Idea Borrowing

Some of the entrepreneurs of our time haven’t been the inventors we believe them to be. It’s not a criticism, entrepreneurship goes far beyond inventing and ideas. In fact some of our most revered entrepreneurs are simply good at cross fertilization.

Let’s take Steve Jobs for example. He didn’t invent the GUI (Graphical User Interface), the mouse, icons, paint, folders or any of the ‘user friendly’ things that Apple became famous for.

He ‘borrowed ideas’. By looking at related categories Jobs was able to adopt new thinking and bring it to his market in a way that made sense. He was a great normative thinker. The best example of Jobs in action was when he was invited into the Xerox PARC office for a study tour to ‘share knowledge’. In essence, they gave Jobs the key to their kingdom. This is where Jobs vision of the future of the personal computer grew from.

The first GUI was on a Xerox office workstation called the Alto. Closely followed by the Xerox Star in 1977 – see picture below.

xerox-star.jpg

Look Familiar?

The trip to Xerox by Apple computer’s Steve Jobs in 1979 led to the graphical user interface and mouse being integrated into the Apple’s Lisa and, later, the first Macintosh.

Jobs borrowed ideas, ideas born in a photocopier company.

Ebay took the excitement and quick sale of the auction process from real estate.

Craigslist made an electronic web based newspaper classified.

So the question begs to all entrepreneurs, what new technologies, ideas or systems can we borrow from adjacent industries?

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Competitors

Competition is eternally existential. We compete for love, money, attention, fame, wealth, recognition, and sometimes, we even compete for food. Turns out humans aren’t the only species who must to compete to survive. All living things must do it. Even trees in a deep forest compete for sunlight by growing as quickly as possible forgoing width for height.

What I find most interesting about competition is how we or any being chooses to do it. When a competitor catches us unaware, they usually achieve this through  using some form of subterfuge. Like growing in a smaller segment of the market. Focusing on a neglected geography. And the really smart competitors disguise what they are doing so you don’t even see them coming. A little like Google has done to Microsoft who was overly focused on the ‘desktop’, while the world was moving to web app’s and gathering and storing of information externally.

I noticed this phenomenon first hand recently. My business was moving along swimmingly (which in this case is my tomato plantation). As you can see from the photo below. My Roma’s looked healthy and almost ready for the picking:

tomato1

But upon closer inspection a competitor had been eating away at my market for quite a long time without me noticing. Once I turned around the tomato to inspect the back side of them – I was devastated to find my competition. They caught me napping and had a very big impact on my market share. As can be seen here:

tomato4

How did they manage this?

  • The caterpillar was smart enough to attack on the reverse side out of view.
  • His color is exactly the same as the tomato proving an excellent camouflage.
  • He waited till the market was already developed (by me) and the tomatoes had a reasonable size and were worth attacking – in this case risking his life over!
  • In true terrorist fashion he penetrated the market at one entry point and ate it inside out. That is, the caterpillar was so deep inside the market, he was completely out of view.

None of this was by mistake. It has been driven by millennia of evolutionary survival and subsequent genetic coding. Nature is smart.

The implications for startups are many. When we start out to compete, the best thing we can do is replicate what nature does. Stay out of harms way. Stay small and unseen. Try and gain some momentum and size. If we’re lucky will have built our share of the market and be ensconced before anyone notices.

(FYI – I picked the tomatoes, and placed them in another location of the garden to let the caterpillars fight another day – they may just leave some seeds which will flourish next season!)

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People Watching

If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve never been ‘people watching’, then start up blog strongly recommends a session. For a lot of reasons it’s a cool thing all entrepreneurs should do. For one, all our revered entrepreneurs are champion trend spotters. And they spot these trends a long time before they are reported in the Sunday newspaper lift outs.

What’s next?

Go some where busy, go somewhere where there are zillions of transactions, go somewhere sans commerce, go where families hang out, go somewhere singles hangout, look for the subgroups, watch people looking at shelves in stores – guess their decision process, see if this process is the same for all or different for all, see what they wear, see how they move, how did they get there, where are they from, bring a notepad with you and write down ideas, go places you’ve never been before…. Watch people, guess their motivations, view their life in action and then we’ll be the ones gaining life experience…. Just go and watch.

shibuya-crowd

The funny thing about our world is that we are all in it every day, but very few of us are actually paying any attention to it. Step off the stage and become the director. Make it a habit to pay attention to what is going on in our world.

As entrepreneurs and marketers we are lucky. We can do our homework everywhere we go, and our start ups are the key beneficiaries.

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Prices vs Relationship

A while ago Philip Welnman spoke at the Hive. (Australian Entrepreneurial forum) One thing he said struck me, and I think it’s true

“Without relationships we can’t win. We never lose business over price, it’s always the relationship, and price is the fall guy.

Sure, there’s probably some exceptions, like commodity trading. But who wants to trade commodities anyway?

Steve – rentoid.com

How to get to Sydney?

Fly in airplane sydney-drawing

Drive car

Ride bicycle

Swim

Walk

Run

Motorbike

Bus

(insert your choice here)

Which one is correct? Well, it depends on a lot of things, like speed, budget and even why you are going…. Are you walking to Sydney on fitness or political campaign?

It’s easy in to judge strategy from the sidelines, especially when we don’t understand the constraints or objectives.

In startup land our paths will differ. What matters is if we get to Sydney, and if we did it in the manner which suited us.

Steve – rentoid.com

2nd worst shop front of all time

I took this pic of this shop front / side in my local neighbourhood. It’s easy to see when you drive past.

hexworks

Startup blog prize (free book) for anyone who can tell me what they do without calling the number (or knowing someone who works there / digging around).

I’m all for single minded simplicity, but if we are going to go to the effort to paint the brand and phone number, it’s also handy to have a tag line which tells people what we do.

Steve – rentoid.com

Asset Diversification

We diversify our asset portfolios to reduce risk. To reduce the risk of a particular asset losing value, declining, getting stolen, lost, or broken. We store our assets in safes and banks and put locks on them. We even insure our assets.

If information is the new ‘asset’ – Why do we keep all our assets in only 1 or 2 devices? Just a laptop, a brain, maybe an iphone or external hard drive. Why don’t we diversify their location, or even afford them other types of protection?

Maybe they should be shared instead, and not hidden or locked up. Maybe the sharing of the asset will stimulate it’s growth. Maybe…. But there is little doubt they ought be protected.

information

image by Austin Kleon

words by Steve from rentoid.com