A must watch for any entrepreneur, entrepreneur-in-the-making, student in any school, marketers . . . . anyone in business. Most valuable if you are NOT an architect, this movie is less about architecture (the WHAT), and more about digging down inside the self (the WHY) in order to “open the floodgates“, and unleash what’s inside (the HOW) in order to integrate WHAT you do with WHO you are (the WHAT + the WHO = the HOW) in a manner that is congruent to your own persona, philosophy and personality (the WHY).

Being an entrepreneur can be reduced to solving problems, issues and situations that arise (tactics), and the business per se is a meta-situation, where the entrepreneur is faced with a non-liner complex situation, looking for the innovative solution delivering value to its potential audience that will become the business.

What is there was a general framework to approach any problems? Not a solve-it-all equation, nor a silver bullet, just a framework from where to approach problems. Would it still be valid?
We believe so.

George Pólya’s 1945 book How to solve it has a genius-like approach to problem solving, voided from any content, and context rich, it might be one of today’s best kept strategy secrets of the best run companies in the world.

Here’s the general framework developed by George, revolving around four principles:

1. FIRST PRINCIPLE: UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
   • You have to understand the problem.
   • What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition?
   • Is it possible to satisfy the condition? Is the condition sufficient to determine the unknown? Or is it insufficient? Or redundant? Or contradictory?
   • Draw a figure. Introduce suitable notation.
   • Separate the various parts of the condition. Can you write them down?
2. SECOND PRINCIPLE: DEVISING A PLAN
   • Find the connection between the data and the unknown. You may be obliged to consider auxiliary problems if an immediate connection cannot be found. You should obtain eventually a plan of the solution.
   • Have you seen it before? Or have you seen the same problem in a slightly different form?
   • Do you know a related problem? Do you know a theorem that could be useful?
   • Look at the unknown! And try to think of a familiar problem having the same or a similar unknown.
   • Here is a problem related to yours and solved before. Could you use it? Could you use its result? Could you use its method? Should you introduce some auxiliary element in order to make its use possible?
   • Could you restate the problem? Could you restate it still differently? Go back to definitions.
   • If you cannot solve the proposed problem try to solve first some related problem. Could you imagine a more accessible related problem? A more general problem? A more special problem? An analogous problem? Could you solve a part of the problem? Keep only a part of the condition, drop the other part; how far is the unknown then determined, how can it vary? Could you derive something useful from the data? Could you think of other data appropriate to determine the unknown? Could you change the unknown or data, or both if necessary, so that the new unknown and the new data are nearer to each other?
   • Did you use all the data? Did you use the whole condition? Have you taken into account all essential notions involved in the problem?
3. THIRD PRINCIPLE: CARRYING OUT THE PLAN
   • Carry out your plan.
   • Carrying out your plan of the solution, check each step. Can you see clearly that the step is correct? Can you prove that it is correct?
4. FOURTH PRINCIPLE: REVIEW / EXTEND
   • Examine the solution obtained.
   • Can you check the result? Can you check the argument?
   • Can you derive the solution differently? Can you see it at a glance?
   • Can you use the result, or the method, for some other problem?

It’s not often that we find books that were written over half a century ago, that are just as valid today as they were when they were first published. Such treasures are often forgotten or written off and can become part of any entrepreneur’s (unfair) competitive advantage portfolio.

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{Photography by Corey Ann}

Tags: Book, George Pólya, Unfair Competitive Advantage, Business Plan, Brainstorming, Process

There’s a conspiracy of misinformation and half truths, one of them is the quote: “It’s not about you, it’s about the people that you choose to surround yourself with”. I believe consultants must have come up with this quote. It’s not wrong, it’s just that it is a 1/2 truth, for TWO main reasons:

1. Finding, convincing to join and retain top-notch employees & consultants is a rare skill and
2. Guiding these employees and consultant to follow the plan within the vision, and the guidelines is no small feat

Therefore, it is all about you, but not in a selfish way. Bill Gates surrounded himself of MVP (most valuable people), but he was the one with the vision, he saw what nobody else (who could execute) could see, and he sold to the team the concept to give 100% toward his vision. Sure he listened to everyone worth listening to along the way, incorporated thoughts and ideas into his own thoughts and ideas.

How does this affect you as the entrepreneur? It does, in many ways:

• The journey and the communication starts within you: not only WHAT you do, nor HOW you do it, but the essence of WHY you do it. Steve Job wanted to free people from using user unfriendly computers. Have you discovered the WHY you are an entrepreneur? is it only money?
• If it’s just money, that is the WHY and the WHO that will be the driving force of the business, that will determine the hiring that you will be doing (more WHO), your management style as well as theirs (HOW), the corporate culture of the company (HOW), the language and vocabulary that will show up over and over in emails, memos, web site copy, marketing collateral, and conversations (HOW).
• Strategy. Got a strategy to fulfill the vision, and a plan to achieve it. And if you don’t . . . that’s also a strategy, whether it is valid or invalid the point is mute, since it is part of the WHO you are. It would not be Debbie Fields, that Debbie that sold Mrs Fields Inc. for $800 million. Debbie said “if you don’t plan, plan on failing”.

Who are you? Who is the “WHO” reading this? If you are a successful entrepreneur and you are reading this, you already have your WHAT->HOW->WHO->WHY aligned.   If your company is not doing well and you believe you’ve given it enough time to mature, and it is still not working, you are in trouble: you’ve got your WHAT (your company products / services), you’ve got your HOW in place (brand, corporate culture, marketing, story, etc.), which are the product of a WHY that is not supporting the WHAT and the HOW, because it never went into realizing the WHO, which is you. What is your passion, what makes you tick, what makes you wake up at 5:00 AM before the alarm goes off, jump out of bed looking forward to work. Is it really work if you love it so much?

If you are an entrepreneur in the making you are in the best position, like a painter with a blank canvass you can paint any picture you want, you get to pick the theme, colors, tone, mood, and you can even cut the canvass Lucio Fontana’s style, and declare to the world that it is indeed a sculpture, not a painting. As an entrepreneur in the making, you don’t even have a canvass, you can go into any art form and medium of your choosing, and you can even make up your own art form or medium, and break all the rules there are and make then your own, John Cage did.

Business is indeed art.

And business is indeed the outmost form of self expression: think Steve Job and Apple, and how the iPod and iPhone is shaping and enhancing people’s lives, that is Art indeed.

WHO are you? What’s your art? What’s your voice? What’s your story? What’s your BRAND? Trutfully and congruently answer those questions to yourself, and that is just the beginning, the base for discovering the WHY, your WHY to entrepreneurship, which will lead to the HOW of doing things, which is going to be your own, and your own only style. From there it is a natural progress to build the WHAT, the vehicle that will carry forward your vision, the healthy WHO in the link WHO->WHY->HOW->WHAT.

You’ve got friends: Jackson, Walt, Paul, Ben & Jerry, Debbi.

When was the last time you were inspired? Randy Pausch did that for all of us. When was the last time you changed your mind about something that you used to look at as negative and tranformed it into a positive? Randy told us that brick walls, when things turns out harder than we had planned, are actually good things, because they offer us the chance to prove to ourselves how hard we want something, and keep the wishy-washy away from our goals; brick walls are necessary to cut down the competition from the good stuff. Randy’s is has moved from this world to his next, his imprint remains with us:

Interesting video of Moshe Safdie at TED. Notable is the conclusion, where – after quoting Theodore Cook – Moshe recites his own poem:

He who seeks Truth, shall find Beauty; he who seeks beauty, shall find vanity; he who seeks Order, shall find Gratification; he who seeks gratification, shall be disappointed; he who considers himself the servant of its fellow beings, shall find the Joy of Self Expression; he who seeks self expression, shall fall into the pit of arrogance; arrogance is incompatible with Nature; through Nature, the Nature of the Universe and the Nature of Men we shall seek truth; if we seek Truth, we shall find Beauty.

Inspired by: http://www.brain-fun.com/Brain-Teasers/EinsteinsRiddle.php Einstein’s Riddle: Einstein believed that 98% of people could not solve the following logic riddle. Wouldn’t it be interesting to use this as a hiring tool, not so much to make sure your candidate has the answer – although it would surely be nice – but to see how they will approach solving a problem. Here’s the riddle: There are 5 houses each with a different color. Their owners, each with a unique heritage, drinks a certain type of beverage, smokes a certain brand of cigarette, and keep a certain variety of pet. None of the owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigarette or drink the same beverage. Clues:

• The Brit lives in the red house.
• The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
• The Dane drinks tea.
• The green house is just to the left of the white house.
• The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
• The person who smokes Pall Malls raises birds.
• The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
• The man living in the center house drinks milk.
• The Norwegian lives in the first house.
• The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
• The man who keeps a horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
• The owner who smokes Bluemasters also drinks beer.
• The German smokes Prince.
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
• The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Who owns the fish?

<- – - end of riddle – - – >

One way to arrive to the solution is to find those absolute statements that give the most significant information. I re-wrote the statements as follows:

1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is just to the left of the white house.
5. The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Malls raises birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps a horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters also drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Also, I called the the first house 1, the second 2, etc. . . we have that:

• Statement I tells us the Norwegian lives in house # 1
• Therefore according to statement N, house #2 must be Blue.

• Statement H tells us the house # 3 drinks coffee;
• Let’s combine statements D and E. D tells us that the Green house and the White house are next to one another, with Green being on the left, and Green drinks coffee. The only possible location that fits these criteria is Green on house # 4 and White on House # 5.

• Now the easiest next step is to complete the color allocation, we have only Red and Yellow to assign, and only house #1 and #3 without color assignment. Statement A tells us that the Brit lives in the red house. Since we already know that the Norwegian lives in house # 1, house # 3 is the only one who can satisfy statement A.
• Conversely House #1 must be Yellow and according to Statement G, the owner must smoke Dunhill, and statement K tells us that house #2 has a horse.

• By combining statements J and O, we can see that the person who smoke blends can only be living in house # 2 or # 3. While looking at statement L, we can see that whomever Smokes Bluemaster and Drink Beer can live either in house #2 or house #5, and the only combination that satisfies J, O, and L is for the owner of house # 2 to smoke Blend (and therefore the Norwegian in house #1 to drinks water), and the owner of house #5 to smoke Bluemasters and drink beer.

• The easiest set to complete now is the “drink” set, with house # 2 being the only one that can accommodate statement C.

• House #4 is the only one that satisfies statement M of the relationship between nationality and cigarette

• Let’s now complete the cigarette set by applying statement F

• Having placed “birds” in House #3, we can now apply statement J

• We are now left applying statement B

• Leaving only the German who lives in the Green House #4, smokes Prince, and drinks coffee as the only possible owner of FISH!

Al, eat your fish out! P.S.: solved using the classic whiteboard and color markers

No matter how busy you are, you have to make time to take a peak here and there at Pop! Tech, you will increase your cIQ (cR3AT1vE IQ) by no less than 3 quarks.

The quality of the speakers is surpassed only by the quality of the content, and just tune in at random, and be ready to jot down a few notes, for follow-up and for AI (Action Items).

Good opportunity to mark your calendar for 2008 and make it to Camden ME, context is indeed just as important, probably more important than content, is it?

Attribution: “If you could pass the guacamole, that would be AWESOME!” belongs to Steven Pinker.

No excuses: it’s free and you can access it live from anywhere in the world, as long as you have an Internet connection. You won’t even get bored, you can interact with the conference speakers and ask questions. Your investment of time will pay dividends for a lifetime.
With a 3 day summit, and a clear schedule, you can make virtual dates with the speakers and topics that interests you the most. And how about stimulating your gray matter by attending something that you would not ordinarily be interested in?

An army general got the idea for camouflage while wandering a museum and looking at Braque’s cubist paintings.

So get your mouse over to PopTech.org, and dovetail the conferences into your schedule, and from the comfort of your own office, or internet cafe’, you will be able to put in action some of what you’ll learn: order something, email someone, make plans . . . I really like the menu, there’s something for every taste, high on nutrients, and low on empty calories:

THE HUMAN IMPACT INNOVATION FROM THE BOTTOM UP A WHOLE NEW MIND THE CREATIVE INSTINCT THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ALL TOGETHER NOW SUSTAINING TOMORROW OCEANS IN BALANCE

The only question is: will it work on the iPhone?