I had the pleasure of attending a meeting at the Chicago Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. It involved about 10 entrepreneurs, 10 venture capitalists and about 10 of Chicago agency officials interested in business. It was convened by Lance Pressl, Foundation President of the Chamber and leader of the Innovate Now initiative. The guest of honor was Steve Chen, co-founder of Youtube. Steve grew up in Chicago, attended the innovative Illinois Math and Science Academy, and then U of I in Champaign. He moved out to Silicon Valley and this discussion was about why and how to retain entrepreneurial talent.

In a surprise to all, Mayor Daley showed up! It was a real treat for all except the people from the city that report up to him. It was chaired by a gentleman from the MacArthur Foundation who handled the group superbly. Steve Chen talked about joining Paypal and Facebook prior to founding Youtube. His comments were straight forward — the valley is the place to be to start and grow a startup. The talent that has been or wants to be part of a startup is there as well as a high concentration of venture capital.

In many ways, it reflected the perfectly capable talent and resources of the midwest, but also highlighted the fact that we have no where near the critical mass to be a dynamic hub of venture backed startups. There was a great conversation and a gentleman from the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center emphasized the BIG events they do just to get the press and awareness of something happening.

I suggested to Mayor Daley that the MARS Center in Toronto was a good example of a city outside the valley building something important to foster innovation. He seemed genuinely intrigued, we engegd in a short conversation, and then asked for my card after the meeting was over. Let’s see where this goes!

According to Jeff Hawkins, in his book On Intelligence, one of the things that make us able to function on a daily basis is a MASSIVE feedback and feedforward pipeline between our brains and our body. Its interesting that we don’t perceive this information going to and from our brains, but it is necessary for the everyday, but deceivingly complex behaviors we exhibit in the world. Feedback (and feed forward) is a very important concept to innovation. Too many people fail because they do not get the feedback they need prior to launching their assumed revolution. Dean Kamen, in spite of his technical and management genius, kept the Segway (or Ginger for those who remember) so secretive that the company was could not have imagined such a tepid market launch. They continue to search today for a viable and lucrative market for their “revolutionary” human transporter.

The question for business leaders, or even the individual inventor, is how to foster MASSIVE feedback for any given project you have in the pipeline. Your attitude and values should drive for feedback rather than spurn it. At every opportunity, look for ways assemble those who are not a part of the effort to review your work. It doesn’t matter they have little knowledge of what you have done — it only matters if they understand and value what you have created. Open your ears and listen to their feedback with no defense. For any criticism, ask them to say more. Enjoy the naive, neutral, unimpassioned response to your idea. And then go make your idea better.

Gary Hamel’s new book, The Future of Management, is out. I’ve been waiting for it ever since I heard him speak at Fortune’s Innovation Forum in New York last year. His fundamental insight is that while there are many aspects of our lives have undergone fundamental change and in some cases, innovation, the way we manage our organizations are stuck in the industrial revolution. The quote I remember from the conference is, “Our management structures are essentially the same as those of third world dictatorships. And we know the dictatorships don’t work.” I am not through the book yet, and while it can be a little redundant, its thesis is strong, his objective modest and open-ended “you’ll have to figure out what management innovation means for your organization,” and he provides several examples of companies with innovative management such as W.L. Gore, Google, and Whole Foods Market. While I come at it from my particular point of view of Creative Production, Hamel’s sense that our paradigm of management needs a revolution is refreshing, exciting, and spot on.

The New York Times reported that anthropologists have been deployed in Afghanistan to help the local military units better understand the more subtle aspects of tribal relations. It is both surprising and encouraging the the military has done so, realizing that culture is far more powerful than explicit force. While I do understand the debate in the anthropological community about whether the deployed anthropologists are able to work objectively for the people of Afghanistan, it seems their overall impact is highly positive. As the Times reported, “Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population.” And i think we can all applaud their bravery and selflessness. If anyone is still under the impression that ethnography and other social science methods don’t deliver objective and substantial results, that they are somehow “touchy-feely”, they should take note of this latest evidence from one of the most extreme environments one could imagine. Empathy enhances perception of what is REALLY going on and provides decision makers productive clarity.

Having been pressed by numerous clients about why the iPhone is being so well received when they’ve tried the same functions, the best way I could describe it is, “Dramatic Features.” Dramatic Features are those that resonate with a person on a human level.

To understand better what I mean, consider the definition of drama: “A composition, …accommodated to action, and intended to exhibit a picture of human life, or to depict a series of grave or humorous actions of more than ordinary interest, tending toward some striking result…”

Take a look at the pins that fall from the sky and populate Google maps on the iPhone — you feel them! Why? Of course, they could just appear — just use the frame buffer and make a call to the graphics card. But to make the user feel them, we use perspective animation and a sense of gravity — all things we experience on a daily basis and can relate to.

Dramatic Features are the next step beyond features that look good and work well. They inspire. You not only understand and can use them, you enjoy them. To design Dramatic features you need an organization open to and skilled in, well, drama! With so many students in animation and game development programs, I can imagine they’ll be designing the interfaces of the future — not traditional graphic or interaction designers…

Every once in a while someone crystallizes a way of doing something that is fresh, effective, and a really great idea. The folks at Commoncraft create short videos to explain web-based concepts and services like social networking, RSS, and Google Docs. Using paper cutouts to create little vignettes on the screen, a great set of hand and voice gestures (”Yay!, Boo!”), and great writing, Commoncraft has created a communication form that could become the next big way to pitch ideas! Check ‘em out. (Thanks to Josh Penrod and Jed Wood for the link.)

Speaking of bicycles and not of the iPhone, I think I have found the bicycle I want and more importantly, a bicycle company I want to do business with. In this age of outsourcing, online shopping, and big box retail it may seem strangely intimate to speak of wanting to doing business with a company. But with Bike Friday, I quickly warmed to the products which appear excellent and their culture which appears knowledgeable, passionate and refreshingly quirky. Once I had found their very impressive Tikit, and browsed the web site for about 20 minutes, I was pretty certain this company had integrity, a great product, and a culture worth being a part of.

onward »

Mayor Daley would like to make Chicago into the greenest city. But I’m afraid my experience today would indicate we have a long way to go. Green will be very hard to achieve if we abondon it when it becomes a little inconvenient. I’ve been using my bike on the Metra to go between Chicago and Libertyville.  Except for rush-hour, Metra accomodates 9 bicycles on each train. Well, I rode my bicycle today to the station in Libertyville to catch the 2:10 to Union Station. Train pulls up, doors open, and I walk to a car that takes bicycles. The conductor calls out, “You can’t take that bike on this train.” A little stunned, I asked, “Why not?” He replied, “Taste of Chicago this week. No bikes on the train.”

It seems that accommodating a few bikes into the city per train is inconvenient this week. Sure, the Taste is running and July 4th is coming up in a couple days, but the train was not at all crowded. On the one hand it seems perfectly normal to restrict bicycles on the train if there is a big event and it would get crowded. But then I started to think about it and began to see it differently…

onward »

It is no mystery to me why Ebay bought Skype for 2.6 billion dollars. Ash Bhoopathy, one of my students at the Institute of Design, is doing an internship in Shanghai this summer. He’s thinking about doing a workshop that includes prototyping of services and wanted to chat about it. We had been trading emails. “I can Skype you.” “Oh…OK, Ash. Sure.” While I have, out of curiosity, research interest, and need set up accounts on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others, I was a bit embarrassed I never tried Skype. Somewhat hesitant to go through the ordeal, I went to Skype’s site. I downloaded the app, started it up, created an account through the app, and called Ash. In a matter of three minutes I was talking with Ash in Shanghai, clear as day. The value to me was immediate, amazing, and profound. I can’t even count the number of other “services” that make you jump through hoops and provide a plethora of meaningless offers on the way to getting what you need. So, thank you Skype. Thank you Google. Thank you 37Signals. Now, what are the principles and values we can identify in these examples and teach to a new generation of innovation leaders?…

“Get out there.” “Immerse yourself in their world.” “Explore the rich context of users.” “Discover unmet needs.” “Get in touch with our inner user.” “Dive deep.”

The catch phrases of user-centerdom are an odd mix between Deepak Chopra and Vasco Da Gama.

The funny thing about these phrases is while they do a good job contrasting from the lack of depth in much quant research, they do a pretty bad job of actually preparing people for meaningful field work. Good fieldwork is not a random walk through the wilderness. It is designed with a point of view. It is framed by objectives and hypotheses. It has its own sense of discipline and rigor.

Before we go do field work at GT, we often:

• Spend quality time determining who we want to observe and speak with.
• We develop hypotheses about what we think will matter and look to prove/disprove.
• We test our protocols to make sure that they “work” and we refine them.