December 2011 panel on “How Educators and Entrepreneurs Can Collaborate.” From Educators & Entrepreneurs Summit: The Future of Education Technology at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge, MA.
I had a great time.
21 Lessons Learned from SOCAP11
- Goodwill Foundation is a value-recovery organization, of discarded products and people. They are the largest employer in Bayview / Hunter’s Point.
- “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” - Henry Ford, from Jen Medbury during Kickboard’s pitch
- If you pitch, and a judge on the panel asks a question about something that was not covered in your talk, don’t say “oh that question comes up all the time” because you will sound like you weren’t prepared or are being slick. Integrate their feedback into your presentation. Or say, “oh that is a really good question.” And answer it.
- Start w/ customer needs. (via Curtis @ Innosight, lessons from Clay Christensen for #4-7). Prototype by “jobs to be done.” Customers hire products/services to fulfill jobs. No one buys a drill for it’s own sake… you buy drill to make 1/4 cm hole. Jobs include social, emotional, and functional. Using example of iPhone, stay connected to wife and kids, feel cool, and make calls. Who are your stakeholders?
- Next comes integrated business model. (ibid) What is customer value proposition? (tech platform) How can we capture value proposition? (earned income, crowd-funded) What resources are needed to capture value proposition? (brand, people)
- Piloting and Testing follows. (ibid) What assumptions are embedded in this? (parents will love this app & pay for it). Prioritize assumptions according to risk. Design experiments to test assumptions cheaply and quickly. Fail fast & often.
- Scaling model (ibid).
- Each high school needs an active Center for Alumni Relations and Professional Networks. Especially under-served, low-income schools.
- Let your users drive the design process.
- Kalimah Priforce and Jason Young are education entrepreneurs I admire.
- In the US, we have sick care, not health care. (Adam Dole, Mayo Clinic)
- Alex Gilliam’s Public Workshop and Veronika Scott and her innovative design work on homelessness in Detroit rock.
- If a college student has a tough time finding a job, imagine what it is like for a person who has been homeless for 20-years with a horrible record, addictions, and no support network? How do they get a job? (Scott)
- Go from “I’m here to help you” to “I need your help” at homeless center with design. Eventually, if you are designing a product like a coat that will be used by someone sleeping on concrete in the cold, you better do the same. Offer drinks and food to your college-aged friends to join you in the experiment. (Scott)
- Homeless people, like all people, want to provide for themselves, create something, not be reliant. Basic human motivations still apply. Build for an emotion (e.g., pride). (Scott)
- In a break-out session on prototyping behaviors, one guy spilled water on the big white paper in the middle. Initial reaction was “uh oh.” But group jumped to action, took on roles, and solved problem. Our minor “disaster” brought people together quicker than anything else could have. Gilliam highlighted this well.
- Put yourself out there.
- Consider whether you should aim to achieve your goal slow or fast. Sometimes slow is better. If you walk into a bar in a Superman outfit with the goal of making friends, at first you will be laughed at. If you sit down, have a drink at the bar, and mind your own business, someone will eventually ask you about what you are doing. You will have the chance to change from “that crazy guy” to “that courageous guy” if you can establish a larger theme in common with the other patrons. In this case, the slow approach works.
- Use Pathable 3-14 days before conferences to arrange meetings with people you want to meet. 0-2 days is last-minute. During the conference, everyone is too busy to check-it, and you are better off searching for the person or pinging them directly.
- We must ask: what behaviors do we need to prototype to promote better networks?
- Day 1 of SOCAP/conferences: feel like everyone knows everyone else (except you). Day 2: meet amazing people and feel like this is your community. Day 3: hone in on the people most directly tied to your work that you want to collaborate with after conference is over. Post-conference: be inspired… and work.
