startups Archives - Page 39 of 117

How invention timelines distort

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

The screen culture era that we have entered is clearly here to stay – but it does represent some interesting nuance in human perception. Given that we are in the middle of a technological upheaval there is a default belief that everything newer is better. And often it is, the real challenge is for us to train ourselves to stop and compare the new option with the existing method. Once we start to do this, we might surprise ourselves to find we adopt a lot of new technology for reasons that defy relative utility.

This short doco I was watching on the future of connections got me thinking about it more deeply. Our current obsession with the screen as the default to every solution to every business flow problem. The idea that UX is seen as a screen issue, that we use digital to replicate analog, and the fact that we even make ebooks look as though they are turning paper pages, says that our we are distorting the true utility of the tools we are using.

So let’s imagine for a minute that the digital screen was invented before paper was. That paper, and printing upon it had just arrived today. I have no doubt that the same level of excitement would bubble around this as a technology. We’d all be very quick to point out the benefits of the printed word and visual over the screen:

It doesn’t need electricity
You can drop it without breaking it
It’s super light
It can be incredibly thin…. “paper thin?”
It can have a superior resolution
It’s flexible and can be shoved in a bag, folded, rolled etc
It can be compiled into multiple sheets or bound together
It doesn’t take memory to scroll through, or load up, you just turn directly to a particular page
It can be written on with almost any writing device (which probably wouldn’t have been invented yet!)
It’s very low cost to produce single or multiple copies
Data can be generated on it and stored with or without computing power
It can be sent without risk (although mail probably wouldn’t exist – but it would be a ‘hot’ startup vertical!)
You can tear out a page or square and give it to someone

You get the picture…. and I’m sure you can make an equally compelling list in reverse which is ‘pro digital screen’. And the irony is not lost on me that the current battle in screen technology is for one that can can flex without breaking.

So why does this matter? Because it is time we started again to focus on utility, not newness for the sake of it. It is time we appreciated the variety of tools at our disposal and used them interchangeably or together based on suitability. But most of all it’s time we started to remember why technology matters, which we can do by reminding ourselves of the definition according the Oxford Dictionary:

Technology: The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.

Or put another way, the thing ought serve the purpose, the purpose is not the thing – unless of course it’s the thing we sell.

As far as startups and entrepreneurs are concerned, there’s a clue in all this. The only way we’ll ever get adoption of our technology, will be if it ‘practically’ supersedes the alternative.

Scribbles from a note pad

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Yesterday I was cleaning the remnants of 2012 from my desk when I found an old note pad. I was flicking through and found some thoughts and ideas I had written down during meetings, while listening to some talks and just reading articles. While many of them are ‘oldies’ I still think some are worth sharing and creating a digital foot print for.

– Being busy is not the same as being effective.

– We should begin every project as if there is no budget.

– 1 billion dollars laid flat in $100 bills would fill a 1 meter deep 1300 meter square space. (Swimming pool?)

– To get a good answer, we need to ask a great question.

– The average Australian has 1 testicle (be careful with averages).

– Get T-Shaped people to work in your business. A broad set of experiences. Arms that reach wide into the world. People that can go left or right. people who are centered and balanced.

– It’s worth asking “why” 5 times if we want to get to the real reason of something.

– There are only 7 major plot lines to a story: Overcome the monster, Rags to riches, The quest, Voyage and return, Farce, Tragedy, Re-birth. Even our startup needs to choose one of these.

There is no digital

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

While it is clear that the birth of the omnipresent web has changed our business infrastructure, it’s not clear that most people understand the truth about digital as it pertains to business, brand or startup strategy. Here’s a simple phrase to help remind us:

There is no digital.

There is only ‘life’. We seamlessly move between a variety of technologies in our day. As we have done since the beginning of time with all forms of technology. We don’t have a digital life and an analogue life as much as we don’t have a sitting on a chair life or a sitting on the floor life. A chair is just a piece of technology like the latest shinny thing in our pockets is. And it’s about time we started recognizing that a digital strategy is a flawed one by definition. All that exists is a strategy that makes sense – one which is technology agnostic. One that achieves objectives by considering all of the methods and tools at our disposal.

The days of digital strategy are over. Anyone who doesn’t get digital, doesn’t get strategy. We need start to think again in terms of utility for the audience – it’s only when we focus on their needs that we can ever hope to be a solution in their day.

The best deal is not the best deal

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

When negotiating with a supplier in business, it’s a natural desire to want to get the best deal. And when we think of deals, we think of the value equation: The product or service as a function of price.

If we take this approach and succeed the net result is this: The party we are dealing with gets their margin squeezed and they make less money from dealing with us.

This isn’t the best deal. In fact, it is not a very good deal for both parties. Low margin customers usually get sub optimal service, attention and effort put into their account. In startup land what we usually need is love and attention more than sharp supplier pricing. Which is why best business practice is to leave something significant in it for the other guy.

The downside of the internet

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently watching this documentary about break dancing and its evolution in the Bronx of New York. You may remember from previous posts that I was very much into the activity, before the main stream media and taste makers decided it was over. They pulled the albums from the shelves, stopped showing it on TV (I had 3 channels to chose from) and let it evaporate into history as a fad we can all look back on.

What you probably don’t know about break dancing is that it was around for about 10 years before it hit the mainstream. In fact, it was pretty much developed on a single housing block in the South Bronx. It didn’t move from this single location for the best part of a decade. The 3 tenants of Hip Hip: the break dancing, the Music (DJ’s & MC’s) and the aerosol art – all thrived and evolved in one physical space over a large number of years without any external influence or involvement. A small community lead by people like Kool Herc, Fab Five Freddy and Afrika Bambaataa added layers to their micro culture into a form of self bootstrapped art and entertainment. The period of development was iterative, local and very long before it blossomed into something amazing and beautiful. Hip Hop cultural was the veritable flower growing through a crack in the pavement. It didn’t appear in discotheques of Manhattan until it had fully developed. Only when this flower began to germinate and turn into an garden of undiscovered originality and urban culture – did any taste makers and marketers start to take notice. Only when it was fully developed could it turn into a global phenomenon where big dollars got made via the TV Industrial Complex.

I don’t think that this could happen today. The connected world just wouldn’t allow it. And while, I’m a technology evangelist, it’s true that all technology has some negative outcomes. The lack of isolation is one of these technology negatives. Certain things need the condition of isolation in order to develop to their true potential. To develop in a single environment without external influence. The exact kind of environment that Hip Hop culture both needed and thrived in. It’s why it was so pure and so real. It had to find its way with limited resources. The reason the 3 tenants of Hip Hop are what they are is because the founders were poor. They couldn’t afford instruments – so they used record players and microphones as an instruments. They used spray cans and train sides as their canvas. They took the only nutrients their environment of urban decay provided.

Today the entire connected world is looking for something interesting to blog about, to tweet about, to post on their youtube channel and start a tumblr page on. Anything that looks remotely interesting gets posted about, mashed up, promoted, storied, and presented to the world before it has even taken its own shape. The original community of anything different and interesting can’t own it and nurture it like they could pre-web. And I’m starting to think that we might be missing out on some of the cultural benefits which evolve from simple unadulterated time to develop. If the first blossom of a new species is picked, re-planted or re-purposed will we ever really see what that species might have turned into?

While we are urged to promote and share all that we do and find, maybe it is time to consider the opposite. To cocoon our idea in development until it has evolved into something worthy. The let the startup actually ‘start’, and find its place and take its own shape before others start to re-shape it on our behalf. Maybe it’s time for us to step back and let some things be, before we interrupt them.

The key to the success of all technology, is knowing when not to use it.

The future is in 'Sight'

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Every now and again a cyber punk film comes along which is futuristic, yet plausible. That’s when I get excited. And I’m very excited about the short film Sight. Based on the simple idea of living a fully connected life, yet the execution is pure genius. Think smart phone, think geo-locating, think facial recognition, think the Google glass project…. think all this and more. I very much dig the fact that this was a graduation project from an Arts School – more proof that the tools are in everyones hands today, and that creativity is greater than resources.

In the end we always build what we imagine first… and we imagine things which are within the realm of our reality.

As far as I can tell – this is inevitable, that time just hasn’t elapsed yet. Enjoy!

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/46304267]

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