A new idea or a tuning of an old one

“I think of 6 impossible things before breakfast” – is that only because technology doesn’t make the idea possible or because the public isn’t ready to buy into the idea yet. Imaging if the iPod Touch as we know it today was introduced years ago in place of the original iPod, complete bust.

What happens if an impossible idea isn’t thought worth working on, but someone else does? If they are successful, do you have any rights to the finished product? Is there any way knowing what happened to have had two people think of a similar idea?

When the commercials and associated hype came out about The Social Network, I had no interest in seeing it. Since I have had a couple employees attempt to walk with my company intellectual property to release on their own, I didn’t need to see a movie about the same. All the news was talking about how the lead in the movie got away with developing someone else’s idea and is making billions.

By chance, the movie came on and I didn’t reach for the remote fast enough to not get drawn into it. By the end, I was thinking less about people having original ideas and more about people tuning other’s ideas. If a company passes on a idea, is it OK for someone that works for the company to run with the idea? Big Corp American says no, you where being paid at the time of the idea so they own it. But, how can one be certain that the idea came to you and the company at near the same time due to a global event? Two different people seeing the same need might have different thoughts on a solution, usually enough to make one profit and the other fail.

Outside of the cases where a company says ‘no’, is an employee running with an idea on their own the fault of poor management? If a superior encouraged the idea, would the employee felt they needed to see the project through on their own? In today’s society where ideas are creating Billionaires, more people are willing to risk a company coming after them and will try to see an idea through on their own.

In the case of Mark and his Facebook, he was obviously motivated by attention and not the money. He has or at least ‘had’ a pretty good grip on what people wanted. The direction the group he was working with had an idea but it was highly limited, pointed at a single market. Should Mark have given his idea to the team he was working with, one might argue that they would not have seen his vision. Would he have come up with the idea on his own? The school (at least as represented in the movie) thinks that many people at the school can come up with the same idea since they don’t know the ‘aha’ moment that many may have shared in a class or at a campus event.

Running with an idea that a employer may think they own is highly risky. Even if they don’t do anything initially as they don’t see a profit from their legal expenses, it will always be hanging over the creations ‘head’. Of course, everyone thinks their idea will be so big that they can just pay off anyone that comes along with a few hundred million ‘jump change’. It shouldn’t be missed that the project may end up with a partner that will be tired of the creator down the road and run with the idea they passed on before it was a hit.

There may be ‘no new ideas’ under the sun left to be thought of, but an impossible idea passed on yesterday can be a reality tomorrow… in the right hands.

“We tried it, it didn’t work” – it could be you

In the 80’s, we would propose software solutions for companies to solve their issues. Many times we would hear them say that they tried the solution and it didn’t work. Rather than just move on, we would explore why it didn’t work. More often than not, we found that the full power of the solution or group of functions they needed where not explored.

Recently there has been a lot of press around large companies not getting out of social network marketing as they expected. Comparing the ROI to other media options for marketing, there is a feeling that they aren’t getting their money’s return. A coupon or special offer is pushed out and they aren’t showing up in their stores.

There are a few group buying or coupon sharing services that are hitting it big. These are working because people using the services are folks that already have their heads around using the services. What happens when a person not in that spot gets a coupon in an email for 10% off? They don’t know what to do with it… do they print the email? Do they search the email for a key phrase to use in the store? Do they have to click through to a site where they have to give personal information? If there is a coupon code to use, will they face possible embarrassment in the store when they ask for a discount they get wrong or there are particulars… again, should they print the email?

Not a single item above creates a positive experience for a possible customer. It doesn’t work. It isn’t the fault of the system, it’s time to rethink the whole marketing scheme. This doesn’t mean companies should jump on board with the many folks marketing online how they can sell, their job is to sell a system. There isn’t a ‘system’ that works for everyone. Think about who uses the service being used, now about the current customers. Even though the current customers may be moving to using the social service, their frame of mind is in that social frame of mind… not a newspaper coupon clipping.

Along with rethinking marketing, what is a real ROI? Is money being best spent with big promotions instead of ongoing mentions across the social landscape? Some big names have large followings which can be paid to mention a product. That might build hits but doesn’t mean purchases unless the person was already in a position to buy.

There needs to be a reason for a mention in Social Networking circles. Forget the coupons unless it’s a “50% off everything”. Even ‘click here’ to go to our site for a discount will have very low counts of people willing to go since they know they are being ID’d to the site and followed around… causing them to get more junk mail.

A system that worked in the 80’s physical store days is now proving to be valuable in a electronic social world is relationships. Marketing across other company’s promotions. Your email list is very valuable, particular to other companies. Join forces to do mailings of your products, mentioning other company’s tie to yours. You have a golf club company, you can’t say ‘buy these chocolates too’. But, you have a card printing service, you can mention that including chocolates with their customer card to their co-workers is always a hit. There is no discount involved. The win is that the Chocolate company got a reach they didn’t have before… the Greeting Card company doesn’t give up their client email list but they have people reading since there is additional information from a marketing pitch from them.

Customer lists are literally a reason companies are being purchased these days. Take good care of your lists, organize them with keywords to what the person purchased, how they purchased, if they came in via marketing and if they continue to order.

For movies that I am a Producer for, I never push the movie it’s self. Posts across my circle of influence are about who has mentioned they are going to be at a sneak showing, what is going on in the line, what is going on after the movie showing, tie ins to items within the movie. These all build interest as people can relate to their own lives. There is no mention of coupons or hype about what the movie is about.

This will be very hard for most marketing groups to jump on board with since they are generally asked to show ROI on everything they do. New measurements are required to prove what worked. Rather than throwing away anything that is thought as a ‘didn’t work’ do a tweak to it instead. Drive down the overhead of pushing information out via social networks doesn’t mean firing the marketing group but it does mean that marketing have to be very dynamic rather than six months of presentations to get anything kicked off. Don’t be insulting with social network marketing, but don’t be afraid to try new ideas!

Augmented Reality – Construction, Inspection and Sales – Let’s get moving!

Sitting on the highway this morning, not moving, I passed the time between emails and watching a construction team move a lot of dirt. The hard hatted individuals consisted of one gent running a large shovel machine, two people standing on the hill looking down and two workers aligning survey equipment. Watching the process, I wondered why the shovel operator wasn’t looking through a heads up device that was telling him where to dig and how much was left to be completed.

Thinking back to watching a friend design houses, he had moved from building little foam and paper models to exporting a 3D computer model right from his plans. Let’s take that up to today, using what we have available to use with technology now:

Construction: Workers on a building or residence construction team could come in each day and receive their updates electronically. They have a checklist of work to be done and, looking through a single eye lens could see a overlay of what is there now compared to what they need to do. Exact locations of wall structures, outlets, wiring etc. All of this data is directly out of the design software used to create the building drawings with a human or software dividing up the timeline/progress to give to the team each morning.

Inspectors: When a building plans are submitted, the electronic version is distributed to the inspectors. Updates are also uploaded by the construction team so that the visiting Inspector can look through their eye piece or hold up the screen of their handheld to look ‘through’ it to see what was approved versus real. They would know which switch should activate which outlet, what was agreed to for step heights, location of vents and windows, etc…

Selling the dream: Need a bit of empty warehouse for this one. Load up a clients floor plan in their little carry unit hooked to their video glasses and let them loose to walk from room to room in their new location. The can walk through augmented reality walls and into a real wall or trip so some cautions should be used. Otherwise though, they can see if there is enough room to turn around in the kitchen or too far to go from the master bedroom to the kids room. For condos on upper floors, real view images could be put in so a person can see the view their dollars are buying and if they can see any of it from the other side of the dinning room. This is actually not a difficult bit of technology to do and is much better than even computer screen 3D walk through.

There are several ways augmented reality software knows what to show a person. Popular for games is a paper with a box or ID image which the app uses to build the 3D view around. For more advanced systems, location is assigned via global positioning for low precision due to several feet difference is acceptable. For a construction site, beacons would need to be used that have their altitude and location to each other set. Then, personal devices within the area would key off those to know what the user should see with pretty good precision. A house would need two beacons while larger construction like the highway dirt diggers might need three to six beacons to not get into underground gas and power lines.

Who’s in? Let’s get started!

Being all things to all people – Facebook wants more social photos

The trick to pulling this off is to not make a person step through all things to get to what they want. Your ‘super’ service isn’t for everyone, they may only want a small part so you need the ability to see that small part as it’s own world. Could this be where SecondLife went wrong?

The challenge is always to the big service that tries to get into an area a smaller ‘specialized’ company owns. Case in point is the news over the last couple days around Facebook about to release more specialized mobile apps to build their photos areas.

Facebook is known for it’s record quantity of photos being uploaded and shared through their network. Personally, I used to upload a lot of pictures to share with friends through Facebook. Till Instagram came along, which is more about the image than text. Friends on Facebook read the text updates and shared links, images being lower on the list of reasons friends look at feeds. Sometimes images are grouped on the Wall area while other times they stand alone.

I can upload images to Facebook with their current iPhone app. But, viewing them and viewing updates to the text for the images vary in success. There are several apps for the iPad that push they are great Facebook photo viewing apps.

If Facebook is in fact going to lean heavily on the photo sharing crowd to move all their sharing to their Facebook account, will they succeed without treating that as a standalone service? When you think about the Everything to Everyone services you have used in the past, was there areas that you liked. But, after having to drill in a few times found you went there less and less. Maybe your visiting frequency was slowed because others weren’t willing to drill in to see what you where saying or posting.

Even if Facebook gets it ‘right’, will there still be a need for the services that only do one part of Facebook’s big offering? For me, yes. The more specialized offerings have a world of friends all it’s own. Like the few popular photo sharing social networks gaining in popularity, there is little talk and more viewing. No one needs to be a ‘friend’ to share images they took around their local town. There is little personal information so there is less concerns about privacy. It’s a different view of sharing without all the concerns of people knowing what your viewing or buying. Unless of course, you share pictures of those things.

What are all these wooden ‘book’ shelves used for?

We are not far off from needing a new name for those wooden shelves in offices at work and home. There may be some classic books or ‘coffee table’ books that will need a home. But, the shelves are quickly becoming not needed for Instruction/Tech Manuals, Novels and even most Magazines.

Currently, there isn’t a perfect single electronic solution to carry and provide access to all of the needed reading materials. Most manuals are text only so they work nicely on the Kindle. It is easy to search for key words, move rapidly through pages and can even read (audio) most electronic ‘Kindle’ books to you. Black and white images are fine but color and even most gray scale images do not do well on the Kindle.

For color image ‘books’, I turn to PDFs and ePub electronic books, viewed through either my iPad’s iBooks or GoodReader apps. There can be some limitations for getting through the book quickly, but generally search is supported. Color diagrams and charts are usable in these formats.

Lastly is my magazine subscriptions. My wife has magazines she buys that she sells later while most of mine are for research or just for fun. Very few electronic magazines are less expensive than their print counterparts. For me, they are much easier to carry and read on-the-go in the electronic form. My iPad is with me everywhere at the office and most times around the house so I have several years worth of Wired, Photo Pro, Dwell, MacUser, Macworld and StuffUK. Great to have in hand when on my exercise bike every night.

The purpose of this article isn’t to convince you to sell your print books and go all electronic. Instead, it’s a statement that it works for me and my crystal ball says that there are types of books in your life that will actually be more usable if you had it as an ‘eBook’. They aren’t perfect for all books for all people, yet.

Electronic versions are easier to carry in bulk and most carry more ‘features’ than you can have on paper. Wired has multimedia built into their electronic versions (US version is very nice… not sure why the European version has lost their way with weird scrolling mini boxes). Providers like O’Reilly offer very large selections of manuals and instructional eBooks to get me through my work day. Searching a eBook is much easier than trying to remember what page I had read content on later. And the Kindle books play through my headphones as I put my PowerPoints together.

Is an opinion the final answer?

There are groups of people that you will come across in life that feel their opinions are fact. They will defend and state your questioning it isn’t the right path. The two that come to mind are ‘many’ teachers and most corporate learning instructors.

For teachers, there are a few that drive to get students to question decisions stated by others as facts. They want their students to think things through. Then, there are the others, a high school english teacher comes to mind.

In a class where we analyzed what stories meant, we all gave our interpretations. At the end, the teacher explained what the story actually meant. While the teacher’s proposed answer seemed like it could be one option, it didn’t set with a couple students that it had to be the only answer. Upon asking, I was informed that the teacher’s answer was based on the book’s teacher notes in the back. Of course… I just had to ask if the story writer was the one that wrote the teacher notes. Within a week, I found myself in another english class where the teacher was also a rebel.

The above came to mind recently when at a corporate retreat, the result of an exercise came to a different conclusion than the instructor stated it did at the end. When questioned, they stated that the result was as expected and moved forward. In this case, unlike the teacher, the instructor was hired to get a line of thinking across. To help guide us to a conclusion.

Like a school classroom though, corporate team building gatherings carry a level of pressure to go along. Not only is there fear of being blocked from advancement but there is also the desire to fit in and not rock the boat amongst your peers.

Other than saying to everyone to just risk the repercussions and standing up for what you believe. The answer to the team building meetings is management doing a better job at interviewing the people they choose to run the tasks. Taking the time to throw out a bunch of ‘what if’ questions. At the end of the day, the company wants the team building meeting to be successful so taking a little extra time up front will pay off through better results.

Beware the speakers that have a book to sell or a desire for follow up meetings. Remember the point your trying to drive to your team, not getting caught up in a quick sell from someone who can’t back up their message.