Learning from One Data Point

September 28, 2010 By

Sometimes I get annoyed by all the pious statistician-types I find all around me. They aren’t all statisticians, but there are a lot of people who raise analytics and “data-driven” to the level of a holy activity. It isn’t that I don’t like analytics. I use statistics whenever it is a cost of doing business. You’d be dumb to not take advantages of ideas like A/B testing for messy questions.

What bothers me is that there are a lot of people who use statistics as an excuse to avoid thinking. Why think about what ONE case means, when you can create 25 cases using brute force, and code, classify, cluster, correlate and regress your way to apparent insight?

This kind of thinking is tempting, but  is dangerous. I constantly remind myself of the value of the other approach to dealing with data: hard, break-out-in-a-sweat thinking about what ONE case means. No rules, no formulas. Just thinking. I call this “learning from one data point.” It is a crucially important skill because by the time a statistically significant amount of data is in, the relevant window of opportunity might be gone.

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The Seven Dimensions of Positioning

September 21, 2010 By

I don’t like reinventing the wheel, so for months now, I’ve been trying to reconcile everything I know about traditional business (think Peter Drucker and the Harvard Business Review) with all the seductive ideas I’ve been learning from the Lean Startup movement (and I’ll admit I am simultaneously attracted to, and wary of, those ideas). Some instinct led me to focus on a single word: positioning.

It seemed to be the key word, and I think my instincts were correct. I’ve concluded that positioning, defined in a 7-dimensional way, is the single most important word in business. So what is positioning? It is a generalization of the idea of product-market fit. It is the controlled, but not deterministic, crossing of a threshold beyond which the business suddenly seems to come alive and “work.” The emotion changes from depressed to excited. The energy changes from languid to explosive. The rhythms change from weak and uncertain to harmonious, vigorous and steady. Positioning happens when a business has an “Aha!” moment, and discovers identity, profitability and sustainability.  The business has found its groove and tempo (the business word for tempo is clockspeed) Positioning involves throwing seven firing switches from “Off” to “On” position and all 7 cylinders firing steadily enough that anyone in the business can take a real vacation without everything going to hell. [Read more…]

King Gustavus’ Folly: The Story of the Vasa

September 8, 2010 By

Guest post by Jim Anderson

In my life, new product ideas are always showing up. However, whether we’re talking about new products or just new ideas, if too many people get involved in making them “better”, the whole thing can fall apart. Perhaps a story would help me to make my point.

(This is a guest post by Jim Anderson of Blue Elephant Consulting. Click here if you are interested in guest posting.)

My favorite story of what can happen when you let too many other people get involved in designing a solution has to do with a boat. Maybe I should say this more clearly: it has to do with a ship that was created a long time ago in Sweden.

(Picture by Javier Kohen, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0)

The Greasy, Fix-It ‘Web of Intent’ Vision

August 17, 2010 By

The Web of Intent is a term that’s starting to get tossed around a lot, and I’ve gone from being wary about it to believing strongly in it. I was introduced to the term by Nova Spivack about a year ago and was initially skeptical. Could Web ADD be reversed? Can technology give us a true knob to allow us to tune our engagement anywhere from ‘distracted’ to ‘laser focused’? From knee-jerk reactive to coolly deliberate? Actually that’s how I think of the concept: a technology model that gives users this control knob to manage their online experiences:

The evidence is slowly starting to roll in. This conceptual knob can be created through a generation of “Intent” technologies. What’s more, this knob is what will likely save the publishing and media industries.  It will also save our brains from getting fried, and create a new dynamic in the ongoing disruption of all types of information work.

As I thought more about some of the core ideas (see Nova’s posts What’s After the Real-Time Web? and The Birth of the Scheduled Web), I started to understand the power of the model.

This is where I am placing my bets. Not the 3D Web, not the “Mobile/Touch Web”, not the “Internet of Things” and not the “Semantic Web.” Those are important, but secondary. I am going all-in on the “Web of Intent” as the next main act that will reshape the Internet. As I’ll explain later, it is a gritty, greasy, roll-up-sleeves, fix-it vision, that is emerging in response to actual problems, as opposed to a vision born out of new possibilities (combined with the smoking of illegal substances).

So here you go: my primer on what the Web of Intent actually is, in terms of user experience (UX), concepts and technology. We’ll need to start by reframing what Web 2.0 actually is.

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Down with Innovation, Up with Imitation!

August 3, 2010 By

Perhaps it is professional burnout, but lately I’ve been getting extremely tired of all the stupid things people say about innovation. Especially stupid positive things. A great deal of the stupidity in the conversation about innovation is driven by the desperate urge to be original for the sake of being original. There is a pervasive, unexamined assumption that originality is always a good thing. Copycats, by Oded Shenkar is a delightful little book that takes on a project that I strongly support: taking down the holy cow of innovation and extolling the virtues of imitation.  Ironically, it is one of the most original business books I’ve read in the last few years. It even manages to say something new about the business case everybody loves to hate: Southwest Airlines.

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The Right Question, Review of Shallows, Insight vs. Mind-Candy

July 22, 2010 By

I have three off-ribbonfarm posts this week that should interest you guys.

Is the Internet Making us Smart or Stupid?

A guest post on VentureBeat, my review of Nick Carr’s The Shallows (a book-length build on his Atlantic piece, “Is Google Making us Stupid.”

The Dangerous Art of the Right Question

On the Trailmeme blog. This post seems to have gone somewhat viral via Hacker News, Lifehacker and a couple of other significant mentions. Slightly lighter fare than you guys are used to here, but should still be of interest.

My Remarkable, Famous Graph

Also on the Trailmeme blog, this one is a sort of follow-up to the previous one, examining the emerging world of infographics, using 3 of my own ribbonfarm graphics to examine the difference between mind-candy and true insight graphics.

Head on over, comment etc.

The Happy Company

July 20, 2010 By

I rarely read biographies or autobiographies of individuals or groups. This is because I rarely find accounts of success or failure by the people involved, or hired hagiographers, very believable. I usually wait for somebody to tell the story more critically, within a broader context, such as the history of a sector. But I made an exception for Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness for three reasons. First, I wanted to steal concrete ideas from the Zappos playbook about customer-centeredness. Second, I was puzzled by the apparent cultural mismatch in Amazon’s acquisition of Zappos. And finally, I was curious about what a genuinely happiness-centric approach to business looks like. Deconstructing the Zappos story seemed like a good idea. This post is mainly about the last question, as well as some general thoughts about “corporate culture.”

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The Eight Metaphors of Organization

July 13, 2010 By

Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization is a must-read for those who want to develop a deeper understanding of a lot of the stuff I talk about here. Though I’ve cited the book lots of times, it is one of those dense, complex books that I am never going to attempt to review or summarize. You’ll just have to read it. But I figured since I refer to it so much, I need at least a simple anchor post about it. So I thought I’d summarize the main idea with a picture, and point out some quick connections to things I have written/plan to write.

(For once, the picture was complex enough that I chose to draw it and scan it in, instead of doing one of my ugly MS-Paint sketches). Here’s the main idea of the book — [Read more…]

WOM, Broadcast and the Classical Marketing Contract

June 24, 2010 By

Word-of-Mouth (WOM) vs. Broadcast is the emerging Mac vs. PC debate in marketing. There are relevant facts, but they don’t matter, because battles inevitably turn ideological. If you did the Mac-vs-PC ads for WOM vs. Broadcast, an episode might go as follows:

WOM: Hey Broadcast, how are you doing?

Broadcast: Great, I just finished a multi-million dollar Master Marketing Plan for my Fortune 100 client, with a textbook positioning strategy, a great branding theme and 3 superbowl ad concepts. All in just 3 weeks.

WOM: Oh wow! That’s impressive. How did the customers respond?

Broadcast: Very funny WOM. We both know it takes months of stakeholder conversations and focus groups before you can roll out a marketing campaign. If all goes as planned, 50% of our marketing will work; we just won’t know which 50% of course, ha ha. Even someone as good as me can’t break the Golden Rule of Marketing after all.

WOM: Well actually Broadcast, I just finished a 3-week concept-to-execution campaign for a small business, for just $800, where we used a Facebook page to talk to customers. And I know exactly which pieces worked, and why.

Broadcast: Oh I have a social media component in my master plan too. We’ll have a Facebook page AND a Twitter feed AND a blog AND a YouTube Channel. And we’ve already sourced the first 50 professionally written blog posts. So looks like I am  a little ahead of you there, WOM. You really should try more planning instead of just jumping in. You’ve got to maximize reach and optimize your channel mix; it’s all about eyeballs baby.

WOM: You do know that Twitter is not always best for all types of conversational marke….

Broadcast: Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET. I can’t hear you. TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET

The WOM-vs.-Broadcast debate, which is currently at this level, is incredibly shallow and juvenile (though sometimes entertaining). The WOM camp is getting prematurely smug, and the Broadcast camp is defending the wrong parts of classical marketing. So let’s try to take the conversation up a notch.

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Two Interesting Gervais Principle Follow-Ups

May 6, 2010 By

I thought I’d share two recent ‘Gervais Principle’ related posts that crossed my radar. There have been quite a few blog reactions to the GP series over the last 6 months, but most don’t venture beyond an editorial comment or two. These two go further, in a couple of rather dangerous (and fun) directions.

First, a few weeks back, Pete Carapetyan emailed me about his post on dealing with passive aggressive. He doesn’t cite or relate the ideas to GP directly, but he tells me that the post is “inspired” by GP (dangerously ambiguous linkage term there).

Working with Passive Aggressives

Working with a PA is the most counter-intuitive thing you will ever do. That is their primary tactic, coming across exactly opposite from what is really going on, which also includes covering their tracks. Well honed PA skills never show on the radar, that is how the whole system works.

In a different vein, Jacob, writing in the extreme early retirement (nice name for a blog, that), has a post riffing on the idea that if you can’t join the sociopaths, perhaps you can beat them by owning them, by turning to capitalism? Jacob suggests that this requires giving up addictive consumerism.

A Cure to Careerism

Of course there is a third way, extreme early retirement, which sadly is considered too extreme by many. The reason is that it means giving up consumerism which to consumers is like giving up cigarettes for smokers. Not only are many people suffering from careerism, but they are also suffering from consumerism believing that it is impossible, at least for them, to live a satisfying life without shopping.

Note that this is a different exit strategy than the ‘exile/exodus’ strategy described in Managing Language (With Extreme Prejudice), on Tobias C. Van Veen’s Fugitive Philosophy blog, which I highlighted earlier.

I’ll withhold my own opinion for now, other than to note that I agree that the questions being raised are important, even if I don’t entirely agree with the answers. Click on, check out the articles, and comment. I’ll be following the discussion with interest of course.