From my time spent in product development, there is an approach that has served me well: "Go ugly early."
This concept involves releasing early iterations of your products so you can allow your customers to interact with them and provide feedback. I'm not talking about releasing unstable or buggy products - I'm talking about releasing stable products that have limited functionality, but which telegraph the shapes of things to come. This can be done on a controlled basis (such as with a limited Beta program)
There are many advantages to this approach. For example:
- You allow your customers to become more involved in the evolution of your product.
- You provide functionality to the market earlier - this is good for the market and your position in it (assuming you release stable product).
- You get early feedback on whether there is even a need for what you've built, enabling course corrections earlier when your sunk costs are lower.
- You discover how your product interacts with other products, processes, etc. in the market.
- You can often increase your thought leadership and influence in the market.
A similar approach can be used for our personal ideas. If you have an idea, concept, etc. you can often advance the development of that concept by going ugly early and sharing that idea with others for input before you think the idea is "done." Many of the advantages are similar to the ones listed above.
Of course, there are risks in early disclosure. You may give away your secrets and your competitors may gain advantage from what you have released. In business, as with your own ideas, there are multiple ways to address this.
- Plentiful attitude. Assume there are enough ideas, money, opportunity, etc. to go around and share the idea openly. This approach also works for ideas you are contributing for the greater good (open standards, for example).
- Scarcity attitude. Assume that revealing your ideas early will expose you to risk of being out-executed, or having your idea show up in others' works. You can control this to a certain degree by limiting disclosure (to a selected group of early adopters, for example), or by putting a non-disclosure agreement in place. In this case, pick your friends wisely.
And there are many shades between these two. Regardless of the end of the spectrum on which you find yourself, there can be a lot of value and "time to market" benefits of going ugly early. Consider this powerful tool in your toolbox - are you incubating any ideas that could benefit from going ugly early?
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As you may be able to gather from some of my posts here, I spend a lot of time on airplanes. Last year, I used some of my American Express Rewards points to get a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones (I couldn’t justify paying $300 in cash for them, but using my Rewards points was painless). The Bose headphones are very nice - they’re the Escalade of noise-cancelling headphones.
Unfortunately, the Bose headphones are so bulky (even when they are folded) that I don’t really bring them along any more except when I travel on international flights. As a result, I’ve been listening to my iPod and my laptop using the headphones that come with the iPod. They’re very good, but they just weren’t doing the trick for me on planes - particularly when listening to the audiobooks I download from my subscription to Audible.
Well, I just finished a round trip to NYC with my latest headphones, and I love them. They’re Sony’s MDR-EX71 earbuds. They don’t have active noise cancelling, but they have very comfortable rubber ear pieces (three sizes are included) that allow them to block out most of the ambient noise, including the racket on a plane. They sound great, come with a tiny case (not shown in the picture) to hold the extension cord and extra ear pieces, and have a cool little sleeve (looks like a capsule in the photo) to help you store them in a laptop bag without messing up or losing the rubber earpieces. The sleeve also reduces the likelihood of tangling.
The sound quality is very good, and you get a lot more bass out of these buds than the ones that come with the iPod. They sound good enough that I’ll probably put my Bose headphones up on eBay or something. I wore them continuously on a 5½ hour flight and they were comfortable the whole time.
At about $30 via Amazon, the Sony MDR-EX71’s are affordable, and they perform at least as well as other earbuds I’ve tried out that cost $150 and up. If you’re in the market for some comfortable, great sounding earbuds for travel or other places where you’d like to isolate the sounds around you, I recommend these.
Read More"Contrast that with Visions that grab ahold of you deep inside and don't let go until you reach the finish line. These are the Visions that change things."A lot is written, said, theorized, and declared about the most effective ways to get things done. This is due, in part, to the volume of things going on in our lives. Couple this with the endless ways we make ourselves feel bad because we aren't getting as many things done as you'd like, and frustration is inevitable.
Most of what I read about getting stuff done deals with Technique, Systems, and Tactics, with lots of Purpose and Balance sprinkled on. Goodness knows, I've tried various recipes - some work well, some don't, some work sometimes, some work always. They all have one thing in common - I can screw up any of them because I don't predictably play by the rules.
In my quest for the perfect system I've come to some conclusions, thanks to a number of cosmic nudges toward "Intention" over the last year. The nudges have helped me conclude that Intention is the key element that determines whether any of the other stuff works (sort of like the One Ring that rules them all, in the Lord of The Rings).
Turns out I was on a quest (or something like it) and didn't realize it. This post is quite a bit more philosophical (and a lot longer) than my usual curious musings here, but I have heard a different muse today. Here is my travelog.
Road signs
The gurus of productivity all have their own twist on creating a compelling Vision of the future. Stephen Covey tells us to "Begin with the end in mind," David Allen says "You won't know how to do it until you see yourself doing it." - My friend Gene Kim recommended "The Message of a Master" to me last year, which deals with "broadcasting" your desires (intentions, if you will) to the cosmos triggering the cosmos to respond with what you need. It's an unassuming little book, and I'd forgotten about it. I found it under the edge of my bed this weekend and it came crashing back.
- Steve Pavlina's "Million Dollar Experiment" (I'm a participant) gathered a bunch of folks to "manifest" $1 million dollars through the power of Intention. I personally attribute thousands of dollars to this simple intention technique.
- I saw a PBS special by Wayne Dyer, in which he goes through how to use the "Power of Intention" to change your life for the better. I was so intrigued, I donated enough money to Public Broadcasting to get his whole collection on the subject.
I started listening to the Wayne Dyer CD's this week, and a surprising thing happened. It was very "out there," new age sounding stuff (and I'm usually a roll-your-eyes-in-the-face-of-new-age-things kinda person). Then the connections started happening.
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While doing some housekeeping on the blog here, I've added a Frappr-powered Google map showing some members of the Genuine Curiosity community. As I write this, there are 28 folks who've plotted their coordinates on the map, and some have even posted a picture.
Put yourself on the map! Either click on the "Genuine Curiosity" link above the map in the right-hand sidebar menu, or go there directly by clicking here.
By the way - if the title of this post confounds you, check out this video clip from Saturday Night Live, called "Lazy Sunday." It is so well done. |
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On my last flight (seems like I start a lot of things that way, but that is when I have a lot of time to catch up on my reading) I read some excellent articles from some of my favorite bloggers. Here's the catch - I wasn't online, or even using a computer. I was reading a book called "More Space - Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business," edited by Todd Satterstein (with a foreword by the inimitable Seth Godin).
The concept is simple - take nine bloggers, and give them lots of space to express their thoughts about business. The results are quite impressive.
The authors are Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Haneberg, Rob May, Johnnie Moore, Marc Orchant, Robert Paterson, Evelyn Rodriguez, Curt Rosengren, and Jeremy Wright.
The wide array of styles brought out a wide array of responses from me as I read. At various points I was intriqued, enraged, inspired, and (surprisingly) touched by the material. These folks shine in this book.
Just to give you a taste, here are some things I liked from the book:
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