People often forget that the reason you try to understand what you are currently doing in R&D is so you can make better decisions in future. Representing projects graphically allows you to understand the portfolio at a higher level and is ideal for the senior management team when they are contemplating where they are compared to where they are trying to get to. There are a couple of other blogs about this but I was too tired to put in these final diagrams. Again, there’s no right or wrong – just different ways of viewing what you have. I think they’re pretty self-explanatory. I’d write more but there’s a guy playing his i-Pod so loud I could sing along and I’m just off to garrott him with his own headphone cable. If there are no more posts – please come visit me in prison.    more »

I’m going to start mixing up my content with the best of what I find out there (or what makes me titter like a little girl and wet myself).

Given I’ve been going through a list phase, here’s the founder of Blogger talking about web startups.  A lot of the rules are very applicable elsewhere in my opinion.

http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp

Okay you're sat in Starbucks wanting to access the internet. You know they have a T-mobile wireless hotspot but what you don't know is that T-mobile have developed a cunning process to make it almost impossible to buy their product without upsetting customers. Read on for a rant with a few lessons hidden inside.   more »

Having laid into people pitching their ideas to investors and resource managers, I was challenged to come back with a blog about daft things investors do to provide some balance. Well, balance in this case is going to come from a chip on both my shoulders so let’s move into the shadowy and sometimes arrogant world of investment. A few dont’s and dont’s with the odd bit of personal experience thrown in…   more »

Oh dear. I’ve had a day when I’ve seen another very enthusiastic person with an early stage business and absolutely no clue how to get their idea across. Okay to be honest he wasn’t that enthusiastic………… and he smelled a bit strange……………and smoked the smallest ‘roll-ups’ I have ever seen but anyway – back to my point. How is it people blow investment opportunities so badly? It appears like a sub-conscious wish to fail it can be so bad. To save people who really want to screw up but don’t have the energy to figure out how to do it, I have compiled a list of real ‘show stoppers’ when you’re looking for investment or approval for a new corporate venture.   more »

I tend to ask this question in quite a lot of companies, although it is particularly important in the development of new products/features/ventures!  When new initiatives are put in place, everyone seems to somehow forget the past.  Ongoing projects are respected but innovation pipeline, idea banks etc. are ‘created’ and then people studiously start to fill them up with new stuff.

I was the same until someone opened a filing drawer in their desk once and I spotted a strange bit of plastic.  After a bit of conversation it turned out this was actually an idea for a medical device that the person had thought of a few years previously.  I’d like to say it was a stroke of genius but it wasn’t.  Actually it was so bad it would probably only be good if you decided euthenasia was a growth area.  However, the more people I talked to, the more I realised that there was interesting stuff that had been canned in the past for various reasons but which might hold value now.

It stands to reason if you think about it.  A good innovation process will put some stuff on hold while you await specific conditions to be met.  That might mean a component needs to hit a certain price point or someone has to invent something new.  You’re just keeping it in a holding pattern waiting for the world to turn enough that it becomes worth something.  Well, this was the same situation.  A lot of good ideas in this company had been halted because there was not enough money, willpower, time, management attention and intelligence to carry on.  Some of the ideas were just hobby projects that never saw the light of day because the person changed jobs, lost enthusiasm or a myriad other reasons.

Okay the cupboard is a metaphor………..or is it a simile……no, it’s a metaphor.  There will be things in cupboards, drawers, hidden on computers and locked away in people’s heads.  However, I’ve never seen this exercise fail to find interesting ideas whose time has come.  You can ignore all this previous work and thinking but why make life hard for yourself.

Something is a specialist skill that only a few people can do and gradually it becomes more widely available, cheaper and easier to use (no punchcards in computers now - only blue screens of death and sanctimonious Mac users to deal with). This article talks about the inexorable march of technologies and produsts from high cost, scarcities to being cheap and on your desktop etc.
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Here are the signs of how to spot if you are talking to a startup company that is doomed. Might be a bit harsh and an exageration but I bet I'm right almost all the time on this. Here is the first thing they say that should make you run out of the door screaming.   more »