We are super interested in ideas that matter and how people can really create something where the odds are stacked against them. Not in terms of their intellect or innate abilities but from the sheer fact that creating something in a box is going to result in something that only you can see and touch. Get out there and open your normal and jump into something new – work with a stranger, get to know them, expand your network through this person and then see what you can do..
It’s Not Crowdsourcing..
We have been working on our platform for a while now and get more excited about it everyday. It is called ideablender and we are hoping that we can create a platform for you to work with us on some important innovation projects. Don’t worry if you are not an expert on crowdsourcing or working on projects with a global team. There is room for you to contribute things that may inspire others, post your own ideas or you can evaluate ideas that others have suggested. The goal is to find ways to inspire and educate people and derive solutions to problems, not just business problems but social, environmental or health to name a few.
The idea of crowdsourcing innovation is, in my perspective, still early in its adoption. The question has been whether the crowd can outperform the internal team. ideablender’s view is that small teams are good for some things and the broader community is good for others. The goal of our’s is to find the intersection between the two to achieve better results. We hope you will join us in this journey
Let us know what you think!
Don’t Change Process!
Organizations are always looking at ways to make process better, sometimes for the sake of it and not for a real outcome.
It’s not easy…
Over time, processes that seek to create order are valued, but improving them gets more difficult as well. If you’re seeking to make the organized more organized, it’s a tough thing.
Far easier and more productive to create productive chaos, to interrupt, re-create, produce, invent and redefine.
How Is Our BETA Going..
We’re very happy with how it’s going, and it’s gratifying to see real customers running their businesses off of it. Our first beta customer has been on ideablender since November, and since then we’ve rolled the beta out to several more organizations. The beta release has been successful both in validating some of our product hypotheses and, at least as importantly, providing input about how to allocate our time.
We’ve been selecting companies from our personal networks as well as those who have contacted us. We are still in its very early phases, but we’re learning from customers who say they can no longer work with the average consulting firm but need a real diverse platform for problem solving. Every day is an opportunity to take the product one step further, to make our users happier and more effective in their day to day lives.
Passionate About Something…
I spent 26 minutes last night watching Jamie Oliver (the celebrity chef) speaking at his acceptance of the 2010 TED award – the topic that he is passionate about is his fight against child obesity. It was convincing, thought provoking and real. It makes the health care reform debate seem moot. I drove into work and had many different ideas filtering around and considered what I was really passionate about. We spend so much time with work and other activities that it becomes difficult to step away and exert energy into a cause. But the one that keeps drawing me back to is how to make social, economic and racial diversity the standard in how business is conducted and decisions are made. Wouldn’t everyone benefit? Would we ever get to the brink of another Global Depression again – I doubt it..
Train, Train and Never Stop!
Almost everyone who builds a company knows that people are the most important asset. Properly run start-ups place a great deal of emphasis on recruiting and the interview process in order to build their talent base. Unfortunately, often the investment in people stops there. There are four core reasons why it shouldn’t:
1. Productivity
It is important to keep careful statistics of how many candidates have been screened, how many have made it to the full interview process and how many people were hired. The most important statistic is missing: how many fully productive employees have they added? By failing to measure progress towards the actual goal, they lose sight of the value of training. If they measured productivity, they might be horrified to find that all those investments in recruiting, hiring, and integration were going to waste. Even if they were made aware of low productivity among new employees, most CEOs think that they don’t have time to invest in training, the opposite is true:
Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manger can perform.
2. Performance Management
When people interview managers, they often like to ask: have you fired anyone? Or how many people have you fired? Or how would you go about firing someone? These are all fine questions, but often the right question is the one that isn’t asked: When you fired the person, how did you know with certainty that the employee both understood the expectations of the job and were missing them? The best answer is that the manager clearly set expectations when she trained the employee for the job. If you don’t train your people, you establish no basis for performance management. As a result, performance management in your company will be sloppy and inconsistent.
3. Product Quality
Often founders start companies with visions of elegant, beautiful product architectures that will solve so many of the nasty issues that they were forced to deal with in their previous jobs. Then, as their company becomes successful, they find that their beautiful product architecture has turned into a Frankenstein. How does this happen? As success drives the need to hire new people at a rapid rate, companies neglect to train the new people properly. As the engineers are assigned tasks, they figure out how to complete them as best they can. Often this means replicating existing facilities in the architecture, which lead to inconsistencies in the user experience, performance problems, and a general mess. And you thought training was expensive.
4. Employee Retention
There were two primary reasons why people quit:
- They hated their manager – generally the employees were appalled by the lack of guidance, career development and feedback they were receiving.
- They weren’t learning anything – the company wasn’t investing in the employees.
Don’t Hesitate
…that’s the best way to make things happen.
Write down your plans. Share them. Seek out people and friends.
Shun the non-believers. They won’t be easily convinced, but they can be easily ignored.
Is there any doubt that making big plans increases the chances that something great will happen?
We didn’t take a chance in making something big happen with ideablender, it’s just getting started too : )
Welcome To Our Space
As the Founder of ideablender, I want to welcome you and hope you find relevant information, opinions that are open and hopefully some thoughtful dialogue!
