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Have you ever found yourself ignoring the directions of your car's GPS in order to get somewhere faster or more efficiently than it can calculate? Me too. Chances are when leaving point A, you plugged in the address of point B, and a route was calculated on how to get from one to the other. The problem is, things come up on the route from point A to point B that may cause you to divert from your path such as construction, road closures, traffic, side trips you need to make or neighborhoods you may choose to avoid driving straight through. Sponsor Startups make similar diversions, but the directions they are straying from are those of a product roadmap. Roadmaps are projected out for months, if not years, to give a company a strategy to most effectively grow their product. But just as there are reasons we ignore our GPS, there are reasons for startups to alter their roadmap. Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet has worked with dozens of startups on project roadmaps, and recently he wrote about the importance of driving off course when necessary. Sabet recalls and example of this from his experience working with Boxee's Avner Ronen . "I remember our first board [meeting], Avner shared a product plan for the next twelve months. Then, before the very next board meeting he shipped a bunch of new things that weren't on the roadmap," writes Sabet. "He would see opportunities in the market, listen to his users and then create and launch. And that approach paid off and continues to pay off." If startups come up with a product roadmap and proceed to put their heads in the sand while they follow it unwaveringly, they will more than likely fail. So much is learned from testing products and receiving feedback that being unwilling to change the plan is a death sentence. This quality is so important for entrepreneurs that Sabet says he looks for it specifically when investigating possible investments. "I'm more interested in learning if the founders have the talent and desire to move, innovate and create quickly," he says. The lesson here seems obvious, but there have been cases where startups are devoted to their roadmaps and revenue projects to a point where it affects the success of the company. Like some driving directions, there is no most optimal route for every startup to succeed, so the willingness to turn left when your GPS says right is an important decision to know how to make as an entreprneur. Photos by Flickr users Marcin Wichary and sporst . Discuss
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Why Startups Need to Know When to Ignore Their GPS
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As an avid podcast subscriber I have dozens of audio and video programs feeding into iTunes daily, but one recent submission from the TED Talks video podcast caught my eye because of its parallels to lean startups. Tom Wujec, author and fellow at Autodesk, presented at TED 2010 back in February, and his talk, "Build a tower, build a team," is now available online. Wujec conducted a team building experiment with all types of people, from business execs to kindergartners, and the results he presented were surprising, to say the least. Sponsor The activity, known as the marshmallow challenge , was borrowed by Wujec from Peter Skillman, VP of Design at Palm . Small teams are given 18 minutes to build a free-standing structure made of dry spaghetti, one yard of string, one yard of tape and a marshmallow, which must be placed on top. The team wins by creating the tallest structure of all the groups participating. What Wujec discovered is that this simple game revealed some fascinating insights into how groups collaborate. Wujec has conducted this experiment with over 70 groups of "students and designers and architects, even the CTOs of the Fortune 50," he says. Most teams quickly break into roles and plan their structure, and then spend the remaining time building it before quickly and gingerly placing the marshmallow on top as time expires. More often than not, the structure pitifully fails as the marshmallow is added, leaving the team with a pile of spaghetti and no time to try again. "So there are a number of people who have a lot more 'uh-oh' moments than others, and among the worst are recent graduates of business school. They lie, they cheat, they get distracted, and they produce really lame structures," says Wujec. "And of course there are teams that have a lot more 'ta-da' structures, and, among the best, are recent graduates of kindergarten." "Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand." - Tom Wujec Wujec says that business school grads are taught to seek out and execute the one correct solution their challenge, while kindergartners practice the iterative prototype and refine process, much like the methods of lean startups. The kids would build, test and repeat until they found a structure that worked, and most times, he says, they built the tallest and most interesting structures. Another interesting fact uncovered by these experiments is that incentivizing the teams didn't improve their structures, it actually made them worse. When Wujic offered the winning team a $10,000 software prize, not a single group was able to create a standing structure; however, when we returned to the same students later, they understood the need for iteration, and produced structures well above the average height. What startups can take away from the marshmallow challenge is that bigger teams and higher incentives are no substitute for having the right skills and the right process in place. Wujec found that larger teams performed increasing worse than smaller teams, and incentivizing them with a reward did not make up for the fact that they were not using the right process. As Wujec adds, every business challenge has its own "marshmallow," so consider bringing some kindergarten-minded people onto your startup team. Photo by Flickr user John-Morgan . Discuss
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Marshmallows and Spaghetti: How Kindergartners Think Like Lean Startups
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From guest panels about the challenges women face in the technology sector, to interviews about the challenges they face in a male-dominated work environent, this collection of videos shines a light on women in tech. The list includes Caterina Fake explaining how she became co-founder of Hunch and Flickr, as well as Dianne Marsh speaking about the under representation of women in computer sciences. Also included is a video about a data center a women built, and an interview with a college student majoring in computer science. Best of all is the top video She's Geeky, which is about an all-female unconference facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin . (ReadWriteWeb's Mobile Summit on May 7 is going to be facilitated by Hamlin.) Sponsor She's Geeky Sisters Are Doing 'IT' For Themselves Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner Panel Geek girls and their birthday Geek Girl at Her Data Center Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering (WECE) 2008 Google Workshop for Women Engineers Kelly Carnes on What Needs to be Done to Increase the Role of Women and Minorities in Technology Caterina Fake, co-founder of Hunch & Flickr: In conversation with Women2.0 Dianne Marsh: Under-representation of Women in Computer Science: Why I care and why you should too Discuss
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Top 10 YouTube Videos About Women In Tech
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Thanks to voice-controlled systems like Ford's Sync , drivers don't have to take their eyes off the road if they want to place a call or switch to the next track on their playlists. Today, Ford announced the next step in the company's roadmap to connect mobile phones and cars. With Sync AppLink, Ford is introducing a new platform that allows developers to offer voice controls for their mobile apps on Sync-enabled cars. At first, AppLink will only work with Android and BlackBerry devices, but the company plans to offer support for Apple's iPhone OS and other smartphone platforms next year. Sponsor The first Sync-enabled applications, which will be available later this year, are Pandora , Stitcher , and Orangatame's OpenBreak Twitter app. Even though Sync is based on the Microsoft Auto platform, Ford did not announce that it plans to support the upcoming Windows Phone operating system. Drivers will be able to control AppLink-enabled mobile apps through voice commands that will be routed through the Sync system, as well as from buttons on the steering wheel. The first car to feature this new service will be the 2011 Ford Fiesta . Ford plans to offer AppLink on all Sync-equipped cars next year. Existing Sync users will be able to update their car's software at a later point as well. Same Apps - Just Controlled by SYNC From the user's perspective, installing a Sync-enabled app is no different from installing a regular app on their mobile phones. The only difference is that the car will notice when you start a Sync-enabled app and allow you to control the app's function with your voice. This allows Ford to plug right into the existing developer ecosystems and distribution channels for all of these platforms and developers only have to make relatively minor updates to make their apps compatible with Sync. It's important to stress that these applications are running on the user's phone and not on the car's built-in Sync hardware. Sync only passes the voice commands on to the application but doesn't interact with the app beyond this. In Ford's parlance, these are "brought-in" apps, as opposed to "built-in" apps (like Ford's Vehicle Health Report and 911 Assist) or "beamed-in" cloud-based apps that send traffic information and turn-by-turn directions to the car. Sync AppLink for Developers Ford is currently working with a small group of trusted partners and plans to open up the Sync API and software development kit to a broader selection of developers later this year. Ford also announced the launch of a Sync developer community that will give developers a pathway to partner with Ford on Sync-enabled applications. Image credit: Flickr user Jim Trottier Discuss
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Ford Sync Will Soon Let You Control Your Mobile Apps by Voice
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Every now and then we hear the story of the entrepreneur who left his or her steady job at a large company to follow their dreams and create a startup, but we aren't all as daring and brave to quit steady work, especially in a time of economic uncertainty. If you have the entrepreneurial itch but aren't in a situation that would allow you to sacrifice your day job, there are still ways you can scratch said itch and bring innovation to a "startup" within a larger company. Sponsor This morning I talked with Eric Ries , the driving force behind the " lean startup " movement, which encourages high efficiency and meticulous metrics tracking within entrepreneurial ventures. Ries, who is often asked to speak on the subject, says he noticed a trend among some of the people attending his talks. Many managers from large companies were coming to his sessions to learn what they could, because, as Ries discovered, the principals of lean startups can exist within larger corporations that are attempting to innovate. "A startup is a human institution designed to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "There is nothing in there about the size of the company, or what industry you're in, or whether you're the manager of a division or if you're two guys in a garage, its just about the conditions in which you operate." As he points out, there are times in larger corporations when divisions are created to work on a new project, and similar rules and guidelines for managing that project which come from startups can be used here as well. Ries says that managers, like entrepreneurs, are taking risks on new ideas, and when they create a new division, they are essentially investing the company's time and money as a VC would invest funds in a startup. "The more I started to work with those managers I started to notice that they were having very familiar sounding arguments," Ries says. "The arguments between a venture-backed entrepreneur and a venture capitalist are almost exactly the same word for word as between these 'intrepreneurs' and their CFOs because the same issues come up." One of the ways larger corporations can implement entrepreneurial innovation into their businesses is to allow for what Ries calls "innovation inside the box," or a fenced off sandbox for experimentation with new products. By creating a place where employees with ideas can test a tweak to a feature, or where new ideas can be built within certain constraints, companies can greatly increase their potential for innovation. "The real value is [this] starts to catalyze change because by changing the way you work you start to accelerate that feedback loop and that can become the basis for making other changes," Ries says. Unfortunately, most larger corporations aren't allowing for this open sandbox of innovation within their companies, and choose to buy up technology and talent from startups. Ries agrees that many entrepreneurs get frustrated working inside a larger company, but he says the combination of these entrepreneurs with a walled off innovation playground could provide for some amazing innovations. Companies could also benefit from the addition of a sandbox by inspiring their existing employees to be innovative, instead of wrangling up entrepreneurs from a startup, which would save them money in the end. "They have this idea that a certain alchemy will happen that 'if I bring these special people into my organization, they will teach my regular people how to be special,' and that's just a formula for breeding resentment," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "If the people doing the acquiring had more of a theory about how entrepreneurship is supposed to work they could start to think of better ways to plug an acquired company into the larger organization, taking advantage of what they're good at without destroying it." If you're a budding entrepreneur or a manager at a large company, there is an excellent chance to hear from Ries and others on these concepts and others this Friday at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in San Francisco. If you can't make it to the Bay Area, there are simulcasts occurring Friday in nearly 50 cities worldwide, many of which are free or very inexpensive, so RSVP and bask in the lean startup goodness. Photo by Flickr user longhorndave . Discuss
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Thinking Inside the Box: Eric Ries On Creating Startups Within Large Organizations
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