The happier twin brother of idea killers are idea growers. Things you can say in response to ideas to help them grow.

Unlike idea killers, these statements act as idea fertilizer, helping them to grow, find homes, make friends, and grow from ideas into solutions. Instead of ending conversations, they always provide a path for the idea to move forward, grow, or be the seed for other ideas.

(Thanks to Jennie Zehmer for suggesting this)

Idea starters

• Great idea, keeping going with it.
• What do you need to make this work?
• How can I help you?
• Who’s support do you need?
• I’ll stay as late as you do to write this proposal tonight.
• How much time will it take to flesh this out?
• Good, lets make a prototype and see if it holds together.
• This is better than sex.
• Here’s a blank check and the corner office.
• Drop what you’re doing and focus on this.
• Talk to Fred, our smartest guy, and see what he thinks.
• What can you add to this to make it better?
• What should change to help make this happen?
• E-mail this out to the team and see what support you can get.
• Lets run with this and see where it goes.
• This rocks!
• This has potential.
• Make it happen.
• What can we cut to make room for this?
• What’s the next step?

Can you name others you’ve heard or said?

Posted in Innovation | 13 Comments »

Last week in the creative thinking course I’m teaching at UW, we spent time listing idea killers. Statements we’ve heard, or used, that stop ideas in their tracks. Have any to add?

Mostly these are used as thought inhibitors: they don’t require any thought to say. They’re used as flinch negative responses, dismissing without explanation. Unlike real critical thinking, which offers a path (e.g if you can overcome x, y and z we’ll consider it) idea killers are lazy dead ends.

Idea Killers

• We tried that already
• That never works
• Would you like a pony?
• Looks like ass
• You’re fired
• We will actively work against you
• (Laughter)
• Not in our budget
• Not an interesting problem
• We don’t have time
• Execs will never go for it
• Out of scope
• But its the law
• Too blue sky / Holy grail
• This train is on fire
• Wont make enough $$
• Not in our business
• Its Non performant (engineering)
• What are you on?
• Can we get someone with a brain in here?
• That isn’t what people want
• No response at all

What are others you’ve heard?

Posted in Innovation, humor | 93 Comments »

Seattle mindcamp was this past weekend and surprise: they let me in!

Here’s the short report:

The good:

• New format rocked. The innovative organizers chose to take a risk and have pre-filled out forms for sessions. It made a dramatic difference: the quality of session titles and descriptions was very high. Encouraging people to plan paid off, without losing any of the free-form vibe or last minute idea possibilities. A lesson to all future unconference organizers.
• Fun randomness. This is why i come - I met a female bodybuilder, talked to some friendly burners, shook hands with Tom Bihn. Awesome. it’s these non-tech interactions that interest me most. Chad McDaniel suggested a non-geek camp, same people, but non-geek topics, would be a more mind opening experience, and I agree. The Discovery Slam Bryan Zug and I ran nailed this (pun intended, thx to street performer guy), but it was just one session.
• Ran a fun session on the innovation book. Had a great crowd, exchanged ideas, laughed and had good times all around. Many of the myths I heard are already in the book, but heard some comments that I’m still thinking about (If you have more thoughts, let em fly). Thanks to all that were there. Also sat in on Scott Ruthfield’s excellent session on innovation in big orgs.
• Food, environment, lack of rules. The unstructured vibe always makes things fun, since as soon as it gets dull or I can’t find anything, I can make something up, or head guiltlessly home. Everything else was taken care of - kudos to organizers.

The complaints:

• Some process problems. The new system, as expected, had some kinks. Sessions started late and without their organizers (they didn’t know they were up first).
• Crappy pitches. I heard so many bad pitches for start-ups, projects and people, it drove me nuts - it was embarrassing. I did a lightning talk late in the day on how to pitch an idea, which might not have been useful, but sure was therapeutic. I think you know the start-up seriousness of a crowd by the average quality of overheard pitches.
• Few projectors / wi-fi. There was no warning, so for Ario’s UI design session, we assumed the requested projector would be there. No dice. Session canceled and we had to send 30 people on their way (some hung out for small group critiques). I don’t care much for wi-fi at conferences, but like projectors, session organizers need to know what to expect before we show up in the room.
• Are 3 word intros worth an hour? It’s an unconference tradition, but Donte, Ario and I came up with less time consumptive alternatives: Idea: Let people who want an intro put a photo with their 3 words (or whatever they want on it) up on an ftp server. Have that projected in slide show mode before sessions, during meals, on the website before the day, and any other time when passive media has some value.
• Where are the ladies? Kudos and all my platonic love to those that were there (all 8 of you, yes I counted), but there’s something bogus about mindcamp if it’s really “boy-geek camp”. Making mind camp less “geek-camp” (encouraging artists, writers, designers, to come) would not only make my brain happy, but would balance the gender ratios too. But perhaps this is the seed for a different event… (Sex camp!). No, I mean, roughly, Renaissance-mind camp. If you’re into this, leave a comment.

Kudos again to all the organizers - appreciate what you made happen!

Tags: mindcamp,mindcamp3.0

Posted in Seattle, Teaching/Training | 6 Comments »

There’s a theory that everything we think is clever or new has been done before - well, in the case of software developers dogfooding (forcing themselves to use early versions of their own work) it’s definitely true.

Here’s this gem about Edison’s lab:

“Workers at the Edison laboratory and the residents of Menlo Park became the guinea pigs for the first incandescent lighting system. Lamps hung from overhear wires lighted the workshops, the streets around the invention factory, and even a few residences.”

I’m just glad I never had to dogfood the first jockstraps, automobile breaking systems, or defibrillators.

(Quote is from the excellent Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, By James Utterback)

Posted in Innovation | No Comments »

I’m starting a philosophy discussion group here on the Eastside, and I need help. My rolodex of people that like to talk philo, and aren’t insane, scary, or humorless, is pretty slim.

A Socrates cafe is an informal, coffee fueled, humor encouraged, chat session about whatever topics people want to discuss, as long as its tied to philosophy in some way.

The idea isn’t to discuss philosophers (which is usually a bore) - but to ask questions and voice opinions and see where they go.

All the details are on meetup.

First meeting Thursday 11/16, 7pm. Redmond/Bellevue (specific coffeeshop TBD).

But do join the group even if you can’t make this first one: time & locale may change depending on what folks want.

Posted in philosophy | 4 Comments »

I’m writing chapter 9 of 10 (so close!) this week - its focused on how dependent, or not, innovation is on the role of the team leader or group manager.

Many legendary innovations, from the Apollo moon landing, the Xerox PARC lab, the Macintosh, the Palm Pilot and the i-pod, were all driven by strong leaders (JFK, Bob Taylor, Steve Jobs, & Jeff Hawkins respectively).

Who else deserve mention on the list of great mangers of innovation?

Or specific to your own experience:

• Have you worked with, for, or around someone who excelled at managing innovation projects? (Or are you one yourself?)
• What are the traits, tactics and talents they used to be successful?
• Or do you have a horrific tale of an innovation-assassin, who was somehow charged with managing an innovation effort? What anti-patterns did they use?

I hope you’ll take a minute and share a story or thought.

Posted in Innovation | 6 Comments »

I’ve seen my share of office pranks: filling an office floor to ceiling with packing peanuts, cover over the doorway to someone’s office, moving an entire office, fully functional, into the building lobby… the list goes on.

But some of these I’ve never seen before. Good fodder if you’ve got a co-worker about to go on vacation.

(Hint: its always easier to get a group of people to pull things like this off. Order a pizza, bring some beer, and you’ll be surprised what you can do in an afternoon).

With some careful searching you can find even more photos of creative pranks.

Posted in humor | No Comments »

Although this list isn’t in a web friendly top ten format, it’s certainly interesting to see what the folks at Time ranked as the best inventions of 2006.

Some are interesting, but enough are so consumer focused that I can’t help but feel every major magazine these days is more lifestyle catalog than anything else.

Pictured at right is an RFID kit so you’ll never lose household items again. Sure is interesting, but can this compare to the invention of the microwave, the PC, the automobile, or the laser? I think not.

Since these best inventions are new and quite expensive, only those who have been really good this year will see any of these for holidays (I’m not holding my breath :)

(Link from Business innovation insider)

Posted in Design, Innovation | 2 Comments »

Rounding out this week of browser reviews: to be honest I can’t recall the last time I took a serious look at Opera - regardless of when it was, 9.02 is a much improved and simplified experience. The toolbars look sharp, the clutter and over-featured UI of previous releases is gone, and I felt invited to spend some serious time putting Opera through its paces.

The good:

• Opera has the correct UI hierarchy for tabs - they appear above the address bar, as conceptually the tab is the highest order UI element in any browser (I complained about this in my first review of Firefox). To take this all the way, tabs should be above the menus too, but there are some problems with following the model this far.
• The notes & links sidebars rock. I’m a sucker for good sidebars as I designed them for IE4 & IE5 when they were new (and I was young). Everybody else has stood pat, but the notes field says “hey, I know you need scrap paper” and the links field says “Dude, relax. Here’s an easier way to use this page as a launching pad to other sites”.
• Tight, lightweight, clean visuals. I never thought I’d see the day, but Opera has a cleaner visual design than IE. It’s not even close. They handle the new tab usability issue gracefully (no birth defect button).
• Lots of unique clever goodness. The ability to start where you left off, save sessions (your suite of tabs), undo close page (Holy shit!), hotclicking and more. These are mostly done well and at worst give you the vibe of thoughtfulness: these Opera guys have clearly thought about what’s annoying in the browsing experience and tried to fix it.

The bad:

• Shortcut keys - if you’re a market trailer, you must support the shortcut keys for the market leaders. No questions. It’s easy to implement, at least as an optional mode. Most frustrating: Cntr-H, which is history in IE and FF, closes Opera! Pressing Alt-D (Address-bar), my most used shortcut, resulted only in misery.
• Active tab confusion: its hard to tell which tab is active. There’s not enough de-emphasis of non-active tabs, and the active tab needs stronger outline in connection to the browser frame (FF does this well).
• Help! I couldn’t figure out some of their unique features, so plunged into help for an overview. Searches for “wand” & “transfers”, two labels for features in their UI, turned up nothing. I don’t expect much from help, but with the web and wikis, I expect basic coverage of anything in the UI. (Transfers = Download manager as I eventually figured out on my own). There was a welcome to Opera first run page, but I couldn’t figure out how to get back to it (Why isn’t it listed in the help menu?)
• Vestigial weird UI. My old complaint about Opera was that it tried too hard: too many features designed in well intentioned, but awkward, goofy ways. 9.02 is much improved in this respect, but there are still some weird spots. The find on page UI is all too happy to highlight every instance of the first letter you type (shocking), and then switches to selecting the first, and highlighting the rest (I couldn’t figure out why: first instance is enough 95% of the time). There are some other oddities like this (print preview is a mode, not a separate view, the scrollbar has a bright yellow mouseover effect), but fewer than previous Opera experiences.

In summary, Opera is sweet! (Download here) I preferred it over IE7 for its personality and moxie alone, but until they soften a few more rough edges, I’m staying with FF.

Posted in Design, web browsers | 21 Comments »

Something’s wrong if, after 5 and 2 years respectively, the two most popular web browsers deliver mutually low-key major releases. All the talk of how Firefox has revitalized competition in web browsers, the most used PC applications, has had little impact on this round of browser design. Everyone (Opera and others aside) is shoring up, not taking new ground.

Any review of these two browsers, efforts so similar in functionality and core design, has to be about details. There are differences, primarily in interface design, but also in fit, finish, and vibe.

IE7

Five years since the last major release, IE7 delivers on most of the innovations Firefox popularized: Browser tabs & RSS feed support the most notable. Kudos to the IE7 team for picking up the design baton and making some visible changes, and for those who criticize them, you have to catch up before you can get ahead.

But within moments of taking IE7 out for its trial run, there are noticeable visual mis-steps: the shiny polish of the grayed out back/forward buttons. The weird background gradient behind the tabs. The empty tab all the way to the right (its the new tab creator, but it looks more like a birth defect, given it has no icon, text or anything).

These are the kinds of details only UI designers would call out - but they add up in the minds of users. Its the details that create feel and vibe, and that’s where IE7 leaves me cold. I know many people worked hard to ship this thing, but their love and passion was hard to feel when using what they made. I live in a web browser all day, and like my living room, the details matter. My guess is the visual designers were tasked with being midway between Vista and XP (explaining the elimination of the command menus), a difficult middle ground to hold.

However, in the days I’ve used IE7 as my primary browser I found its workman like charms. It does what it needs to do - stays out of your way, and seems to have filled in, lack of polishes aside, the major functional gaps between IE6 and Firefox.

Innovators note: the quick tabs feature is interesting but mostly a lark. Thumbnails of web pages, as much as i tried, never seemed to help me do anything except demo IE7. The Zoom feature was nice, given my aging eyes, and improved phishing detection (which was hard to demo) and other security improvements seem to be a large part of their marketing message, but I had few comments on these anti-features.

Firefox 2.0

I did a short, underwhelmed review on their beta2, and the final release held few surprises. This is entirely a polish and plumbing release. They invested in infrastructure (installer, JavaScript 1.7, etc.) and some minor UI enhancements. The addition of spell-checking (a la MS Office red squiggles) seems minor, but is easily the underdog champion for best low hanging fruit feature in this wave of browser updates (Despite its clear value I have to lament: it’s 2006, the age of the blog, and all browsers don’t spell & grammar checking? Yikes).

While Firefox’s toolbar design is more conventional, it’s also more polished. The side gradient shading in the icons (look closely at the Reload and Back buttons) give it a warm, friendly feel. Notice how their tabs are easy to scan, uncluttered by text on blue gradients. They shifted all non-active tabs to black on gray, a simple way to make large tab sets less oppressive (though scanning non-active tabs is slightly harder now).

The summary

I’m still a dedicated Firefox user. While 2.0 is a conservative release, the product does a better job delivering on core ease of use and functionality: its an easy recommendation. Despite being a browser designer, I have mostly simple browser needs, and would recommend FF to just about anyone. If you factor in the vibrancy of their add-on community, it’s also a winning choice for power users.

IE7 is much improved - but visual design mis-steps, some awkward design choices, and lack of any compelling feature advantage makes it impossible to recommend it to anyone currently using Firefox. I’d recommend the upgrade to any IE6 user for the security improvements alone, but also for the benefits of tabs.

In general I’m left hoping hoping that both camps have their eyes on what browser user experiences could and should be like. There’s so much more user experience ground browsers need to cover. Lets hope IE8 and FF 3.0 build on their current foundations and take up the charge.

IE7 Download / FireFox Download

And don’t miss my review of Opera 9.02 - you’ll be surprised.

Posted in Design, web browsers | 6 Comments »

Posted in Seattle, humor | 2 Comments »