what their marketplace is. Sales channels are identified, competitors named and strengths/weaknesses pointed out. So the market is described, the product developed, and maybe, a market developed. On the Rich-Gumpert scale, they might be a 3.5 for Product/Service Status.

People-wise, Renewit has a CEO and a Founder with two highly experienced advisors. We don't have a business plan, nor do we know who is managing production and the rest of operations. They're asking for $0.7 million. We might assume that some of the money is going for experienced managers, but we don't know for sure based on the limited information we have so far. Since they are in production and shipping, we can assume that they are out-sourcing, a useful, proven way to go in today's global marketplace. Maybe we can give Renewit a 3.0 for Management Status. Without a full business plan, we have been able to score Renewit's deal as a 3.0:3.5 which actually is a pretty good score. With more information, we might score it differently.

Now comes the hard part. How does your company score on the two scales? Will investors - or maybe, the bank - agree? That's the real test.

Reference

Rich, Stanley R. and David E. Gumpert. Business Plans That Win $$$. Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum. Harper & Row. 1985.

Posted by jackmixner at 08:27 AM | Permalink

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It's pretty safe to say that all of us like the appearance of the Google website.  Not much there, is there? For a while, my website had a picture, my name, my email, and that was about it. I've since redone my site to include more descriptors on the home page. You want your site to be searchable by Google's search engines so you get some results from your site. Label things "We Make Widgets" not "What We Do" so Google can figure it out as well. Put your most important content on your home page. Make sure you have a call to action for humans and dynamic content modules for spiders (Goldman, 53). Have a simple message that makes people remember you and want to visit you.

Jack Mixner Strategy

• Everyone knows the plan.
• Everyone implements.
• Everyone cares.
• Profits increase.
• So does valuation.               
  
  

Reference

Goldman, Aaron. Everything I know about marketing I learned from Google. McGraw-Hill. 2011.

Posted by jackmixner at 12:19 PM | Permalink

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We used to read newspapers and watch the 7:00 news shows. Not any longer. Since we're getting our news from all sorts of sources, here are some questions to ask yourself about your news source of choice (Kovach, 32):

1. What kind of content am I encountering?
2. Is the information complete; and if not, what is missing?
3. Who or what are the sources, and why should I believe them?
4. What evidence is presented, and how was it tested or vetted?
5. What might be an alternative explanation or understanding?
6. Am I learning what I need to? 

When I realized that all the politicians and newspapers nationwide were reading the early editions of the New York Times to decide what stories they needed to spin that day, I started reading the NYT religiously. Things are shifting since the NYT has started charging for its site (although that charging seems to pretty non-intrusive, even for this pretty heavy user). I've been pausing a bit to decide whether I'll pay the Times for their content or trust other sites to give me "good enough" news. That list, above, will be part of the test process I use as I look at new sites and sources. The news business is in the midst of disruption. What to do is an interesting question.

Reference

Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel. Blur: how to know what’s true in the age of information overload. Bloomsbury USA. 2010.

Posted by jackmixner at 11:59 AM | Permalink

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It is the year 1720. You, a traveler, arrive in the Italian town of Cremona in search of the best violins made. You look on the street of the violin shops. At the mouth of the street, immediately to the left, you see the shop of the Guarneri family. In its window is a very large sign with majestic calligraphy: Best Violins in All of Italy. Farther down on the right you see the shop belonging to the Gagliano family. In its window is an even grander sign: Best Violins in the Whole World. Down at the end of the street, tucked in the shady cul-de-sac, you find a small shop belonging to the Stradivarius family. In its window there is a small card. You have to lean over and squint to read the handwritten message: Best Violins on This Street (Denning, 379).

Denning's books starts you down the innovation path: first learn for yourself. Then bring what you know to your community, your company. Only then do you start thinking about global excellence. He and Dunham lay out the steps.

Reference

Denning, Peter J. and Robert Dunham. The innovator’s way: essential practices for successful innovation. The MIT Press. 2010.

Posted by jackmixner at 11:28 AM | Permalink

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Most of us can remember the loneliness of walking back from home-plate after having struck out at bat. Not too good a feeling. Slowly, however, it dawns on us that there might be an explanation. Batting averages for the best batters average, maybe, .325 or so. For every ten times at bat, you can expect to strike out more than six times. Now things are starting to look better. What to do? Practice seemed to be one of the suggestions. Keep going up to the plate. Keep swinging. You will start to have more and more successes. Now, in a business environment, is practicing good enough?

Having a look at what went wrong - or right - might be in order. Failures seem to get more attention, but understanding why you made that first sale to IBM might help you make that crucial second sale. Folks have to want to take the time to look at their processes. Learning cultures (Edmondson, 51) examine their decisions to see which ones could have been made differently so next time goes better. Figuring out that something went wrong is the first step; analyzing it is the next. Experimenting to see if making simple changes will help outcomes is third.

These steps - detecting, analyzing, experimenting - ultimately lead to more successes. In some environments, perfection is the goal. In others, perfection is only a dream. Knowing, however, what went right or wrong in both perfect and less perfect environments still makes sense.

Reference

Edmondson, Amy C. Strategies For Learning From Failure. Harvard Business Review. April 2011. 49-55.

Posted by jackmixner at 11:08 AM | Permalink

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References

Bogle, John C. Don't Count On It! Reflections on investment illusions, capitalism, "mutual" funds, indexing, entrepreneurship, idealism, and heros. Wiley. 2011. 

Burns, Rebecca. Burial for a King. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Funeral and the Week That Transformed Atlanta and Rocked the Nation. Scribner. 2011. 

Denning, Peter J. and Robert Dunham. The innovator’s way: essential practices for successful innovation. The MIT Press. 2010.

Edmondson, Amy C. Strategies For Learning From Failure. Harvard Business Review. April 2011. 49-55.

Goldman, Aaron. Everything I know about marketing I learned from Google. McGraw-Hill. 2011.

Gostick, Adrian and Chester Elton. The Orange Revolution. How one great team can transform an entire organization. Free Press. 2010.

Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken. A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Random House. 2010.

Jones, Clarence B. and Stuart Connelly. Behind the Dream: the making of  the speech that transformed a nation. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011.

Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel. Blur: how to know what’s true in the age of information overload. Bloomsbury USA. 2010.

Lawrence, Greg. Jackie as Editor. The Literary Life of Jacueline Kennedy Onassis. Thomas Dunne Books. 2011.

Parinello, Anthony. Selling to VITO: the Very Important Top Officer. Adams Media Corporation. 1999.

Prince, Cathryn J. A Professor, A President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science. Prometheus Books. 2011.

Rutledge, Patrice-Anne. Using LinkedIn. Pearson Education, Inc. 2010.

Schepp, Brad and Debra Shepp. How to Find a Job on LinkedIn Facebook MySpace Twitter and Other Social Networks. McGraw-Hill. 2010.

Posted by jackmixner at 08:03 AM | Permalink