I cheated on my job interview

Doctor: Are you going to cause any trouble?

Candidate: no Sir, I do not discuss orders, I am a hard worker and I keep my ideas for myself. 

I read an article by Franc Ponti, http://www.francponti.com/ (thanks Fátima!) about the barriers towards Innovation within companies with a marked, let us say, "military" organisation culture. There is one point in the article about hiring professionals to which I subscribe: in the past, one key point for en employee-to-be to pass the HR tests was to be "not problematic": it is better a person that obeys, that you can shape, a team player, very organised, an executant of directors' ideas, than a problem generator or a freak (as Ponti says).

So now, it must not be weird that most of the people either in an SME or a LC are that way, because we (HR) rejected the "funny" candidates. And to those who cheated at the interviews pretending they were not at all creative and passed, we sometimes keep telling them: Who are you to have new ideas?

Now a culture shift is needed inside the company, that is for certain, but also we need a new hiring culture.

Cheers.

  

LEARN AND BUILD

Why is it so hard and time-consuming to get an idea into a valuable product or process?

Why is it so hard to get a new idea funded?

Why do you believe that every tech news you read is true?

We need PROOF!

And we need to reduce uncertainty, above all at the beginning of a tech project or even before when the project is still an idea. First we need to reduce this uncertainty into risk. Then reduce the technological risk via validation of hypotheses, via demostration of concepts, and here you had better go STEP BY STEP.

The only way to reduce risk and expenditure in high technological risk projects is fast-prototyping, dividing concepts into consecutive MVPs. Lean Start-up philosophy reminds us that a product is ready to be proven just when all the concepts are joined in a minimum viable product, but every concept or proof of concept PoC, can also be evolved into an MVP itself, without having to wait for the global MVP. At every MVP achievement, an increasing investment is at play. Investors are happy, research manager is happy.

Plan the whole thing, but proof at every step. Is that against researcher's freedom?

Every researcher would like to have a bunch of funding for a 10-year project: no questioning until a final presentation of discoveries. But truth is that big things are made not just by one researcher, but a team. PoCs and MVPs are also a way to have the team focused and motivated, and investors happy, don't forget.

So, build your ideas, take them into practice, start your masterpiece. We need some action here!

Cheers. Antonio.



Naïvennovation

Recently in Spain, there has been some kind of agitation about not economy but a "restoration" of an ecce homo fresco painting in a small town church, by an 80year-old woman who declared to do it "for good". The result looks somewhat grotesque, only if we compare with the original. But, is this really the result of the action?
The result is that everybody is talking about it, the town has so many visitors, merchandising of all kind is being manufactured,...so the result is a profit. A profit that came through an action of changing the established way, without permission, with good intention and naïvety, but without really any intention of profit. I think it qualifies as innovation. What do you think?
The fact does not imply that every masterpiece of Art could be ruined. This innovation (or atrocity) came from a fact and its circumstances.
But please, do not focus on this exact example that I chose to illustrate a concept, the concept of naïvennovation.
Whether one works hard an idea and showed it as a naïve invention or it really came out of the blue without meaning to produce some profit, the result is the same: a profit out of an innovative action without purpose or intention (naïvennovation).

We all see the 3M post-it TM as one of the recurrent examples to show innovative products that came laterally aside from the goal of the project. Does it qualifies to be naïvennovation? Maybe not.

I can't help but be interested in the implications of the actions, on purpose or not, only to call the attention on the consequences achieved through an action (dimming a little bit the intention which drove it).

Before judging (by his face), think about the potential benefits and profits that an innovation may yield.

[By the way, I am sure great Diego Rivera would have preferred the new fresco to the old one]

Cheers.

stream of consciousness

#TheStreamofConsciousness

The Stream of Consciousness refers to the flow of thoughts in the conscious mind, and also is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions. It is the continuous flow of sense‐perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories...and also the connections or mingling through the thought process.

In literature, this mode was pioneered by Dorothy Richardson in Pilgrimage (1915–35) and by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1928). Hard to read out, uh? As hard to watch out a David Lynch movie…

When we start to think in a #lateral way, either through a planned #Ideation session or just while watching commercials on TV, we are able to sense that our mind is working  in a different way: faster most of the time, sudden pace changes, …until we come up with ideas that nothing have to do with the original issue. But if we are quieter and listen to our thoughts thoroughly, what is more impressive is the lack of blank or pause-between-sections. One thought mingles with the next, sometimes without even a comma.

Mr de Bono explained us that one way to really quicken the pop-up of ideas is to become faster (by exercising lateral thinking) at concept association. These associations are the bonds and linkages throughout the thought.

Listening to your thought stream does not mean to slow the process. Some writers have the practice of creative writing by writing down every idea that comes to their mind, by letting the thought flow like a river of words. If you are not a writer, maybe you could use your voice recorder.

Would you dare? Would you dare to share it (vimeo, e.g.)? But What’s the point then?: to deliver the same problem or riddle to solve to different people, and to record the process for each individual.

There is a lot of abstraction and intuition in the world. Negativity restricts Creativity.-D. Lynch

Here I found an interesting video link:

http://archive.org/details/ConsciousnessCreativityAndTheBrain

THE WALKING DEAD

Alone facing Danger

SHOULD A LATERAL THINKER BE AFRAID?

I always enjoyed stories dealing with a few "normal" people fighting alone a massive invasion of villains. I can now think of The walking dead/The invasion of the body snatchers/28 days later/The last man on earth/V visitors and so on.

On the picture, we see quite a bunch of "grey", slow, hungry and dominated herd trying to turn the "colored" guy into one of them. Sometimes, that is the picture for creative or open-to-change people, who suffer the peer pressure of the invaders. Even, most of the time, they see themselves as the invaders.

As a colleague of mine once told me (M.A.P.G.), you cannot choose the side at the beginning but the conversion can be reversed bothways. "Once you feel a change is to come, it is already happening", and you won't have to wonder which side of the battle you are on.

Quoting Victor Hugo: On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées.

Certainly, One cannot resist an idea whose time has come. By letting changes come and coaching yourself to think in a lateral way, you are letting the rest of the herd know that you would like to be different. And this is dangerous. But that happens until you get to know that the creative side can also bite and fight back. A happy ending you can guess.

So, every time you look at your leg and see it is becoming grey day by day from the shoe, you gotta be doing something, mate! Do not let the herd capture you, but also, do not concentrate on fighting them but on keep walking and shining.

ey, a new post to be called "The Shining" will soon arrive.
I hope not to have bothered you with so many metaphor...
Cheers.

THE INTRAPRENEUR

Spin-off company. A Supportive role comes to play a leading role.

THE INTRAPRENEUR
[It is not a new movie with Nicole kidman, but give Pollack some time… ]

"Intrapreneur" is an employee in a corporation who comes up with ideas and then brings those ideas to life with the assistance and resources offered by the company. The result may turn out to be just a new project, a new business line, a new corporate start-up company or an organization culture shift, which is more valuable?

April 17, 1982 in an article in the Economist, Norman MacRae gives credit to Gifford Pinchot as the inventor of the word "intrapreneur".

Intrapreneurship is not easier or better than entrepreneurship—it’s simply different.  Let us come up with a few first-sight differences between intra- and entre-preneurship:

-Elevator Pitch. For an intrapreneur, the elevator pitch must convince not a business angel in a 20 min speech but your own company. This is usually a long-distance day-by-day work. TIP: If it is not moving ahead, try to spark off a pitch meeting but thoroughly choose an influential audience.

-Team. Either in or out, an idea rarely comes to business by itself and a team is built around. An entrepreneur can choose its team more freely, while the intrapreneur has to choose in most cases among colleagues. TIP: It is usually said that the more heterogeneity the better, but be sure everyone in the team has the same sense of survival.

-Internal Affairs. Is intrap. easier than entrep.? It is so, only with respect to risk, but then, How many startups died at the very beginning just because the team did not have to set it up to survive? Maybe survival sense linked to motivation is an important issue to take into account. An intrapreneur, at the beginning, has to employ extra time to boost an idea and quite often quits at the second or third blockage of some leaders’ ego.

-Internal Inertia. As one joins a corporation, one employs oneself in fast learning what the core business of the company is, and in moving the planning-budgeting-marketing-technology “machinery” at their very pace.  After a couple of years, it is difficult to move fast inside this maze, and quite often one pre-intrapreneur gets tired of trying. An entrepreneur can walk more freely and faster sometimes.

What can you do if you think you came up with an idea inside a corporation?

 

1.       Clasify: Is it an idea for a new project or a new business? If it is business, you are a pre-intrapreneur.

2.       Leading role: If somebody “up in the pyramid” thinks that this is a good idea, would you be willing to lead the project? If not, let the idea find its worker, if you are, keep reading.

3.       Egos: in some corporations it is not well seen that one skips one’s boss and here comes one of the first bottlenecks. Make him/her participate but be sure your idea is not kept in captivity at his/her ego’s cage nor in yours:

I like to imagine my ideas as homing pigeons swarming around me. Then you go to your boss and give it to him/her in the hope that you will be somewhat rewarded as a creative employee (although once a culture is shifted you would be doing it because it is in your nature to be creative or just a problem generator, not looking for a reward). The more pigeons you host and care for, the bigger your cage becomes, but remember to send them deliver ideas to the correct people if you know you are not able to grow them or they are not useful to breed new ideas.

4.       Gollum or Pollock. Try not to keep looking for a long time at your “precious”, feeding your ego. You are creative because your mind is dynamic, fast and can look at things laterally. So, start painting your thoughts and do not think too much, because we need some action here.

5.       Team. Ask for advice before you ask for resources. Try to spread your spirit and motivation to colleagues in very different areas of the company. Remember you have to weaken the corporate immune system towards boosting new business. Gather together multidisciplinary people: your colleagues know much more than the title of the department they are working at.

6.       Resources. Ask for resources. Keep the best interests of the company and its customers in mind, especially when trying to bend company’s rules and human resources dept. tradition. Honor and educate your sponsors.  Remember to include education in intrapreneurship for you and your team.

The world is changing. Money makes the world go ‘gound, but so do people. Creating an Intrapreneurial environment does not have the only mission of setting up startups under the corporation umbrella, but also, and more important, to promote expansion, motivation, working out of the cage, dynamism, and an opening of innovation.

Some of the ideas have been picked from other posts at intrapreneur.com /pinchot.com / intrapreneurialresources.info

PAVE THE WAY

A POEM, A THOUGHT:

I go to seek on many roads
what is to be.
True heart and strong, with love to light-
Will they not bear me in the fight
to order, shun or wield or mould
my Destiny?
(O. Henry)

VERSUS

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I...
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
(R. Frost) 

Whether you believe in Destiny (Henry) or Dare to find new ways (Frost), both beliefs push you to walk, take decisions upon a puzzle and keep walking!