Watch this movie, it illustrates an important point.  To succeed you must fail.

What skills do you have?  What are your strengths?  What is the one thing you are good at? Is this the truth?

Many of us were raised in a system that plants false assumptions and we accept them.  Why do we accept them? Because authority figures told us.  We are taught to look up to, respect and listen to anything and everything that they say when growing up.  Teachers, Scientists, Doctors, Coaches, Adults, Parents all had an influence on you.  Some of it would be positive, but a lot of it will be negative.  What are the false assumptions that someone told you?  Are these assumptions true today?  I was told by my 6th form math teacher that I would never learn maths.  I studied computer science at  university and got an A in all maths papers.  This is just the knife edge.  Make a list of your false assumptions and challenge them.  Are they true? or just useless thoughts conditioned by a past that simply does not exist?

Entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game.  A zero sum game is like poker where at the end of the hand you have one winner and everyone else loses.  Markets do not work like that.  A popular misconception is that if someone else has already thought about an idea, patented it, or incorporated a company around that idea then you are too late! The market has been taken!

This is false.

There are always more customers, parts of the market your competitors cannot touch.  No product is identical.  If IT IS a zero sum game then explain to me the 150 different types of salad dressings I can buy at the local supermarket?

That should prompt some thinking. 

It amazes me that doctors prescribe regular activity (3 times a week) for physical health, but leave mental health.  Mental health is probably the most important issue surrounding mankind today.  Yet we do not talk about this?  Or we prescribe dangerous medications in order for a quick fix to handle all cases.

There is a simpler solution:

Dedicate 1/2 an hour each day to sit still and clear your mind.  Breathe deeply.  I dare you.  For some strange reason we are afraid of going inside ourselves.  Try it tomorrow, you do not know what you will find

At school we were taught that there is only one way to solve a problem.  With test and essays, we had to provide an answer exactly in accordance to the teachers answer book.

If I were to ask you what is 7 and 7 equal, the only answer is 14? right?

Wrong.  I have not said what 7 is, whether its a number 7 or 7 eggs or written like “Seven” or any other definition.

The point from this silly example is that there is always more than one way to do anything.  This is a key insight to the innovation process.

What do we do when we are thinking of ideas?  We often stop thinking of new ideas once we come to one we think is right.  This is exactly the mentality as the 7 + 7 example.  

Keep going, create more ideas.  You will find miracles.

Sometimes its nice to take a break and work from somewhere different. Yesterday for a few hours I temporarily moved my office to the hills above wellington. Here I could think clearer and it gave me fresh inspiration and ideas. I highly recommend it.

A popular buzzword among entrepreneurs (especially technologists) is the notion of crossing the chasm. This involves the shift in adoption from early adopters to a mainstream market. Based on Crossing the Chasm a book by Geoffrey A Moore this theory is relevant in a mass market psychology.

The problem with going for a mass market “sweep” is that it rarely happens anymore, especially in technology. There are an infinite number of choices for all consumers in a society increasingly dominated by clutter.

A more effective strategy is to push for a niche. Adopt the long tail. Kevin Kelly puts a good point that if you get 1,000 true fans you’ve got your living. Good in a small sense, but does this scale? The auction giant EBay is a niche product. Netting 3% of the internets users at any one time. Lets face it, there is no mass market in an increasingly connected world with no borders, there simply is too much choice.

The model has changed. For example if you are featured on a prominant blog such as techcrunch or a news network such as CNN early adopters and adopters will know of your existence. The challenge then comes not from adoption but to persuasion.

The idea of a mass market is an old-age myth of boom or bust, of a 20th century fantasy regarding a zero sum game. If you cannot sustain your business, then you need to rethink your strategy but if you want your product to be used by everyone, then start making it average.

The most important chasm that exists is one that is within your Niche. Crossing that involves a combination of acceptance, timing and hard-work. Cross from bleeding edge adopters to early adopters is ideal. Apple does this successfully with around 3% of the total computing market and billions of dollars in revenue.

Walking around Wellington, I often look at pedestrians faces to see if they are actually aware of the present moment. Are they aware of what is going on around them? Are they looking at their surroundings? observing what is happening right now? Most are not.

The majority of people I observe have blank faces. They are running images in their mind of the future, or the past. Scenarios like “what if this happens”, or “what didnt I do that”.

Living in the now provides a path to absolute clarity. Obsessing over the future (or the past) is insanity. Why? Because it is not real, its in your mind. All that is real is right now.

Seth Godin writes a timeless article on following ideas:

Walter Hunt patented the safety pin almost exactly 160 years ago.

It looks an awful lot like a fibula, which, of course, is used to hold your toga shut.

My friend Kevin has one (not a toga, a fibula). An old one. He’s very proud of it.

So, the question that Walter Hunt didn’t ask is this, “Why should I bother patenting the safety pin? It’s already been done. I mean, even John Belushi has a fibula.”

Just about everything has a strike against it. It’s either already been done or it’s never been done. Ignore both conditions. Pushing an idea through the dip of acceptance is far more valuable than inventing something that’s never existed… and then walking away from it.

Apple has achieved success with its closed model of computing. Apples vision of computing as an appliance (hardware + software) calls for a closed system.  This approach could be creating one of the companies greatest catch 22 situations.

With the released of the Iphone and the consumer reaction to the closed system of providers and software platform, this has seen an uprising in an open-source community creating thousands of applications for the Iphone at little or no charge.  The consumer reaction to the device was positive, but to AT & T and a closed system; quite the opposite.  

Now Apple faces itself with a catch 22 dilemma. Psystar a company that has just started up in California now offering reverse engineered cheap hardware that will run Apples operating system. In other words Mac clones.  This opens up Apples software and takes away Apples control.  Naturally Apple will file suit with Psystar.

Perhaps this approach is not the best?

The future will be Open Systems and I see parallels in the Iphones hyper adoption and Apples latest OSX issue.  If Apple wants to be a large player they could simply certify other hardware providers to run OSX and increase their marketshare.  To keep their niche Apple would reject the notion of open and play the way they always have; closed.

Only time will tell.

Today at the bookstore I discovered this book on Lamborghini’s (above).  Great! I thought, lets have a look. No joy. The book was wrapped in cellophane.  Why?  The Authors percieved value of looking at pictures of Lamborghinis is obviously higher enough to only allow the reader to look at a single picture on the front and back cover.  Why is this the only wrapped book in the store?

This type of closed tactic immediately arises two questions in my mind:

• What are you hiding?
• Does your product have any value?

Is your company wrapped in cellophane? Most companies are.  

Transparency builds trust.

There has never been a greater truth as is this:

Thoughts in your mind; ideas, thoughts, concepts, situations, scenarios, future events. They do not exist.

No-one has ever got rich off a future idea or been killed by a past thought.

These exist in your mind and they are not real. They are not real

People get rich of acting in the NOW. right now, this is the only reality.

Success is an accumulation of nows.

The constant repetitive ACTION of the moment, the reality.

What are you doing now?

Google Apps have formed a partnership with Salesforce.com, a popular CRM.

Its an interesting move and one for the better in my thoughts. I have been trialing Salesforce for a while and the setup was relatively simple to integrate with google docs. For the other services such as gmail and calender, I am dissapointed and I wasted 1/2 an hour trying to get this to work. Why? because of you need a paid version of salesforce to “trial” this. How much? Well the only way to get this is to contact salesforce. bad move. Build trust with me and then I might buy from you.

I would prefer Highrise integration. Its a CRM minus the bloat that you get with “useless feature rich” applications. With Highrise you sign up for the free version and all the pricing is disclosed at all times to the user, so they know what they are in for and can plan ahead. If only Salesforce was this transparent then this would be a sure winner.

Transparancy builds trust.

Al Gore gives a moving and inspirational speech to update his ground breaking inconvenient truth speech:

We must ALL act now. More to come from me.

Cleared the mailbox today at NZPost and was greeted with the usual sight:

Why on one hand talk about corporate responsibility and sustainability and on the other hand bombard mailboxes with junk mail? NZPost earns money from advertisers (real life spammers) so they let it happen.

What a waste of resources.

Walk your talk.

Whether you think you can or think you cannot; either way, you are right

Nothing could be closer to the truth, in business and in life.

Was checking out some of the latest software as a service (Saas) companies at simplespark when I noticed that many offer a “free 30 day trial”. That got me thinking.

A free 30 day trial used to be worth something as it was a means of re-assuring the buyers confidence before making a purchase.

I don’t think this method works now. 30 day trials are disappointing and not really worth anything. If I see a 30 day trial and I do not know the app, I will close the page. Why? Because there is no trust between me and the company. In order to gain my trust, I need free. The cutting edge SaaS providers give away free versions of their software and sell pro versions. E.g Flickr, Salesforce, Gmail, Basecamp etc etc

30 days builds a trial, free builds trust

Great Ideas alone don’t guarantee success. Original ideas don’t either. Success is accomplished using a combination of execution and more importantly timing. Why do I say timing? There were dozens of video sharing sites before YouTube. Dozens of web mail applications before Gmail and many social networks before MySpace and Facebook. What these successful iterations did was combine an already embraced concept and take successful elements of the old and slightly adjust and tweak the features to what users really wanted. The timing had to be right for these companies to succeed. Timing as in: features, the date, current events, market overview, morale.

Past experience matters, the problem is it does not always matter. So often I read of new companies that are run by a previous leader in another field or of a top athletes transferring from one team to another riding a wave of fame but reaping a mediocre performance.

The reason is because everything has changed. The team is different, the world is different, the opportunity is different.

The entrepreneur with a golden touch is a rarity.

Its a bit like the stock market. Its impossible to predict the future

Often I talk to other entrepreneurs about ideas and they are reluctant to tell me as I might “steal their ideas”. The truth is that I have too much to work on myself and am not interested in the slightest in stealing their ideas. Most likely the idea is not my passion, so therefore not worthy of me. Its an interesting psychology. Lets compare:

Form Idea: Keep it under-wraps. Start to create product: tell people. Finish product: Tell everyone

It works better like this

Form Idea: Tell Everyone. Start to create product:Keep it under-wraps Finish product: Tell everyone

The reason being is I could talk about a product but you don’t really know the details of it. There is only a slight but small danger in sharing ideas and that is being beaten to market 1/2 way through a design, when you have time and resources invested. The risk is minimal. On the bright-side, you will have someone to compare against.

Jawdropping to say the least, love the “wallet card” at the end.

Peter Jones, successful businessman and TV star of Dragons Den outlines them in this video

1. Vision
2. Influence
3. Confidence
4. Commitment
5. Results Orientated
6. Timing
7. Perseverance
8. Caring
9. Action
10. Intuition

Often entrepreneurs are consumed with a vision and influence (network) or people. Caring for others (staff and customers) and Intuition seem to be the most neglected. Intuition is VERY important when it comes to making key decisions. Timing is often overlooked as well; doesnt make sense to release a product in a bad cycle. Simply getting an idea and going mad is not very strategic.

Marie-Claire Andrews writes an interesting blog post about this. This is so true.  Often people are so precious about their ideas, believing the idea itself is the worth.

The outdated romanticism of the mad scientist working away in the basement to only be discovered is not the case. It is the execution of the idea and the pleasure from creation that should motivate an entrepreneur.

A true entrepreneur wants to change something for the better, for the masses. The true entrepreneur is not motivated by credit or fame or their own benefits.

It is societies benefit that motivates the entrepreneur.

2 great posts from Kevin Kelly and Chris Anderson.  Meaty posts, but well worth the read.

Free as in Gmail, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Wikipedia only touch the surface.  More to come soon.

There has never been a greater time to bridge gaps:

• The Injured to the Recovered
• The learner to the learned
• The mentor to the apprentice
• The seeker to the provider
• The lost to the found