It’s been exactly two years since we launched dotherightthing.com to connect people with the companies they care about. This time has gone by quickly but looking back now it was all part of the journey that made this latest re-launch possible. Once again I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by extremely talented people most of whom went above and beyond to make the impossible possible… isn’t that always the case? (particularly Loren Baxter, Ryan Daigle, Ryan Mickle, Carsten Lindstedt, Peyman Pakzad, Robert Hoekman Jr., Jarkko Laine, all our clients and partners, and support from the original dotherightthing.com community)

Here are some key “notes to self” I discovered personally and professionally the last two years, I will undoubtedly refer to and stay mindful of these going forward:

1. Passion and momentum are the only requirements – when the unknowns mount and things get out of hand (which is standard for most entrepreneurial endeavors) it is key to continually communicate passion for what you are trying to solve or deliver and encourage the same from those around you, this builds the momentum required to stay motivated and stay in motion; it’s not enough to set goals, product requirements, and agendas (although these are important) but rather to keep telling yourself and the world around you what you are driving toward regardless of the perceived risks at the time
2. Help others take on new responsibilities and be true to your own – when taking on an audacious project it’s important to let those around you step up and be accountable for things outside their comfort zones, of course you should do the same but always stay accountable and get it done, experiment and draw outside the lines but always find a way to deliver
3. When you think it’s easy enough make it easier – creating good products is about solving real-world problems in innovative and elegant ways. The original dotherightthing.com for example was innovative but intimidating for companies and the community at large… the expectations were tough to overcome for most people, making it difficult to get started let alone get engaged; stripping everything to the core components not only ensures a solid user experience but it can also be very empowering and the more empowering it is the more engaging it will be (twitter is a good example of simple yet empowering)
4. Stay lean but not mean – stay lean but, more importantly, stay compassionate; things will likely unfold naturally and there will be many tough decisions that need to be made but do this without being shrewd or losing focus
5. Cultivate patience and persistence, it’s best done together – things will never get done fast enough but staying persistent ensures that things will happen and there will be movement toward the objectives, don’t sweat the small stuff but push on and remember it’s all small stuff (from this great book)
6. Engage the world openly and transparently – in many ways this is what dotherightthing.com is all about, transparent and genuine discussions with the companies/organizations you care about

New changes that are worth noting:

1. more empowerment with less of that activist edge – dotherightthing.com now focuses on what can and should be done, not on the good or bad; this new focus creates an environment that encourages action from the community and participation from companies/organizations; the flower metaphor helps visualize this
2. the community can engage directly – we’ve added a basic follow feature that allows community members to follow the activities of others (thanks Robert; there is also mention of it in his new book)
3. smart email notifications – you will now be notified of activities on the site through email notifications that are delivered more or less frequently based on your clicks and interest, you can disable these anytime but we think you will find them useful
4. new extra usable and sexy design – as always we did a good deal of research, prototyping, and design to ensure that this latest release is both functional and extra sexy

We look forward to implementing your ideas too. Please don’t hesitate to post them here. We would like to empower the community to help shape dotherightthing.com’s future. What do you think?

Go post an idea!

As an entrepreneur this is just another day with another set of challenges. Yes, the conditions are slightly different then yesterday but all in all this climate is ripe with opportunity. Not surprisingly, the source of most of this fear is coming from investment and finance people. Unfortunately, when it trickles down to entrepreneurs, this cloudy thinking puts their $ at serious risk. Innovation requires creativity and creativity requires clear thinking. During this time, opportunities are everywhere and particularly ripe for the taking…don’t give in to the doomsday theories.

TechCrunch recently wrote a solid piece on this entitled “Fear Kills Businesses, Dead” and it is spot on. Fear also kills innovation.

“Your rivals are retreating right now, so what are you going to do about it?”

This applies to you whether you are an entrepreneur, student or investor. So keep cranking.

Traditionally in the online world, research won’t come into play until *after* the product has already been scoped. You build it (or something close), test it and iterate accordingly. Even though this process appears on the surface to support, in some cases, successful consumer Internet products, I would argue the most successful consumer Internet products started with lean and simple objectives and *then* evolved as the “real” needs became clear over time (or when the users identified and adapted a completely different use for it: MySpace). I believe this can also apply to business models as well; start lean, simple and build around “real” needs accordingly.

What I am advocating here is a process that goes beyond product ideation and explores “real” needs in order to drive the design of consumer Internet products (not the other way around).

I think what Stan Shroeder describes as “the magic formula” is right on:

“Determine a basic need -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up”

(Fred at A VC also discusses Stan’s perspective in an interesting related post about online group solutions)

But I would modify this magic formula slightly to read:

“Explore, research and understand a basic need/problem -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up”

It’s not just about identifying or determining a “need” but understanding that “need”. How can you create a service that satisfies a “need” if you don’t really understand it? Of course, without proper execution, why even bother…

This important yet subtle distinction is too often blurred. The success of a solution or product is largely determined by how effectively it supports a given task or solves a specific problem; not by how inventive it is. The “execution” or “how” is far more critical than the “what” and, unfortunately, there exist few exceptions to the rule. Invention can be exciting and, at times, even revolutionary. But when haphazardly applied, invention just isn’t good enough.

In the end, it’s all about consistently re-working solutions around people’s needs in order to better solve problems.

Putting innovation before invention is when…

* Users feel understood – this means religiously putting less emphasis on target audience defaults or assumptions and more emphasis on relevance and emotional impact by researching users “in the wild”. Consider analytics and log analysis. Explore the competition, alternative solutions and keep in constant contact with users. And consider combining these efforts with off-line (in the real-world) ethnographic research to really get to know your users as people not just clicks. These insights can create remarkable results and as marketing guru Seth Godin continually reminds us: “Products that are remarkable get talked about.”

* Problems are sought out and quests are embarked upon – this should be done early and often. Sometimes the problem you think you are solving is very different from the problem you are really solving…so constant identification and re-identification of the problem is critical; this is at the core of both online and traditional product innovation. Facebook and the iPhone have done this very well. Any problem worth solving requires that it be considered something like a mythological quest to solve. Embark on a worthwhile quest and many others will join you in finding the right solution.

* Learning takes priority – The Internet makes it easy to acquire second-hand innovations by learning from giant, high-traffic sites. Particularly, those sites that take user-centered and data-driven design as seriously as Google or Amazon.com. I find myself considering this often. For example, you won’t ever find me re-creating a fancy new web-based shopping cart and checkout system.

I love hearing from you. Do me a favor and let me know your thoughts.

Related Posts You Might Also Enjoy:

an honest business model innovation?
disruptive innovations will drive “real good”
simple insights drive innovation

For more, check out their very candid blog post entitled “The Next Stage of Growth – An Honest Deal“ by Honest Tea co-founders Seth and Barry. Kudos to the Honest Tea team for structuring such a creative deal and I look forward to hearing how things work out after all is said and done.

Illustration by Ian Whadcock

The January 2008 report confirms that we are in the midst of a new and prosperous economic landscape. This rapidly changing competitive landscape requires that companies and business leaders take innovation and social responsibility more seriously than ever.

The Economist report also claims to have (with much regret apparently) totally dismissed its previous opinion that CSR is just a fad. Claiming instead that “CSR has arrived” with results from a recent survey indicating that 96% of people recognize CSR to be important (only 4% of respondents believed CSR was “a waste of time and money”). The stakes are just too high to ignore. Consumers, job seekers, employees, investors and even potential suppliers believe in corporate social responsibility.

In a surprising omission however, The Economist fails to give enough credit to those who are already building businesses using non-traditional and innovative approaches to do “real good”. Companies like Seventh Generation and people like Muhammed Yunus of Grameen Bank (who I recently had the pleasure of hearing speak here in San Francisco) for example, have already proven how effective disruptive innovation can be, not only in theory, but in action to make profits while at the same time making a positive social impact. And most recently among them is Mr. Bill Gates of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Who is calling for “another level of innovation” in addition to “creative capitalism” to help drive future positive economic and social impact.

Here are 3 disruptions already well on their way:

1. As technologies better support our natural social interactions, traditional marketing and advertising will become less and less effective. The antiquated and impersonal methodologies will be replaced with direct, meaningful communications that aim to create relationships with people (as opposed to just searching for another transaction).
2. The world is flat and the long tail is real. We have the ability to create “real good” more quickly and easily than ever.
3. In addition to an increase in corporate transparency, people are and will continue to become directly involved in the co-creation of products and services. Customers and other stakeholders will actively help the companies they care about succeed.

I agree (without philosophical or religious leanings of any kind): plans can be really funny. So instead… experiment vigorously then… fail. fast. forward.

These are just a few things advocated by business “guru” and management thought leader Tom Peters. Over the course of this year, I have directly applied many of Tom Peters’ insights. Tom just gets it. More importantly, as an entrepreneur, I find Tom’s views truly inspirational.

He emphasizes (and again re-emphasizes) the obvious and subtle nuances of modern business. In my opinion, his blog isn’t as powerful as his raw presentations but it is worth a visit nonetheless if not only to find his other materials.

* Solid introduction to his ideas are available here
* More insights can be dug out of this somewhat lengthy presentation (MS Powerpoint required)

I think so much about doubling my failure rate to the point that it has now become a part of my daily “routine”. Getting over the hump of “failure” isn’t easy but it is an essential ingredient toward innovation, progress and other amazing outcomes.

I wish them the best of luck here with respect to opening things up in a public way online. It is hard enough to take a company from concept to launch but providing a play-by-play of the process at the same time makes it that much more of a challenge. Reminds me of a recent lecture by the innovative thinker and businessman Ricardo Semler (thanks for the link Ankur). In his talk, Ricardo compares the traditional “ways of doing business” as militaristic and simply out of date. It’s worth checking out either way.

I look forward to their upcoming wiki and wonder if they will double down by opening up their books, equity, compensation and other traditionally confidential “business stuff”. Also, including recordings of their meetings (not just agendas) and some video would be nice too. What do you think?

Please help them out if you’re interested, there is a lot of work ahead but the increased transparency seems to be paying off already.

In a world where transparency is the new golden standard for all human interactions, passion will always trump product. If it doesn’t get you excited and make you want to tell all your friends, it’s probably not going to engage others either. A great product is really just bottled passion anyway, right? In college I remember being struck by passion and inspired with Howard Schultz and the whole Starbucks story. This emotional appeal turned me into that loyal customer and evangelist every company wants more of. In this case, emotion definitely trumped my reason, which is exactly what makes it possible for me to spend $4 dollars for a coffee drink at the ‘Bucks.

My good friend and colleague Robert Hoekman Jr. recently put his passion for design and social responsibility to work with the launch of Miskeeto. Their team’s passion: maximizing their positive social impact while changing the world through design. This was the foundation for which Miskeeto was built. Robert and his team wear their passions, alongside their hearts, on their sleeves. An activity that’s worth taking note of.

The world’s most admired companies embody this passion for what they do, who they are and what they stand for. It leaks from every pore and you can “feel it”. Remember, your customers (or users) are always smarter than you give them credit for.