Peter Sims's Blog, page 4

Forbes interview: “How to Make Innovation Less Risky”

Originally appeared on Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclar...

Corporations are clamoring for breakthrough innovation – but in this economic climate, who can afford multimillion-dollar wagers that might not pan out? Enter Peter Sims, co-author of the bestseller True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, with Bill George. “Companies have the wrong mindset,” he says. “They don’t experiment well, they bet big, and that’s often a sign they’re going to fail. We’re living in an age where every person needs to be much more creative and entrepreneurial. You have to be able to really get out there and be scrappy, create value, and the way to do it is through entrepreneurship.”

Instead of launching expensive new initiatives, Sims says, companies (and individuals) should make “Little Bets,” the title of his newest book. The goal is to test demand – and then iterate, quickly and cheaply. Sims became a believer in the “little bets” approach during his previous career as a venture capitalist: “Whenever I talked or worked with entrepreneurs who had built billion dollar companies, I learned more from them than anybody I studied with in business school,” he says.

Upon connecting with Stanford’s renowned Institute of Design (also known as the d.school), where he ultimately became a lecturer, Sims discovered that “design was really the method of experimentation, iteration – acting like an anthropologist. It was similar to the way entrepreneurs I had worked with functioned. And I thought, why haven’t I learned to think this way all through my education? I wanted to empower other people to open up creatively the way I had. It was learning by doing, rather than trying to analyze and plan, and that’s a distinctly different mindset than anything else I’d been taught before.”

Corporations’ time in the sun has passed, says Sims – unless they evolve into a new form that embraces entrepreneurial tendencies (a view also shared by Nilofer Merchant in my recent interview with her). “The modern industrial corporation is really well suited to executing on known problems, but it’s poorly suited to executing on discovery, experimentation, and entrepreneurship,” he says.

“We’re going to see a huge devolution of the industrial power structures,” says Sims. “The industrial corporation is facing enormous pressure because it’s not creating nearly enough value. The alternatives are much more collaborative, network-based organizations, more partnerships, and a more entrepreneurial mindset.”

In addition to placing little bets, Sims believes another path forward is through a mashup of “entrepreneurship, social change, and art” (which he’s pursuing with two new projects, the social venture Fuse Corps and the for-profit B corporation the BLKSHP (think “black sheep”). The shift to a new way of doing business, says Sims, is a return to our entrepreneurial heritage: “It’s a healthy cleanse for capitalism.”

What little bets has your company made? And how are you tracking and learning from them?

Dorie Clark is CEO of Clark Strategic Communications and the author of the forthcoming Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). She is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the Ford Foundation. Listen to her podcasts or follow her on Twitter .

So, today, Harold O’Neal & I walked into the Bowery Hotel in NYC and…

So, today, Harold O’Neal & I walked into the lobby of the Bowery Hotel in NYC and…well, this was quite AWKWARD, but it was worth the little bet

-Tornado #BLK SHP, #BLKSHPUNITE

http://www.theblkshp.com/

 

Why GivingTuesday is the Social Innovation Idea of the Year

reprinted from Bloomberg, original article here.

The most adaptive, agile companies and organizations are figuring out how to leverage what they do best to take advantage of global, seismic shifts in media, technology and society. Today’s newest and brightest example is a distributed philanthropic movement called GivingTuesday.

I’ve seen the underlying trend firsthand as an advisor to General Electric Co.’s Innovation Accelerator, an initiative led by GE’s Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock in which GE convenes partners in academia, venture capital, business entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, branding and social media. They’re discussing megatrends, such as Big Data, the future of MRI imaging, or how to build out ecoimagination into to new sustainability partnerships across sectors. Obama Administration officials describe a similar transition, manifested in their recent decision to preserve the social media arm from the 2012 campaign, as well as the recent national “listening tour” with potential partners and collaborators led by White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park.

Increasingly, administration officials view the White House as a platform for convening power, rather than a monolith that hands down executive orders and speeches from upon high, including Jonathan Greenblatt, special assistant to the President and director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the Domestic Policy Council, and Alec Ross, senior advisor for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This is just the beginning. The era of the command-and-control organization is over, at least for now. Its replacement is still taking shape. Companies like Cisco Systems Inc., GE and Genentech Inc. and are out in front, trying to restructure their legacy hierarchies into more collaborative networked organizations. It’s a messy and inefficient process. Also, witness the U.S. Army’s attempts to modernize its archaic structure, which, as Thomas Ricks’ has documented in his latest book, The Generals, has not gone well. Change is indeed hard — but critical to capitalize on pervasive change in technology and society.

New kinds of organizations are emerging where effective social entrepreneurship meets the networked effects of technology. My favorite case study of the moment is GivingTuesday, which describes itself as a “national day of giving at the start of the annual holiday season.” What started just a few months ago as a small social media campaign has blossomed into a networked philanthropy that claims 2,000 partners across all 50 states. They include well-known social causes like Kiva and DonorsChoose.org; companies, such as JC Penney and Microsoft; small nonprofits and charities, such as the Case Foundation and the Otsego County (New York) United Way; and local governments, including Atlanta. (Disclosure: I’ve been advising and supporting the founding team personally for some time now; my company, the BLKSHP, is a partner organization.)

The idea is simple. Instead of starting the giving season with shopping on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, people are encouraged to start on GivingTuesday with philanthropy. Co-founder Henry Timms, deputy executive director of New York’s 92nd Street YMHA (92Y), contrasts Black Friday shopping and GivingTuesday philanthropy: “We have two days that are good for the economy. Here’s a new day good for the soul.”

American culture seems primed for this message, especially in the wake of superstorm Sandy. The way that GivingTuesday has proliferated has been quite remarkable to me. It came to life at the 92Y, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, and then spread quickly across real and virtual social networks, attracting more organizations and people into its sway. I’ve watched with great admiration and excitement as the idea has developed into a movement.

How did it happen? Distributed leadership. We’re living in a tribal society. The Web’s nimble, networked structure allows organizations to tap vast, hive-like relationship clusters. Once a novel idea emerges, like GivingTuesday, and large institutions identify them and sign on to it, as JPMorgan Chase & Co. or the Salvation Army has, then a constellation of smaller non-profits or charities will follow suit. Before you know it, a movement is born. This is not unlike the way traditional consumer behavior often unfolds, as early adopters scale up toward mainstream adoption.

The combination of technology savvy, such as Mashable’s and Facebook’s, and public-service organizations, like the 92Y and the U.N. Foundation, can open new pathways for civic activity, allowing like-minded business leaders, social entrepreneurs, activists, technologists, opinion-makers and bloggers to follow suit. GivingTuesday portends big things for the future of citizen-focused, empathic, bottom-up social change in the government sector and society at large.

The movement is reinventing how a simple, good idea can reshape networks online and off. The revolution will be improvised.

Peter Sims is founder & a ‘sir’ of the BLKSHP, cofounder of the social venture Fuse Corps, and his latest book is Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

Visit  www.bloomberg.com/sustainability  for the latest from Bloomberg News about energy, natural resources and global business.

“Little Bets” gets nice props in Forbes

Little Bets got some nice coverage in Forbes today, as the pharma industry wrestles with a culture of BIG bets.  The nature of the long cycle times and illusions of rationality in the pharma industry helps to explain why we (the San Francisco BLKSHP) are having such great collaborations with senior execs @ Genentech about helping them to rethink their development and  processes.  Genentech is making a HUGE difference in the world, yet need help getting away from the overly rational mindsets that block discovery and waste resources — the “illusion of rationality” as per Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

Here’s the Forbes article: www.forbes.com/sites/davidshaywitz/20...

Is Big Pharma Dangerously Betting on Huge, Fragile Product Shots?

David Shaywitz, Contributor

Historically, the most significant challenge small biotechs faced was whether to advance a relatively broad portfolio of programs or whether to bet the whole enchilada on a so-called “product shot.”

As I’ve discussed in context of Peter Sims’ wonderful book “Little Bets” (reviewed here), there is a classic tension between investors, who typically favor product shots (since they own a portfolio of small biotechs), and company management, who appropriately worry about risking everything on one program.

It’s fascinating to watch how the same challenge appears to be creeping up the food chain, and many big pharmas seem to be investing outlandish amounts of money pursuing similar product shots – Sanofi’s recently announced PCSK9 clinical trial is just the latest example.

While no one is suggesting big pharmas are shunting absolutely all of their R&D resources to mega development programs, these companies could clearly fund a number of smaller development programs with the money they are spending on these huge, individual programs. For all the talk about the age of the blockbuster being over, it’s crystal clear that many big pharmas not only remain fixated on blockbusters but feel confident they can identify them.

Mathematically, they clearly believe the commercial potential in these cases justifies the huge development costs and sizable risks, and feel that the potential exceeds that of the multiple other programs they could theoretically be resourcing instead (unless you have an even more cynical view, and believe they are pushing these huge programs because they have so little else worthwhile to fund).

I am struck by the difficulty of prediction, as I’ve discussed both recently, and also several years ago (with Nassim Taleb) here. Advancing a small number of large, intricate programs also seems like a vivid example of the sort of dangerously excessive investment in the highly fragile that Taleb inveighs against.

It will be interesting to see how these giant bets turn out.

Can You Solve America’s Problems? via Inc. Magazine

Fuse Corps received a flattering writeup in Inc. Magazine today.  Please send your nominations for the prestigious 2013 fellowship to me so that I can pass those onto the team.

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/u...

Are you a brilliant, entrepreneurial troublemaker? A fellowship program that pairs business people with local government to actually get stuff done wants to hear from you.

shutterstock images

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America may have election fever at the moment, but through all the coverage of the candidates’ proposals and counter-proposals, there runs a thread of cynicism that whoever wins in November, government just isn’t very good at finding and implementing innovative solutions to the challenges that we face. Not nearly as good as the business community in general and start-ups in particular, anyway.

So what if you, as an experienced entrepreneur, could bring some of your know-how and pragmatic, can-do attitude to government (at least at a more local rather than the presidential level) and actually make a difference in American communities?

Fuse Corps says you can. It’s a fellowship program now in its second year that places experienced business people with at least eight years of work under their belts with local leaders who are looking to pair with private sector expertise to find solutions to pressing public issues–solutions that can be replicated elsewhere across the country.

“Fuse Corps takes the top minds in business and in entrepreneurship and places them for 12 months with some amazing and innovative mayors and governors around the country in order to create a space for innovation. The people who can do that, who have been tested in the crucible of getting stuff done, are entrepreneurs,” explains Jennifer Anastasoff, co-founder and CEO of Fuse Corps (other co-founders include entrepreneur Peter Sims, McKinsey senior partner Lenny Mendonca and Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp).

Fuse Corps is careful to match fellows with projects that fit their skills and interests (and geographic constraints). Current projects range from building a private-public partnership to involve Silicon Valley talent in government in Sacramento to improving public education for the governor of Delaware.

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“We work very closely with the cities and states to scope out a project that has very clear deliverables for the year. It’s the job of the entrepreneur who comes in to identify, what are the resources we need? How do we get them? What barriers need to be crossed? What do we need to be learning? The way that we support someone is something we call the Civic Leadership Institute,” explains Anastasoff.

With its less than catchy name, the Institute may sound about as exciting as watching paint dry, but the intensive two-week boot camp held in Silicon Valley is actually a main draw of the program.

“We use design theory and a design approach to leadership and management,” Anastasoff explains. “We get type-A folks who have willed their businesses into existence by hook or by crook and we really push them.”

Also included is a series of lectures from Fuse Corp’s high-profile contacts with all the obvious networking benefits that implies–”One of our placements said, ‘I thought that I was applying for a fellow, but what I realized is I was actually getting a full network,’” says Anastasoff–as well as a deep understanding of how government works that entrepreneurs can carry back to the private sector after the program finishes.

“City and state, that’s where stuff gets done, so if you really care about getting stuff done, this is where you should be. If you’re a brilliant troublemaker, we want you,” concludes Anastasoff.

Think that might be you? Check out the Fuse Corps site for more information, including details of the financial support fellows receive, as well as how too apply. But don’t dawdle: this year’s deadline is October 14th.

Fuse Corps becomes a BIG bet, thanks to many Black Sheep

I’m very proud to be a part of the Fuse Corps team, a social venture that places some of America’s most talented entrepreneurial leaders in the trenches with a mayor, governor, or dynamic social entrepreneur to discover new approaches to sticky problems.  Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, for example, needed Erika Dimmler, a CNN producer who was tired of reporting on the news and wanted to make the news, to help him bring Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard project into the Sacramento Unified School District.

Fuse Corps Fellows act as catalysts to bring together corporate, non-profit, government, and philanthropy groups in new and creative ways – “the politics of entrepreneurship” as Steve Case puts it.  Fellows don’t start by presuming that they have all the answers by looking at problems from a bird’s eye view.  Rather, they begin from the worm’s eye view by developing greater empathy for citizens, their problems and needs, then build up to new solutions.  

Fuse Corps started with an idea from Lenny Mendonca, founder of the Half Moon Bay Brewery, as well as a senior partner @ McKinsey & Company, and many other pursuits.  Since those early days of making little bets with Lenny as a cofounder, it has been nothing short of a joy to be involved, and to put the advice from LITTLE BETS into action to (hopefully) benefit citizens who deserve better leadership these days.  After all, Washington DC is a snake pit that too often sucks the life out of even the most well intentioned people and leaders (the authentic innovator Don Berwick’s resignation letter from his post as Administrator of Medicare & Medicaid will be a historic artifact of this era of institutional corruption).

My Uncle Joe, a life-long truck driver who now earns about 30% less than he did 5 years ago, and yet watches as people like Dick Fuld and Jon Corzine walk away from leading institutions that had fraudulent cultures without any form of accountability, is giving up hope in America, and the American Dream.  This unacceptable.  America was never supposed to be about crony capitalism. It was made great by Emersonian self-reliance and entrepreneurial thinking, grit, craft, and hard work, as well as an appreciation for what Tocqueville saw when he visited soon after the country’s founding — people working together in their communities TOGETHER to build churches, schools, bridges, and anything else they needed to lead productive and (hopefully) happy lives.

And, so Lenny (who is his generation’s John W. Gardner IMHO) recruited me to help get an organization off the ground that could innovate closest to the citizen needs. (As Tip O’Neil famously said, “All politics is local.”) And we were joined joined by Jennifer Anastasoff, a talented person as our founding ceo, and Dave Viotti who took the organization from concept to social venture, and we partnered with Gen. Colin & Alma Powell’s America’s Promise Alliance, and the Points of Light Institute, where we’ve had a terrific collaboration with Ayesha Khana, who leads the Civic Incubator there, as well as Michelle Nunn, their star ceo and her engaged colleagues, and Sonal Shah, who until last year led the White House Office of Social Innovation & Civic Participation.

We were extremely fortunate to receive support from a number of extremely strong advisors, as well as generous angel investors, and from Starbucks Corporation, our founding corporate partner in addition to McKinsey, led by Fuse Corps’ friend Howard Schultz, and a very talented and socially minded team of leaders, who from the outset believed in our vision, and in the need for fresh approaches to tackling vexing social problems.  As Howard said in his call to arms of corporate leaders last year, that eventually became Starbucks INDIVISIBLE job creation campaign, “We’ve lost our humanity.”

Well put, sir.  Rather than remain cynical or helpless, creating Fuse Corps was one of many actions needed to DO SOMETHING about that problem.

And, so while we still have a great deal to learn and figure out, our little bets over the past few years have proven out the significant need and demand for more creative approaches to solving citizen problems.  The four pilot fellows report having life changing experiences, while the mayors and social entrepreneurs lavish rave reviews of working with the fellows.  It’s no surprise, as you’ll see from understanding who these people are when you meet the Fellows here.

They are examples of people we call Black Sheep.

When Pixar director Brad Bird first met with Pixar’s cofounders Steve Jobs, John Lasseter, and Ed Catmull, they had already produced three blockbuster films, yet their biggest fear was becoming complacent. They invited Bird to challenge their normal approaches to doing work.

Bird invited his colleagues to reverse doubts from the technical team that their ideas for their next project were too ambition  us and would be too costly.  Bird and his “black sheep” colleagues ultimately made The Incredibles, an internationally acclaimed film, for less money per minute than the previous film.

As Bird recounted to Stanford Professors Robert Sutton & Huggy Rao and McKinsey Quarterly’s Alan Webb, Bird says, “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to.”

We, The Black Sheep, look around us and see that the old way of working—largely from the top down—isn’t working.  There are men and women in positions of power today who have become disconnected and divided from the people they are supposed to be serving in a way that discourages collaboration and creative energy. The world is desperate for creative change from the bottom up, fueled by Black Sheep.

Bleak as the future may seem, hope should not be lost.  History cycles, thanks to empowered individuals and organizations that opt for change.  American Transcendentalism, Abolitionism, women’s voting rights, Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive “Bull Moose” reform movement in response to the Gilded Era, or the rise of evangelical communities such as Saddleback Church and Willow Creek are several that we admire and study.  The Black Sheep deeply believe that entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, designers, authentic and ethical business leaders, and social change-makers can work across vastly different disciplines to learn from one another, generate creative approaches to vexing problems, and forge collaborations to turn ideas into real initiatives and ventures.

What ultimately bonds The Black Sheep is the belief that authentic and lasting collaborations depend on a spirit of genuine curiosity, generosity, and the pursuit of broader purpose.

In 2011, a group of Black Sheep traveled to Detroit to support local community leaders in their efforts to combat pervasive tobacco addiction among poor black youths.  Video game developers locked arms with branding specialists, product designers, comedians, and advertising professionals to develop new products and businesses in response.  Utilizing a creative approach to problem solving, grounded in the entrepreneurial process and creative methods, community leaders felt empowered to launch new initiatives and products to counter the power of tobacco advertising.

You haven’t seen or heard many stories in the mainstream media, but we were inspired by Detroit’s cultural diversity, artistry, humor, and entrepreneurial bent.  We felt that we were at the center of American rebirth and renewal, and it was thanks to many Black Sheep whose names aren’t familiar (not yet at least).

But the future is arriving now, and this revolution will be improvised.

For more on Fuse Corps here, and consider joining The Black Sheep if you’re interested.  Thank you and let’s DO THIS!

here’s the Fuse Corps press release:

updated 8/28/2012 9:00:00 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Fuse Corps, a non-profit that enlists the nation’s most talented professionals into public service through a mid-career fellowship program, today announced the opening of nominations and direct applications for its next fellowship year. Nominations and applications will be accepted through the Fuse Corps website (www.fusecorps.org) through September 30, 2012.

“We believe our country’s greatest challenges can only be solved by combining the ingenuity and collaboration of the public and private sectors — and that combination is needed most at state and local levels,” said Jennifer Anastasoff, CEO and co-founder, Fuse Corps. “We are looking for candidates with a passion for public service and the motivation to apply their business acumen for the improvement of communities across the nation.”

Starting March 2013, those selected for the Fuse Corps fellowship program will attend an immersive leadership program which draws from the best practices of leading for-profit, public and social sector organizations, including McKinsey & Company, the d.school Institute of Design at Stanford, Points of Light, and Little Bets Labs, before embarking on year-long paid assignments to improve government and communities.

“At a time when the country is desperate for fresh approaches to solve problems and the role of government is openly debated, Fuse Corps addresses the concerns of citizens from the ground up as opposed to following the status quo, top down approach,” said Peter Sims, Fuse Corps co-founder, entrepreneur and best-selling author of Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.

Lenny Mendonca, co-founder of McKinsey & Company’s social sector practice and of Fuse Corps, added, “To spur the growth and renewal of the US Economy takes real innovation and leadership. Highly efficient and effective entrepreneurs and business professionals bring sorely needed help to public sector organizations who, after facing a slowed economy and severe cuts, need it most. From Erika Dimmler bringing a groundbreaking gardens initiative to local schools with Mayor Kevin Johnson to Jeremy Goldberg helping to bridge the important talent gap in San Jose, we are seeing the positive impact Fuse Corps Fellows can have. I look forward to growing this kind of innovation and leadership asset in communities around the country in 2013.”

About Fuse Corps

Fuse Corps is a national, non-partisan, non-profit social enterprise that enlists top business professionals and entrepreneurs into public service through its professional fellowship program — in order to solve the biggest challenges facing communities. Fuse Corps is driven by several of America’s top innovators in the public and private sectors and it has collaborated with McKinsey & Co., d.school Institute of Design at Stanford, Points of Light, America’s Promise Alliance, Teach for America, Starbucks, and Summit, among others. For more information, please visit www.fusecorps.org or follow @FuseCorps on Twitter.

Little Bets in The New York Times

PREOCCUPATIONS

Daring to Stumble on the Road to Discovery
By PETER SIMS

AT the recent Aspen Ideas Festival, the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said that when he graduated from college, he was able to go find a job, but that our children were going to have to invent a job.

Jobs, careers, valued skills and industries are transforming at an unheard-of rate. And all of the change and uncertainty can make us risk-averse and prone to getting stuck.

Despite these realities, our education system emphasizes teaching and testing us about facts that are already known. There is much less focus on our ability to discover, create and reinvent.

The same often holds true in the workplace. Perfection is rewarded, while making mistakes is penalized. It’s no wonder that “failure” has taken on a deeply personal meaning, something to be avoided at nearly all cost.

The skills we’re taught work well for familiar situations, yet we’re trained to perfect our ideas and use the past to predict the future with linear plans in a nonlinear world. As such, we need a completely new mind-set. Linear thinking is a death knell for creativity.

When I worked as a venture capital investor, I found that most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with perfected ideas or plans — they discover them. Entrepreneurs think of learning the way most people think of failure.

A prime example is Howard Schultz, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. When he started what would become Starbucks, he modeled the first stores after coffeehouses in Milan, a new concept for the United States in the 1980s. He was clearly onto something, but the baristas wore bow ties — which they found uncomfortable — and customers complained about the nonstop opera music and menus that were written primarily in Italian. And the early stores had no chairs. Mr. Schultz routinely acknowledges that he and his team made a lot of mistakes. But they learned from them, as they did from countless other experiments.

Consider another example — what it takes to create great comedy. Editors at The Onion, the humor publication, estimate that they try out hundreds of headlines each week before they finally decide to use only a small percentage of them.

Even the most successful stand-up comedians, like Chris Rock, try thousands of new ideas in front of small club audiences in order to develop a one-hour act. Some jokes fail, but Mr. Rock is willing to be imperfect; he persists night after night because every small bet takes him closer to a brilliant act on the big stage.

This is how comedians and entrepreneurs must work — by making countless small bets to discover what works. The real genius is in the approach.

The same holds true for leaders, managers and collaborators. They must to be willing to learn from mistakes. Affordable risks should be encouraged, and small failures celebrated — these are the mark of learning organizations. Otherwise, risk aversion will lead to stagnation and decline.

In a time when valued skills and occupations shift constantly, we must be able to discover interests, opportunities and careers by experimenting. Or by reinventing ourselves altogether.

The architect Frank Gehry, for instance, designed relatively conventional buildings for much of his early career. But inspired by how contemporary painters and sculptors worked, Mr. Gehry performed a series of experiments on his own house in Santa Monica, Calif., during the late 1970s .

Working with plywood, corrugated metal and chain-link fencing, he built a new exterior around his original house.

His experiments were the precursor to what would become his distinctive style, evident in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The money was good in conventional architecture, yet he decided to start anew, using his own style and voice.

INVENTION and discovery emanate from the ability to try seemingly wild possibilities; to feel comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a careful observer, open to different experiences; to play with ideas without prematurely judging oneself or others; to persist through difficulties; and to have a willingness to be misunderstood, sometimes for long periods, despite the conventional wisdom.

All these abilities can be learned and developed, but doing so requires us to unlearn many of our tendencies toward linear planning and perfectionism.

As the technology pioneer Alan Kay put it: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” It begins with a little bet. What will yours be?

Peter Sims is the author of “Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.”

Original article as it appeared in The New York Times on August 6, 2011.  Please see link for reprints.

Little Bets in The NYT

PREOCCUPATIONS

Daring to Stumble on the Road to Discovery
By PETER SIMS

AT the recent Aspen Ideas Festival, the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said that when he graduated from college, he was able to go find a job, but that our children were going to have to invent a job.

Jobs, careers, valued skills and industries are transforming at an unheard-of rate. And all of the change and uncertainty can make us risk-averse and prone to getting stuck.

Despite these realities, our education system emphasizes teaching and testing us about facts that are already known. There is much less focus on our ability to discover, create and reinvent.

The same often holds true in the workplace. Perfection is rewarded, while making mistakes is penalized. It’s no wonder that “failure” has taken on a deeply personal meaning, something to be avoided at nearly all cost.

The skills we’re taught work well for familiar situations, yet we’re trained to perfect our ideas and use the past to predict the future with linear plans in a nonlinear world. As such, we need a completely new mind-set. Linear thinking is a death knell for creativity.

When I worked as a venture capital investor, I found that most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with perfected ideas or plans — they discover them. Entrepreneurs think of learning the way most people think of failure.

A prime example is Howard Schultz, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. When he started what would become Starbucks, he modeled the first stores after coffeehouses in Milan, a new concept for the United States in the 1980s. He was clearly onto something, but the baristas wore bow ties — which they found uncomfortable — and customers complained about the nonstop opera music and menus that were written primarily in Italian. And the early stores had no chairs. Mr. Schultz routinely acknowledges that he and his team made a lot of mistakes. But they learned from them, as they did from countless other experiments.

Consider another example — what it takes to create great comedy. Editors at The Onion, the humor publication, estimate that they try out hundreds of headlines each week before they finally decide to use only a small percentage of them.

Even the most successful stand-up comedians, like Chris Rock, try thousands of new ideas in front of small club audiences in order to develop a one-hour act. Some jokes fail, but Mr. Rock is willing to be imperfect; he persists night after night because every small bet takes him closer to a brilliant act on the big stage.

This is how comedians and entrepreneurs must work — by making countless small bets to discover what works. The real genius is in the approach.

The same holds true for leaders, managers and collaborators. They must to be willing to learn from mistakes. Affordable risks should be encouraged, and small failures celebrated — these are the mark of learning organizations. Otherwise, risk aversion will lead to stagnation and decline.

In a time when valued skills and occupations shift constantly, we must be able to discover interests, opportunities and careers by experimenting. Or by reinventing ourselves altogether.

The architect Frank Gehry, for instance, designed relatively conventional buildings for much of his early career. But inspired by how contemporary painters and sculptors worked, Mr. Gehry performed a series of experiments on his own house in Santa Monica, Calif., during the late 1970s .

Working with plywood, corrugated metal and chain-link fencing, he built a new exterior around his original house.

His experiments were the precursor to what would become his distinctive style, evident in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The money was good in conventional architecture, yet he decided to start anew, using his own style and voice.

INVENTION and discovery emanate from the ability to try seemingly wild possibilities; to feel comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a careful observer, open to different experiences; to play with ideas without prematurely judging oneself or others; to persist through difficulties; and to have a willingness to be misunderstood, sometimes for long periods, despite the conventional wisdom.

All these abilities can be learned and developed, but doing so requires us to unlearn many of our tendencies toward linear planning and perfectionism.

As the technology pioneer Alan Kay put it: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” It begins with a little bet. What will yours be?

Peter Sims is the author of “Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.”

Original article as it appeared in The New York Times on August 6, 2011.  Please see link for reprints.

Little Bets featured in The New York Times

PREOCCUPATIONS

Daring to Stumble on the Road to Discovery
By PETER SIMS

AT the recent Aspen Ideas Festival, the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said that when he graduated from college, he was able to go find a job, but that our children were going to have to invent a job.

Jobs, careers, valued skills and industries are transforming at an unheard-of rate. And all of the change and uncertainty can make us risk-averse and prone to getting stuck.

Despite these realities, our education system emphasizes teaching and testing us about facts that are already known. There is much less focus on our ability to discover, create and reinvent.

The same often holds true in the workplace. Perfection is rewarded, while making mistakes is penalized. It’s no wonder that “failure” has taken on a deeply personal meaning, something to be avoided at nearly all cost.

The skills we’re taught work well for familiar situations, yet we’re trained to perfect our ideas and use the past to predict the future with linear plans in a nonlinear world. As such, we need a completely new mind-set. Linear thinking is a death knell for creativity.

When I worked as a venture capital investor, I found that most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with perfected ideas or plans — they discover them. Entrepreneurs think of learning the way most people think of failure.

A prime example is Howard Schultz, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. When he started what would become Starbucks, he modeled the first stores after coffeehouses in Milan, a new concept for the United States in the 1980s. He was clearly onto something, but the baristas wore bow ties — which they found uncomfortable — and customers complained about the nonstop opera music and menus that were written primarily in Italian. And the early stores had no chairs. Mr. Schultz routinely acknowledges that he and his team made a lot of mistakes. But they learned from them, as they did from countless other experiments.

Consider another example — what it takes to create great comedy. Editors at The Onion, the humor publication, estimate that they try out hundreds of headlines each week before they finally decide to use only a small percentage of them.

Even the most successful stand-up comedians, like Chris Rock, try thousands of new ideas in front of small club audiences in order to develop a one-hour act. Some jokes fail, but Mr. Rock is willing to be imperfect; he persists night after night because every small bet takes him closer to a brilliant act on the big stage.

This is how comedians and entrepreneurs must work — by making countless small bets to discover what works. The real genius is in the approach.

The same holds true for leaders, managers and collaborators. They must to be willing to learn from mistakes. Affordable risks should be encouraged, and small failures celebrated — these are the mark of learning organizations. Otherwise, risk aversion will lead to stagnation and decline.

In a time when valued skills and occupations shift constantly, we must be able to discover interests, opportunities and careers by experimenting. Or by reinventing ourselves altogether.

The architect Frank Gehry, for instance, designed relatively conventional buildings for much of his early career. But inspired by how contemporary painters and sculptors worked, Mr. Gehry performed a series of experiments on his own house in Santa Monica, Calif., during the late 1970s .

Working with plywood, corrugated metal and chain-link fencing, he built a new exterior around his original house.

His experiments were the precursor to what would become his distinctive style, evident in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The money was good in conventional architecture, yet he decided to start anew, using his own style and voice.

INVENTION and discovery emanate from the ability to try seemingly wild possibilities; to feel comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a careful observer, open to different experiences; to play with ideas without prematurely judging oneself or others; to persist through difficulties; and to have a willingness to be misunderstood, sometimes for long periods, despite the conventional wisdom.

All these abilities can be learned and developed, but doing so requires us to unlearn many of our tendencies toward linear planning and perfectionism.

As the technology pioneer Alan Kay put it: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” It begins with a little bet. What will yours be?

Peter Sims is the author of “Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.”

Original article as it appeared in The New York Times on August 6, 2011.  Please see link for reprints.

Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Washington Post recognize ‘Little Bets’

Writing is editing, many days and hours of painstaking revision and sculpting.  So, it has been an honor and gratifying to learn that Little Bets has been recognized by a number of publications I respect for their best books of the year lists, including The Washington Post, Inc. Magazine, and AmEx OPEN Forum.

The Wall Street Journal also selected Little Bets as one of six top entrepreneurial advice books in an article entitled, “The Best Advice Around, From Those Who Took It,” alongside books like Art of the Start by Silicon Valley maven, Guy Kawasaki, the author and former chief evangelist @ Apple.

 

Quoting Saras Sarasvathy, a professor @ the Darden School at the University of Virginia, who many including the well-known entrepreneur and investor Vinod Khosla consider one of the most insightful researcheres on entrepreneurship, the article reads:

“This book demolishes the usual excuses entrepreneurs have for not starting a business,” says Saras D. Sarasvathy, an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, in the article, adding that the book “shows how ‘doing the doable’ without waiting for a big idea, or guarantees about the final outcome, can lead to amazing breakthroughs.”

(see this Big Think interview with Sarasvathy’s for a great overview of her work and findings)

Thank you so much to The Wall Street Journal for this generous recognition, and to the many people who have championed and evangelized the book. Let’s do this.