“Nobody wants your idea!”, David Stokes struck me with this single sentence.
It is a common fear when we believe our idea to be unique and valuable that somebody could steal it, but it’s really unlikely to happen. As Dr Stokes said, “Think about facebook. If Zuckerberg had told you about that, it would probably have sounded like something not that great”.
facebook’s revenue in 2013 was $7.87 billion
His main point was that we have more to gain from getting our idea out there than keeping it to ourselves. Talking with people about it could help you consider different angles, to ask yourself “What is unique in my idea? Am I really adding value for someone?”. It could be your first focus group, just a few minutes after you had it.
“Don’t fall in Love with your idea!”, he struck me again.
“Many people find themselves married to their idea and jump directly from Thinking to Trading, but the real opportunities that a new idea opens reside in the Testing phase”.
We are supposed to be passionate and to back our innovative idea, but once more turns up we can look at things differently. Testing our idea with the final user, in the market, could looks like a waste of time if you are fully convinced but could avoid an expensive failure – both in energies and money. Moreover, even finding out that nobody want to buy or produce your product you will gain a new insight into your market and hopefully you’ll be able to formulate more effective ideas or make the right pivot.
The USA Company Raytheon invented the microwave while researching on a military radar
Dr Stokes, during the last ENTERPRISE! meeting last Wednesday said many times these two words: eliminate waste. It’s the core of the Lean Start Up system and I think it is embodied in the testing phase: we will prototype our MVP (Minimum Viable Product) > measure how customers respond (he focused on the significant difference between end users who’ll use your product – for example a kid with a videogame – and customer who’ll buy it – for example their parents) > and decide either to pivot orpreserve the original idea.And we can also have a Lean manufacturing, building our product eliminating anything that does not create value for the customer.
He suggested to follow this simple methodology developing our business:
DISCOVERY – define your idea.
EVALUATION – adjust your product to be fit for the market.
EXPLOITATION – write a Business Plan.
It seems so straightforward: focus more on the substance rather than on the complexity of the process.
It was more or less a couple of weeks ago when Corinne asked us to form a group and think about a campaign to promote breast cancer awareness online.
I know, I’m late, I should’ve written this post before and, I know, summed up like this it looks pretty simple. But it was not, at least for 10 reasons:
1) Our group was formed based on where we were sitting, so random people and a mysterious International Business student we just met. Strangers, because anyway we still don’t really know each other and this makes the situation both exciting and unpredictable.
2) The topic was the Pink October, the breast cancer awareness month. Every social campaign is a challenge, you are supposed to “sell” a new behaviour, but to speak about cancer and breast make the issue even more delicate and filled with taboos.
3) From the briefing to the actual thinking went by roughly 15 minutes, then 5 minutes to write down 20 ideas and 30 minutes to discuss them in our group with a positive approach (anything negative would’ve been literally “knocked out”).
4) Then 15 minutes to prepare a pitch introducing what we were supposed to work on for the next Thursday.
5) We had to use lemons, for their similarity with the breast shape.
6) And It had to be a viral campaign online. A real one.
We came up with an “IceBucketChallenge-style” campaign. We would’ve picked some guy up off the street giving him two lemons to hold while we would’ve asked questions like “what do you know about lemons?”, “and about breasts?”, “and about breast cancer?”. This should’ve been a video posted online and other girls, that we would’ve nominated through some social media, had to do the same to keep the viral campaign going. And here comes the 7th reason:
7) I went to Central London on a Sunday to test our idea on the field. Of course it was embarrassing, but only doing it I realised all the difficulties: to stop someone filming with your phone while you’re holding two lemons and then ask weird questions about cancer. All this trying not to scare him to death. Moreover, we found out that to be filmed seems to be a problem for a lot of people.
8) When we met again with our team we had to quickly think to an alternative. The temptation to pick the first thing coming to our mind was significant, instead we brainstormed again. We were aware of all the barriers this time but ideas still flowed freely.
The new concept we came up with was a single viral video: 13 men (not that tuned) singing one line each of the popular song “Lemon tree”. Link and hashtag of the campaign had to be shown just in the end, to tease the watcher nothing too specific had to be said.
9) So again we went hunting participants, explaining to each one what we aimed to do and why in the most convincing way. Filming and singing are not the average guy’s favourite activities, but we made it anyway!
This is our #knowyourlemons tree video:
It scored 226 views during the first 24 hours.
The short URL of the official website has been clicked 70 times so far.
And 687 people have been invited to the facebook event.
Obviously, it’s not a stunning success in the web marketing world but it taught me a lot.
I recognised all the Lean Start Upphases we went through – Thinking (1-6), Testing (7) , Pivot (8) and Trading (9) – but, moreover, I discover that people can always surprise you as you can surprise yourself. With short time and strangers coworkers coming from unknown backgrounds it’s easy to think “It’s impossibile, we won’t come up with anything valuable”, but if you only let this prejudice go and your mind free of experimenting you can get unpredictable results. So, my conclusion comes with the 10th reason:
10) It will never be simple to work seriously on something new, as it will never be simple working with people who (surprisingly!) live outside your head but in the end it’s far more satisfying than anything else. And the best part is that each of these experiences teaches you something about yourself, who you can be and what you can do.
_________________________________________
Campaign update and reflections
Media & Numbers
Pinterest
We posted our video on Pinterest on an pre-existing targeted board.
Instagram
We posted 15sec of our knowyourlemons video on instagram with some trending hashtags.
Twitter
We tweeted and retweeted posts about our campaign with different hashtags and teasing sentences during the first week and some people followed.
Facebook
Our campaign went pretty viral on Facebook during the first 2 days. Many of our friends shared the link to the video, but some of them forgot the link to the main website.
Facebook event
We created a facebook Event inviting all our friends. They spread it reaching up to 671 invitation. Even though just 53 people clicked “Going” many of them shared it, saw the video and visit the website.
YouTube
The video on YouTube scored 333 views so far, 226 of which during the first 24h.
Personal email campaign
I personally emailed some people I thought could’ve been interested on the topic, people that I know are not that involved with social medias.
Google Shortener
Our short URL has been clicked 75 times, from Italy, Russia and Britain mostly. Social medias played a role, but 36% of our visits have been direct.
Shortcomings
Language – the website and the campaign in general are in English and the majority of our connections are not English speakers. Having everything translated in other languages could’ve been more engaging for them.
Video – The video was funny and went viral among our friends because of the people involved, common people they could know. Despite this the link to the campaign was not that visible and the one at the end of the video couldn’t be clicked directly. We should have focused more on strategies to lead people to click.
Target – With more time to target the campaign, picking out which of our connections and Groups could’ve led to a more interested target, could’ve been more effective in spreading the campaign.
Time – Posting and reposting many times and at different time on all our social media, testing different approaches and keywords, could’ve helped us to “pivot” our campaign.
During the last week we have been introduced to Sir Ken Robinson and Dr Sugata Mitra‘s theories about the traditional Educational System, its shortcomings and how to implement it to keep up with the current society.
Tu sum up (not to trivialise), they claim that our schools are built on old needs and academic basis killing creative thinking and the natural instinct for testing and innovation that belong to every child. Kids are told that there is always a “right” answer and to get stick to set paths to do the “right” thing avoiding mistakes.
They don’t mention how a clear distinction between right and wrong is reassuring but I think we could read it between the lines.
“Someday the other museums will be showing this stuff” – at the Design museum entrance
I visited the London Design Museum this weekend and I found it surprisingly not-human-oriented. I was looking for the process, explanations about how that brilliant designer went through research and prototyping, keen to know why he choose those materials etc. but I found just technical explanations of a series of successes.
Ettore Sottsass – Logos Olivetti (one of my favourites)
After my visit I asked myself the fateful “why”. I don’t believe this approach to be intentional, but just tuned on the general practice.
As in the academic environment, in every field – from law to architecture – there is a technical language that contribute to cut out anyone who is not a professional. The feeling that there are things many of us can’t understand – knowledge we haven’t been introduced to – ends up drawing elite circles in which only some like-minded people are allowed to take part to the conversation. Everyone else stays outside scared to make mistakes.
Innovation comes from inter-disciplinary collaboration, from discussions with people with different backgrounds. Innovation in design comes also from emphaty, it’s made for people researching people’s needs.
It’s not about building walls but reevaluating human capacities: on one hand, the capacity to understand beyond scholastic notions and take part to the conversation with different point of view that worth listening; on the other hand, the capacity to put oneself ideas into discussion and to change.
This needs courage and humility and it’s scaring because leads us to potentially “wrong” unexplored paths, but I guess it’s the most effective way to innovation.
I’ve been thinking about the last week, the MACE 4 days full-immersion and the Lean Start Up experience with Dan Lockton last weekend. As I often do when something get stuck in my mind, I couldn’t stop myself to talk about it with basically anyone who liked to listen.
I also spoke with my mom, she’s a nurse. She was impressed by this approach: adapt the environment to meet needs. Your first thought could be that, since she is working in an hospital, taking care of someone would probably be something she sees everyday set as first priority but it’s not. She meets everyday people in need (patients) and on the other side people who don’t pay much attention to these needs (many doctors). Bureaucracy and medical procedures replaced the human dimension and empathy ends up to be a luxury.
Then the miracle happened. She told me that observing patients she noticed that, sitting on a wheelchair, they felt uneasy about having someone they couldn’t see driving them somewhere (not very funny places mostly) as baggages. It makes difficult to communicate and they keep turning round. So she just googled the problem to find the solution: a wheelchair with rear-view mirror. Simple.
I know that Google is not the final answer, but what surprised me is that giving people a different prospective can actually encourage them to be innovators and framing problems.
With the Lean Start Up workshop and the “blind/disability” exercise we did earlier happened something quite similar. We have been asked to look for a question before to answer, to observe and to be emphatic and communicative doing research and as a group.
This is the video blog of our experience:
We confronted ourselves with someone else’s attitude and point of view, it was not about us. Testing the KFF (Kingston Friend Finder) we found out that we needed to adapt our idea to each new need we discovered in the next interview. It can be a never-ending process, we can make mistakes and admit that it is not working and start all over again, but even this is a vital part of the thinking process.
There is not just one way to address a problem but seeing it and keep going deeper is the first step. As this was our first week.
A human centred approach in design and innovation, reaching users by connecting emotionally and with empathy to create breakthrough solutions for the digital and mobile age
thoughtfromthemace 
