Patrick
Keenan

Amazon just shipped my new moleskin in under 24 hours, for free.

I’m a prime member. I have a kindle, and and iPhone, a wii connected to a projector, and a laptop which plugs into my monitor. I find where to eat on Yelp. I chat with friends on Facebook. I manage my career on Linked-In. This is normal.

What’s new is that I can start a business and compete with such essential services, and maybe win. Technology-wise, I could build a Facebook, Yelp, Amazon, iTunes in a number of days. But the risk isn’t technical, its cultural. A web business is as common place as a 1-800 number, and its now about execution. Listing more than 122,787,271 products might be doable, under 24 hours is tough to beat.

So many times when I hear a new business idea its about possibility.

Why not try excellent execution as a starting point?

Last week I got back from a class ‘trek’ to the Silicon Valley. We visited companies from cases studies and hear new visions for bootstrapping a better future.

Trickling into the Carlton hotel one oxonian after another. It was Sunday night and we knew, despite the long ride, we would need all our energy for the week ahead. The schedule was packed. We certainly had options: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Box, IDEO, The HUB, Path, Genetech, LinkedIn, CurrentTV, and YCombinator.

What stuck about the Bay area was the contrasts. From one block to the next, from one hour to the next it was a place of:

Perfect Weather vs  Cold Fog

Delicious Tastes vs  Fast Food

Optimism vs  Destitution

Opportunities vs  Workaholics

Thought Leaders vs  Deluded realties

High quality of life vs  High cost of living

Freedom vs  Income disparity

Beautiful Public Space vs  Urine soaked streets

We heard many contrasts at our visits as well. Entrepreneurship and Innovation often come from making unexpected connections, here are a couple we saw:

Path: Anthropology + Online Networks

Drawing from Professor Dunbar at Oxford, Path is working to create a smaller social network. The venture is based on 2 of Dunbar’s magic numbers of 150(the amount of people you can know) and 5(the amount of people you can trust). By limiting your social network, the idea is that you’ll share more of your life(photos). Download the app, its beautiful.

IDEO.org: Human Centred Design + Social Issues

We were privileged to hear from Jocelyn Wyatt about IDEO’s venture into the social innovation space. They’d be launching an incubator for ideas, and a kit around HCD. Design and Development have been too far for too long, we have 90% of designers designing for 10% of the population. Great to see this connection, apply for the fellowship here.

SYPartners: Strategy + Design

I took the liberty of visiting a firm I’ve been inspired by for a while. SYPartners has worked with top tier clients on changing culture for the better. By their material you might think they were a design studio. What they do well is assist leaders to develop new visions for themselves. I hope to see more work that hits the high note of both core strategy and quality execution, check them out here.

O’Reilly: Communities + Venture

Another fortunate meeting was with O’Reily Alpha Tech Ventures. They work with the alpha nerd, and the communities that surround folks who are doing for the sake of it. Some familiar technologies line the walls here: Drupal + Aquia, Foursquare, Strobe + SproutCore, Get Satisfaction.

The highlight of the trip for me though, wasn’t a company, but a talk. I’ve been an avid listener of the Long Now Foundation for years. As fate would have it, the dates matched. In the talk many contrasting visions were reconciled, from the singularity, to nuclear power, to the importance of geography, and more. Check out the talk here.

Its clear I’ll have to go back. There’s an attitude, a culture, and an ecosystem in the bay area that can’t compare. Entrepreneurs live on the fault line of ideas, and the Bay area is wrought with tectonic activity.

Today was the second and final day of the EV Summit. I had the pleasure of working on this together with the team from the Energy OBN. The conversation started yesterday with the case of the hundred year old saga of the Electric Vehicle, and ended today with a vision of as faster more effective system of mobility.

I come from the suburbs, and growing up there my main frustration was the car. It divides the streets, it isolates passers by, it takes up space, and it makes it tough to take a nice walk. But the EV Summit wasn’t about cars for me, it was about systems. We learned that the EV won’t do what a combustion engine can do. We learned that this new technology is different, not better, not worse. We also got a sense that these changes are slow, and will likely end up creating some big problems.

David Kirsch gave a sense of the promise of the electric vehicle, but also that such a promise has been resurfacing every 10 years. From the Panel of Johannes Tulusan, Jimin Zhao, and Malcolm McCulloch, we heard about the challenges in building infrastructure. The next day this notion was followed up and answered by Hugo Spowers and the wonderful holistic that is riversimple. I then learned all about fuel cells, batteries, rare earth materials, and the next 10 years of technology from Peter Dobson. Finally, we had a session looking at the latest technology in electric racing cars, as well as helping with some practical brainstorming to get started with this stuff in Oxford. Marc Ventresca wrapped it all up as he does with his charm and precision of language.

At the end, with history behind us, and knowing the physics of the future, its clear choices will be made. My hope is that we will choose mobility over cars. If we can think about how we want to be rather than what we want to own I’m sure there’s a prosperous future ahead.

We cannot leave out the corporation from our discussion of a better world.

Look around you. You will see light bulbs, toothbrushes, instruments, blankets, faucets, bicycles, furniture, medicine. These are products, and for better or worse they have been planned, created, and delivered by corporations. Too often we start the conversation on corporations by asking what have they done wrong. And likewise we begin our discussion about charity or non-profits by discussing what they’ve done right. So much of the budget for charity comes from corporate coffers either through pay from Employees or tax write-offs. These paycheques and write-offs are both profitable for a company, but that’s the point. Our world of do gooders is built off the backs of do somethingers.

• While councils have been debating the rights of rural farmers, nokia has made a cellphone that actually improves their lives.
• While we’ve spoken about the need to combat aids, a corporation has developed a treatment.
• While we debate about the need to get off fossil fuels, Walmart has invested in carbon neutral fleets.

The point is that each of these situations is profitable. There is no room for debate, only a good business decision. We need less complaining and explaining. We need more planning and executing.

The modern corporation is a modern invention. If theres something wrong then it should be fixed. But the main point is that fix needs to be valued. If people don’t care it won’t be done. We as humans are decision makers. We all budget, our time, our money, our attention. The invention of the corporation has allowed many to do that budgeting together, and fairly. There is a clarifying nature to this decision making process: profit. But profit only comes from one source, selling more for less.

More for less.

It’s our objective as people. It would be our ideal state as beings on this planet. The decision of more is made by the consumer. So far we’ve bought bigger cars, brighter buildings, and heavier suitcases. More can mean something different though. More can mean more happiness, more self-expression, more discovery. The decision of less is up to the corporation. Efficiency creates more for less, and management has been e driving force for this efficiency. We can now use less by capturing our supply chain, involving our customers, and providing just enough just in time.

When we talk about a better world, we have to recognize that, for all the efforts to alleviate poverty, the endgame looks like a mall. When everyone has autonomy, they have the ability to purchase. If the future consumers look anything like the current ones, they’ll buy on emotions and self-interest. The want for more can be reoriented through marketing, but doing that for less is up to the future managers. I think we’re up for the challenge.

I found a file lying around on my computer. I don’t know if I still agree with all of these, but they got me thinking again at least.

• Design is about possibilities not results
• Business is about results not intentions
• No one’s gonna fire you, so its not over till you stop – B. Grigsby
• A good idea is just a poor implementation plan, a successful idea is a behaviour
• A good ideas is something someone else would want to do more than you
• 25 years of consulting, 2 years of volunteering = social entrepreneurship
• Selfish and Selfless dissolve in the face of shared goals
• You can’t change everyone minds, you can charge more
• The end of poverty is the success of global consumption & production by everyone
• Start with what works, end when the budget is gone
• Innovation is just reinventing a tradition you haven’t heard of yet
• Probability is more important than freedom
• Do you want to build a company, or do you want to do something?
• The problems that look most important are the ones people you know complain about
• The most important problems are the ones you take for solved
• The poor are an R & D lab for cheap government services
• Corporations are dumb, and that makes people smarter
• Voting for parties doesn’t matter, checks and balances do
• The population who wants to change the world is small, the population doing so is huge
• Exercise is always worth it
• Shortcuts save time, and make things interesting
• People have trouble with buying intangibles, but insurance works