Manufacturing guy-at-large.

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Jonathan Rosenberg on Leadership

Added on by Spencer Wright.

Below, excerpts from last month's First Round Review post, "42 Rules to Lead by from the Man Who Defined Google’s Product Strategy ." All are taken from a lecture that Jonathan Rosenberg, former Google SVP of Product, gave to Claremont McKenna College in 2010.

#3 Every word matters. 

“Be crisp and direct and choose each word wisely,” Rosenberg advises. “Communication isn’t rambling on in long-winded emails or spewing out every thought that comes to your head.” He quotes author Elmore Leonard. When asked what has made him so successful as a writer, Leonard famously said, “I leave out the parts that people skip.”

#8 Avoid the HPPO.

HPPO stands for “the highest-paid person’s opinion.” When you have a problem or a question, don’t naturally accept the HPPO in the room. Title means nothing. If someone’s experience has value, they should be able to frame a winning argument. “Everybody at every level should have an equal voice in the outcome, based on the strength of his or her arguments.” Rosenberg names Jim Barksdale as his favorite HPPO. As CEO of Netscape, Barksdale once said, “If we have data, let’s look at the data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”

I have, I am afraid, made the mistake of accepting a superior's inadequate argument when I should have pressed for a better path. I've also pushed against authority in ways that were ineffective and counterproductive. Disagreeing with a misguided superior is a delicate task, but one which I would hope to improve my skills at. 

#10 Crowded is creative.

There’s a certain electricity that comes from working in a crowded, bustling space. “Offices should be designed for energy and interactions, not for isolation and status.”

#13 Show up.

True for everyone, and more for leaders: “Working from home is a malignant, metastasizing cancer,” Rosenberg says. “Ban it." 

#15 Hope is not a plan.

I was, once, part of a team whose plan was some secret sauce, made of a mixture of hope and faith. It was not an effective way to manage a project. Robert Greene instructs (in his dubious but interesting 48 Laws of Power) to "plan all the way to the end;" I tend to think that, so long as one's plans aren't precious, planning is of very high value.

#23 Don't hire specialists.

“Especially in tech,” Rosenberg says. “And don’t grow up to be a specialist. The job will change, and the underlying pace of the technology will transform the landscape so quickly that the specialist’s job will be gone.” As Einstein said, “Change is the only thing that is permanent.”

Not being much of a specialist myself, I can't help but agree. 

#36 Good judgment comes from experience. 

“On my team, I asked everyone who screwed up to write a postmortem and publish it to the entire team,” he says. “You would think this would be a shameful experience. But we kept an archive of all these things, and you know what, show me a team that never makes a mistake, and I’ll show you a team that has never done anything innovative.” Errors shouldn’t be defended or buried. They are what make you smarter. You can learn more from your mistakes than from your successes if you take time to study them.

I think this is a fantastic idea. 

#40 Mean what you say. 

A great leader has to commit -- body and soul -- to a team’s goal and vision. People can tell if it’s not the case, and they’re always watching. “Smart people can smell hypocrisy. So think before you speak, and make sure you spend your time on the things that you say are important. Culture is set from the top, and once set, it cannot be changed.”

As a manager of managers, then, it's important to have your team on board with a project's objectives and goals. I no longer wish to work towards goals that I'm not committed to. Under those circumstances, managing your own work and relating to the people around you is a fruitless task.

IoT PaaS

Added on by Spencer Wright.

This passage - in particular, the part I've bolded - from an old McKinsey paper on the Internet of Things kind of blew my mind today: 

 
In the business-to-business marketplace, one well-known application of the Internet of Things involves using sensors to track RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags placed on products moving through supply chains, thus improving inventory management while reducing working capital and logistics costs. The range of possible uses for tracking is expanding. In the aviation industry, sensor technologies are spurring new business models. Manufacturers of jet engines retain ownership of their products while charging airlines for the amount of thrust used. Airplane manufacturers are building airframes with networked sensors that send continuous data on product wear and tear to their computers, allowing for proactive maintenance and reducing unplanned downtime.

I would like a future in which we're paying more and more for services, and less and less for parts. I think of this a lot in the context of the retail service industry, but the application described above is fascinating. Imagine if Boeing redefined themselves as a company whose primary product was the thrust required to drive aluminum cans through the air. The implication of this is really interesting. It would shift the way that airlines dealt with fleet maintenance and upkeep, and might change the way all parties dealt with fuel usage as well. I had no idea that this kind of shift was underway, and I find it quite heartening.

How would your industry change if you redefined the product you offer?  

3D Printing: One part of a New Paradigm

Added on by Spencer Wright.

I often have the urge to cut-and-paste an email I've written onto a blog post.  Ideas mull around in my head, and it's often the case that an email chain prompts me to finally compose the thoughts that I've been meaning to get down for months. 

This morning, I had cause to write a message regarding the questions I have about 3D printing, and managed to nail down a few points that I've been working through recently. 

Note: I would be remiss not to mention the sources of much of my thinking: 

As a hardware product manager, I've sourced 3D printed parts (SLA, mostly) on a few occasions in order to prove out basic functionality. As a prototyping tool, it's been very useful to me (notwithstanding the value that inexpensive CNC prototyping shops like rapidmachining.com offer). As a manufacturing technology, though, I'm a little less impressed with 3D printing, especially because the industry seems most interested in replacing inexpensive injection molded consumer products with their FDM analogs. As SLS/SLA models become more cost effective and - more importantly - easier to procure, I suspect that the cost-benefit will shift, and I'll begin to see more 3D printed objects in my personal life.  

But the model for producing those parts is far from settled, and I'm most interested in how the big players (I figure that Shapeways, Kinkos, and Amazon are probably best situated) will integrate the entire manufacturing process: 

  • Design (cf. Quirky; the current proliferation of hardware crowdfunding & acceleration programs)
  • 3D printing (SLA/SLS, and *limited* FDM) 
  • Secondary operations (namely drilling/tapping)
  • Assembly (monolithic consumer objects are boring; it'll only be once 3D printing is integrated with fasteners, wiring, electronics, etc. that it becomes really interesting)
  • Distribution (ten days to ship a Shapeways model just isn't sustainable)

In short, I'm interested not in 3D printing itself, but in a new paradigm for product development, manufacturing, and distribution. My work background is in traditional manufacturing, where information systems tend to be closed and resistant to change, and I'm particularly interested in hearing people's opinions about how, over what timescale, and by what means these tendencies are likely to change.

Jason Stirman on management

Added on by Spencer Wright.

Earlier this month, an excellent specimen of hype-work appeared on the "The Review" section of the First Round Capital website. Titled "How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers," the piece is essentially a profile of the relationship between the management team at Medium and holacracy, a system of management ideas and software which... well, it gets tricky. In fact - maybe it's best just to lay out a few facts:

  • The article focuses on Jason Stirman, who apparently holds two roles at Medium: People Operations Lead; and Word Master. 
  • Holacracy is a system of organizational governance. If you really want the philosophical details, just read the wikipedia page. The extent to which holacracy can be considered separate and apart from HolacracyOne (a Pennsylvania LLC that provides training and distributes management software based on holacracy) is unclear. The article seems to treat them as one and the same. For some context, however, see Oliver Compagne's response to my question about HolacracyOne's management structure on Quora.
  • The article is peppered with pull quotes like "Traditional management just didn't agree with me," which I, for one, have a bit of a hard time taking seriously.  

Nonetheless, I can't help but vibe with Stirman on a few of his points. He describes a shift towards a personal relationship with his teammates, and it's highly compelling:

He started taking his reports out to lunch, to drinks, to coffee to see what was up. How was their wife settling into her new job? Did escrow close on their new house? This is the stuff that people bring into work with them but never talk about, Stirman says. As soon as you ask, the pressure starts to dissipate.

I have had a difficult time knowing the boundaries between my personal life and my interactions with employees. I have made the mistake of trying to be friends (I see this as distinct from trying to relate to their personal life), and accepting their mistakes as a result, and I have made the mistake of not being friendly enough. But I suspect that Stirman's approach is the more effective one, and is likely more enjoyable, too.  

Stirman also discusses the degree to which information is disseminated in an organization: 

Stirman hit another wall trying to shield his team from external drama and politics. “Classic management advice, and all my mentors told me that insulating your team from things so they won’t worry will make them more productive and happier,” he says. “But they just got angry, and confused, and disconnected. I was constantly censoring all this information and they were way happier when they knew everything.”
(...)
"Most of the time, you know your manager’s responsible for firing you and how much you get paid. I wish I would have sat down with my reports and said, “You know what, here’s what being a manager at Twitter actually means, and here’s a list of the decisions I have the authority to make.  I wish I would have broken that power dynamic, and been a better leader as a result."
I'm not sure I understand, or really care about, the holacratic approach. But positive feedback and open communication are powerful tools, and I hope to use them to the greatest extent possible in my life and career.

CORRECTION: As originally written, I made the mistake of claiming that First Round was an investor in Medium, which it is not. After posting, Jason Stirman contacted me and very politely noted my error. 

When to give up your product

Added on by Spencer Wright.

Product ideas are free, and if you put any effort at all into finding them, they're strikingly easy to come up with.  I keep a list of product ideas that's pages long, and I try to be open about sharing them with friends and potential collaborators.  However, there's always the protective instinct there - I don't want to give my ideas out to just anyone, especially if I think they might actually do something with them.

In the past few months, I've been particularly interested in developing new ideas, and have enjoyed talking to anyone else about their own visions.  I try to keep an open mind when talking startup shop; it's more fun, for sure, to listen to someone's half-baked pitch with enthusiasm.  I think it's also important to be delicate when following up on an idea that strikes me as a good one.  Intruding on someone else's project can be dangerous, and I try to be careful to not overstep on a friend's personal flame.  In particular, it's important to not try to change the focus of an idea.  From personal experience, I know it's all too easy to become protective over what one sees as the core idea of an product, and if someone uses my idea's shell but replaces the seed (the metaphor is a bit of a stretch, sorry), my reaction tends to be defensive.

It strikes me that despite the proliferation of high quality snark surrounding Hyperloop, Elon Musk has made an impressively brave decision in releasing his idea to the public.  It takes real guts to put what, by many accounts, is a totally harebrained idea into the ether.  

My own ambitions are admittedly smaller.  My product list includes a handful of blatant ripoffs (ostensibly with small design improvements, but whatever), lots of generic furniture/EDC items, and is generally full of stuff that's been pretty well picked over.  A good portion of my list wouldn't pass the "market need" test.  There are more well designed LED flashlights out there than I could shake a stick at; if I haven't found one that's perfect for my needs and meets my aesthetic requirements, that's because I haven't googled hard enough for it.

In the end, a product idea will sink or swim partially on the creators' ability to create a successful marketing platform.  Doing so allows otherwise uninteresting product ideas to flourish (this is, IMHO and with no offense intended, how Best Made Co. works).   If your product is generic (e.g., an off-the-shelf axe with a painted handle)  and relies on an iconic brand image to succeed, then you have nothing to worry from someone else taking your idea.  

Ditto if, on the other hand, your product is too large or complex for you to pull off alone.  Hyperloop falls into this category.  Musk himself is likely too overworked to launch it himself, and anyway would need municipal support that he can't get alone. 

From my own list: I want to build a public database of parts - an API that would aggregate specifications from suppliers like Digikey and McMaster-Carr, with a web interface that would allow users to manage the parts they have on hand in their own shops.  I see it as an ecosystem for managing inventory and procurement, with IoT opportunities that could change the way that workshops, R&D labs, and warehouses deal with parts on hand.  It's a project that's too big for me to take on alone, and if someone builds it while I'm busy boning up on the skills required to complete a small part of it - well, all's fair.  

The harder ideas to give up, for me, are the ones that make a big dent in a small workflow in my life.  For years, I've lamented the sad state of laundry hampers.  I want a hamper to be architectural, and to be made from materials that I'd find elsewhere in my home.  I want it to stand on its own, but fold down quickly for trips to the laundromat.  And most of all, I want *one* all-purpose device; I see no need to use one container for in-closet storage and another for transport.

Hamper Assy.jpg

A few years ago, I sketched up an idea for a hamper that fit my specifications.  It's something that I'm fairly well qualified to build, and wouldn't cost more than $100 in parts and a few hours of my labor to complete.  But it remains on my backlog, and it'll likely be there forever. 

What do competent, driven designers do with projects like this?  Presumably, Quirky was built for just this use case: something that could be a decent idea, but which I just don't have the bandwidth to move forward on a meaningful timescale.  But to hand over my baby, however half-baked she is, to Quirky's "design experts?"  The whole idea just hurts a little bit.  It's silly, but I want the product to be *mine,* whether or not it ever gets built. 

Optimally, I think each of us needs a network of collaborators - people who we can work with, for, and against (against is important) in the pursuit of something shippable.  Immediate feedback and real, honest enthusiasm are things that Quirky (and Kickstarter, for that matter) isn't very good at, and to many people those are important parts of the design and development process.  I'm constantly working on expanding my product development network, but I'll admit that it's still far from where it want to be.  And more importantly, my skills at communicating with someone about product ideas - both theirs and mine - are crude, and anyway the ideas that I can bring to the table are mostly harebrained.

How do other designers deal with these issues?  I'd love feedback, or simply to connect.  

 

privacy and serendipity in a connected world

Added on by Spencer Wright.

i've been thinking recently - i was prompted by a trusted editor and interlocutor - about two potential impacts of the development of the Internet of Things. the first concerns, essentially, the right to privacy; the second concerns serendipity and randomness in an increasingly automated world. i'll attempt to address them both here.


the Internet of Things and privacy

the concern here goes roughly like this:

if everything becomes a connected device, will kids no longer be able to steal from the cookie jar?

this is a valid concern. in general, i believe that it's good for people to make their own mistakes. i've spent plenty of time making my own, and i continue to employ off-label uses for many of devices in my life. similarly: i jaywalk, and i would hate for the NYPD to be tracking my phone and prosecuting me accordingly.

ultimately, we as individuals need to come to an understanding with each other about the extent to which we want to police our actions. as a dog owner, i would have no qualms setting up an alert to notify me if Libo manages to get into the trashcan. but as a parent, i would hope that i might cede some control over the liquor cabinet as my children grow into adults. it's worth noting, also, that the degree of nuance that connected devices could provide is much greater than the all-or-nothing nature of recent technology, e.g. lock and key. i can set up notifications and then decline to act on them; i can allow some degree of leniency; i can turn device protections off remotely, or simply turn my phone off.

as a society, the stakes are higher. our new information age has shown that we desperately need to rethink the way we police the distribution of ideas. it is my feeling that the same realignment is needed in the physical world. this problem is not unique to the Internet of Things, and i tend to think that it's the fault of our criminal justice system, not of the technology that it chooses to implement for code enforcement. our system allows for minor laws (speeding, jaywalking, using your parents' HBO Go account) to be routinely broken, but then prosecutes them stringently when a charge is needed. the risk of this kind of action will increase as the world becomes more connected and individuals become more trackable. to avoid societal paralysis, it is the responsibility of citizens to push for, and of legislators to enact, more sensible regulations.

it is worthwhile to note that the massive availability of sense data that the Internet of Things could bring has positive implications as well. as MGI notes in their recent report: "It will soon be possible to place inexpensive sensors on light poles, sidewalks, and other objects on public property to capture sound and images that can be analyzed in real time — for example, to determine the source of a gunshot by analyzing the sound from multiple sensors." in short, there are upsides and downsides of knowing more about the physical world - but we as a society must decide for ourselves where we fall on their overall value.


the Internet of Things and serendipity

the worry here is a more tender one, and i hope that i don't do it an injustice by breaking it down into a formal argument:

random personal interactions produce net positive effects.

the Internet of Things will reduce random personal interactions.

∴ the Internet of Things will produce net negative effects.

this argument reminds me of similar ones aimed at older, more general purpose technologies. for a related example, see Stephen Berlin Johnson's discussion of serendipity and the internet from his book, Where Good Ideas Come From:"

If you visit the "serendipity" entry in Wikipedia, you are one click away from entries on LSD, Teflon, Parkinson's Disease, Sri Lanka, Isaac Newton, Viagra, and about two hundred topics of comparable diversity. That eclecticism is particularly acute at Wikipedia, of course, but it derives from the fundamentally "tangled" nature of Tim Berners-Lee's original hypertext architecture. No medium in history has ever offered such unlikely trails of connection and chance in such an intuitive and accessible form. Yet in recent years, a puzzling meme has emerged on op-ed pages with a strange insistence: the rise of the web, its proponents argue, has led to a decline in serendipitous discovery...When critics complain about the decline of serendipity, they habitually point to two "old media" mechanisms that allegedly have no direct equivalent on the Web. McKeen mentions the first one: browsing the stacks in a library (or a bookstore), "pulling down a book because the title interests you, or the binding." Old-style browsing does indeed lead to unplanned discoveries. But thanks to the connective nature of hypertext, and the blogosphere's exploratory hunger for finding new stuff, it is far easier to sit down in front of your browser and stumble across something completely brilliant but surprising than it is to walk through a library, looking at the spines of books. Does everyone use the Web this way? Of course not. but it is much more of a mainstream pursuit than randomly exploring the library stacks, pulling down books because you like the binding, ever was.

i feel much as Johnson does: the internet has increased the level of serendipity in my life. it allows me to interact with individuals all over the world, of course, and it also allows me (via services like foursquare) to coordinate chance encounters as well. i believe that the same will hold true for the Internet of Things: i will be able to interact with my peers - and with connected devices - in much more interesting and engaging ways than my ancestors ever could have.

consider a few examples - cherry picked, sure, but that's what you get :)

  • i set up my Roomba to turn on only when my cell phone is out of range of my home router. now not only do i not need to take time to vacuum myself, but Roomba never interrupts when i have company over.
  • the TBTA sets up real-time congestion tracking, via sensors embedded in road surfaces, on the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges. i'm driving to Connecticut on a friday afternoon, and plan to take the Whitestone, which is a shorter distance from my house, but am redirected to the Throgs Neck to avoid traffic, past the Queens Botanical Garden and Kissena park. my total route saves me fifteen minutes, and takes me through a new part of the city that i wouldn't have otherwise known to visit.
  • ditto the above, but with Google Maps/Waze on my smartphone.
  • i install an accelerometer, with a small battery and cellular transmitter, in a discreet part of my bike. now i'm able to be less careful locking up in front of a coffee shop, as i'll get a real-time push notification if someone tries to cut my lock. i can travel light to and from my destination, and be less anxious when i get there.
  • i set up Twine to monitor (as they're so fond of advertising) moisture content in my basement. now i no longer need to go to my basement and check for moisture, so i can spend more time outside introducing myself to strangers.

again, i must additionally note the huge benefits in resource efficiency that would counterbalance any decrease in serendipity - if such a decrease would occur. MGI notes that "The cities of Doha, São Paulo, and Beijing all use sensors on pipes, pumps, and other water infrastructure to monitor conditions and manage water loss, identifying and repairing leaks or changing pressure as necessary. On average, these cities have reduced leaks by 40 to 50 percent." this kind of improvement is worth, i believe, a significant sacrifice on the part of individual desires.

most importantly: it is, again, the responsibility of the individual to determine how these technologies impact their day-to-day lives. we all have the responsibility - to ourselves - to maintain our own connections to the people and experiences we care for. the Internet of Things will not make our lives better; only one's personal outlook and desire to be happy can do that. but the Internet of Things will free us up to work on more important problems, and it has the potential to make our use of the physical world far more efficient.


  1. cf. parts one and two of This American Life's recent stories on patent trolling; Edward Tufte's defense of Aaron Swartz; anything written about the recent NSA/PRISM scandal, e.g. this piece in wired; the recent Supreme Court decision re: the patentability of human genes.

  2. see kottke.org's recent post on Harvey Silverglate's book, "You Commit Three Felonies a Day."

  3. viz. this week's brilliant xkcd.

  4. to the tune of $2.7-6.2B annually by 2025, if you believe McKinsey.

Bud Caddell on the Planning Salon

Added on by Spencer Wright.
we didn't know what "inventionist" would be.  i was coming out of spending five or six years on the consulting side.  at Undercurrent, we didn't make anything, we didn't sell media.  we just made beautiful decks...when we wanted to build things, we had to find a partner like Odopod or another company.  and we worked closely with them, but it wasn't *us* doing the work.  and what i missed was, i didn't feel like my blades were getting any sharper making decks.  i'd gotten to that point where i could make a deck that would make a CEO really happy, but i wasn't getting better in terms of my ideas in the real world.

from The Planning Salon.

more thoughts on Quirky and supplier identity

Added on by Spencer Wright.

this evening i was lucky enough to run into Jordan Husney at the NY Hardware Startups Meetup.  before the panel discussion started, i picked his brain about a few of the ideas i've been mulling, and Quirky came up.  i touched briefly on their business model, which i have been thinking about, and Jordan quickly corrected me: Quirky outsources idea generation, not design.

it wasn't until i got home that the relevant question about that distinction struck me: is idea generation something that needed to be revolutionized? 

this is an interesting question.  as i understand Shapeways' model, they mean to crowdsource both idea generation and design, and focus on being a marketplace between designers, manufacturers and consumers.  Quirky employs their own designers, and leverages their expertise to rapidly develop ideas that they cull from a community of "inventors."  from their FAQ page:

Q: What's the benefit of posting my idea [on Quirky]? Why not go do it on my own?
A: By all means, go build what you want to build! Our main jam is that it can be hard to do it on your own… or at least in our experience it was. And it can cost a lot, which sometimes means tricking your parents into remortgaging their house (cough, cough, Ben). But we’ve got an expert design staff, established manufacturing relationships, and a rock star sales and marketing team, plus all the tools and resources to get that idea out of your head and onto shelves. So if you’re willing to risk $10 for your killer idea, it’s totally worth it.

Quirky is definitely onto something here.  they've identified a difficulty that has spawned a number of product development consulting firms (Dragon Innovation, MakeSimply, and PCH come to mind).  interestingly, though, their services include two fields that are much touted to be going through a massive democratization: 3d design and prototyping.  if these processes indeed are becoming increasingly accessible to normal people, and if Dragon et al handle everything from final prototyping to vendor management to supply chain logistics, then what exactly differentiates Quirky?

for one, they're a one-stop shop.  for two, they have their own distribution platform.  it's different from Kickstarter, where the designer can build real relationships with end users; the relationship is instead with Quirky, whose shopping experience feels highly curated.

but the process is streamlined, too.  compare Quirky's "Pluck" with "Yolkr" on Kickstarter.  the two products themselves are hardly differentiated at all.  Pluck spent 3 months in development and has been in Quirky's store since december of 2012.  it has sold over 10k units, grossing $134k for Quirky and netting its inventor just under $13k (including his $10 fee for posting to Quirky).  Yolkr was launched in january of 2013; its 60 day campaign ended in march.  it raised about $63k, and despite its estimated March ship date, has not yet done so.

comparing the two, i'm not sure which i like better; but ultimately that's irrelevant.  the real question is which will be better suited to adapting to a dynamic marketplace - which is exactly what both companies will certainly be required to do.

supplier identity

Added on by Spencer Wright.

recently i've been interviewing at, and thinking a lot about, a handful of companies that are involved in new and interesting ways of delivering product (both physical and digital) to customers.  in previous phases of my career, i've been intimately involved in both product development, customer relations, and physical manufacturing.  but this is a largely outdated model.  there's been a lot of innovation in the product development & delivery process recently (take Quirky, Kickstarter and Shapeways as easy examples), and it's certain that we haven't seen the end of this trend.

this excerpt from McKinsey's recent post about the Internet of Things and manufacturing sums much of it up:

Markus Löffler: With these radical changes looming, who has the best chance of controlling the profit pool—those with the production technology or those who own the assets?
Siegfried Dais: I would take a step back and ask, in the mind of the consumer, who represents the final product? The designer? The manufacturer? Or the person who created the contract with the customer for the final product?
Andreas Tschiesner: Right. This takes us into the field of contract manufacturing.
Siegfried Dais: Design companies have already separated design and production. They create products or solutions for customers but do not produce them; they simply provide the specifications to contract manufacturers, who then handle production. This trend of separating design and production will continue to spread across other industries and sectors.

this back and forth brings up a few really interesting questions.  i tend to think that it's beneficial (to stakeholders, team members, and consumers/users alike) for the product development process to be undertaken by a cross-functional team.  but there are undeniable positive effects from task specialization.  

Quirky, Kickstarter and Shapeways have all taken different approaches to defining their role in the development process.  as a consumer, i find Kickstarter to be the most appealing: i accept that they're just a platform, and put responsibility for the project's completion squarely on the creator.  Quirky is a bit more confused to me.  i have less experience with their products, but the ones i've used (their SOLO coat hanger) left much to be desired.  and i blame Quirky - not the crowd from whom they sourced the design - for the failure.  Shapeways' business model is confusing to me as well.  i have used their services for prototyping (to great success), but have little interest in their product shopping experience.

with all of the talk about how 3d printing will revolutionize manufacturing, it's great to hear an intelligent conversation about how it's really advances in distributed, efficient product development & delivery (brought about by IoT, crowdsourcing technologies, and new manufacturing processes - including 3d printing) that will be most impactful.

McKinsey: the Internet of Things and manufacturing

Added on by Spencer Wright.

full text here.   

Markus Löffler: Most companies think of physical flows—meaning the flow of material components through the supply chain—as separate from information flows and then consider how and where to coordinate and synchronize them. After the fourth industrial revolution, there will no longer be a difference between information and materials, because products will be inextricably linked to “their” information.
Siegfried Dais: Right. For example, a piece of metal or raw material will say, “I am the block that will be made into product X for customer Y.” In an extreme vision, this unfinished material already knows for which customer it is intended and carries with it all the information about where and when it will be processed. Once the material is in the machine, the material itself records any deviations from the standard process, determines when it’s “done,” and knows how to get to its customer. It might not happen right away, but things will definitely move in this direction.

gems from Paul Graham

Added on by Spencer Wright.

three excellent passages from Paul Graham's September 2012 post, Startup=Growth (emphasis is mine): 

on commitment: 

"Startup" is a pole, not a threshold. Starting one is at first no more than a declaration of one's ambitions. You're committing not just to starting a company, but to starting a fast growing one, and you're thus committing to search for one of the rare ideas of that type. But at first you have no more than commitment. Starting a startup is like being an actor in that respect. "Actor" too is a pole rather than a threshold.  At the beginning of his career, an actor is a waiter who goes to auditions. Getting work makes him a successful actor, but he doesn't only become an actor when he's successful.

on startups' tendency to working in technology:

Growth is why startups usually work on technology—because ideas for fast growing companies are so rare that the best way to find new ones is to discover those recently made viable by change, and technology is the best source of rapid change.

on mode of business vs. core industry:

Starting a startup is thus very much like deciding to be a research scientist: you're not committing to solve any specific problem; you don't know for sure which problems are soluble; but you're committing to try to discover something no one knew before. A startup founder is in effect an economic research scientist. Most don't discover anything that remarkable, but some discover relativity.

Ballmer on meetings and powerpoint

Added on by Spencer Wright.

from a 2009 interview in the nytimes; found on Edward Tufte's excellent blog

Q. What’s it like to be in a meeting run by Steve Ballmer?
A. I’ve changed that, really in the last couple years. The mode of Microsoft meetings used to be: You come with something we haven’t seen in a slide deck or presentation. You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call “the long and winding road.” You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion.
That’s kind of the way I used to like to do it, and the way Bill [Gates] used to kind of like to do it. And it seemed like the best way to do it, because if you went to the conclusion first, you’d get: “What about this? Have you thought about this?” So people naturally tried to tell you all the things that supported the decision, and then tell you the decision.
I decided that’s not what I want to do anymore. I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t think it’s efficient. I get impatient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: “I’ve got the following four questions. Please don’t present the deck.” That lets us go, whether they’ve organized it that way or not, to the recommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus.

i am not enthusiastic about powerpoint, though my reasons are an admittedly weak combination of stubbornness and blind adherence to Tufte's critiques, which i've found very compelling.

commodities dressed up in premium packaging

Added on by Spencer Wright.

Adam Davidson is one of my favorite journalists.  the NPR podcast he co-hosts, Planet Money, is consistently entertaining and insightful, and his nytimes pieces are similarly compelling.  last week, he published a piece on the 2013 Brooklyn Baby Expo, which explored the ways in which consumer products - specifically those geared towards expecting parents - differentiate themselves.  

Nearly every product we buy — from coffee and cereal to hotel rooms and cars — is a commodity dressed up in premium packaging, Oster pointed out. But with baby products, the process is intensified. Kellogg’s, Ford and Starbucks can spend years tempting a consumer, but baby companies have a short window — often just the few weeks before a due date — to capture expecting parents’ attention.

paying attention to the methods by which the products i care most about keep my attention has, for me, been highly rewarding, and has informed my own ideas about the products I have created.  i encourage you, dear reader, to consider the extent to which the products you offer (and we all offer products, in both our personal and professional lives) are differentiated by their content, as opposed to just by their packaging.

workflow

Added on by Spencer Wright.

it's old, but i love this.   to me it really captures something about how arbitrary design is. because, so what if your workflow is horrifying?  if it works for you, have at it - but don't expect anyone else to build their products around your weirdass ticks.

ideas in development

Added on by Spencer Wright.

i have not figured out how to keep track of ideas that i'm developing.  Evernote is (despite its features) imperfect and expensive.  Vesper doesn't really have that many features.  paper is impermanent and prone to being lost.  Trello is a little overkill, and iOS Notes is as underkill as Vesper without being pretty. 

nevertheless, one needs to save ideas.  so here, in Evernote OSX screenshot format, is a list of ideas i've been developing. 

a few of them are deeply related and will likely be condensed.  it's also possible that some will be need to be broken down and/or expanded.  some are just tweets, some are soliloquies, some are blog posts, some are just things i mull over or have some indeterminate/passionate feelings about.  with any luck, they'll all be showing up here soon.

first reaction: McKinsey Global Institute's Distruptive Technologies report, May 2013

Added on by Spencer Wright.

it's taking a few days to get through, but last month's MGI report on disruptive technologies (n.b., i'm as sick of the term "disruptive" as you are, but will leave it to someone else to come up with something better) is an interesting and thought provoking read.  i won't go into all the details, but a few standout points are worth mentioning.  [note: you can find the report, and follow along with me, here.] 

the ranking.  let's face it: this is why i'm reading the thing.  mckinsey set out to determine which technologies are likely to have the greatest economic impact between now and 2025, a subject which impacts me not only as a long-term consumer and member of society, but also as a guy-who-claims-to-be-shifting-careers (n.b. the number of levels on which you could read this are...more than one).  now, just because MGI decided that the mobile internet is likely to have the greatest impact doesn't mean i'm about to spend the next twelve years working on MQTT (or peddling cell phones, for that matter).  but all things being equal, i want to be in a field that, 1. i can make an impact in; 2. i can leverage my ability to learn to provide high economic value for myself and the organizations i work with; 3. is compelling from a "we're-changing-the-world (in a good way)" perspective; etc.  and to the extent that mckinsey's ranking captures at least some of these factors, i was excited to see what they had to say. 

a few notes on the entries themselves:

  • as MGI notes midway through the executive summary: "The link between hype and potential is not clear."  noted. 
  • yeah, 3d printing is on there.  at 9th place, leading up the list's long tail.  
  • basically, computers rock.  by my count, the top six entries amount to "machines taking shit over."
  • whatever you think about fracking, it's a big business opportunity for the next year or two. 
  • solar/wind/waves are cool, but energy storage - on both a small (e.g. hybrid car batteries) and large (smart energy grids, with the ability to transport and store large amounts of energy efficiently)  - is cooler.
  • graphene, man.  and, like, nanotubes.

it's also worth giving a huge shout-out to the Internet of Things, which is projected to have an impact larger than the bottom five contestants combined.  it also has the potential to combine with a number of other items on the list, multiplying the impact:

We see that certain emerging technologies could be used in combination, reinforcing each other and potentially driving far greater impact...It is possible that the first commercially available nano-electromechanical machines (NEMS), molecule-sized machines, could be used to create very advanced sensors for wearable mobile Internet devices or Internet of Things applications.
the top of the list ends up being a list of the technologies that are the most general purpose, and thus have the most immediate day-to-day impact on consumers.   the effect is largely positive - a feeling which i share myself (are you fucking *kidding* me you're not excited for google glass?!??).

Many of the technologies on our list have the potential to deliver the lion’s share of their value to consumers, even while providing producers with sufficient profits to encourage technology adoption and production. Technologies like next- generation genomics and advanced robotics could deliver major health benefits, not all of which may be usable by health-care payers and providers, many of whom face growing pressure to help improve patient outcomes while also reducing health-care costs. Many technologies will also play out in fiercely competitive consumer markets—particularly on the Internet, where earlier McKinsey research has shown consumers capture the majority of the economic surplus created. Mobile Internet, cloud, and the Internet of Things are prime examples. Also, as technologies are commercialized and come into widespread use, competition tends to shift value to consumers. 

but on the labor side, the situation is quite different.   as Thomas Friedman wrote in late april, "this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you."  MGI writes:

The nature of work will change, and millions of people will require new skills.  It is not surprising that new technologies make certain forms of human labor unnecessary or economically uncompetitive and create demand for new skills. This has been a repeated phenomenon since the Industrial Revolution: the mechanical loom marginalized home weaving while creating jobs for mill workers. However, the extent to which today’s emerging technologies could affect the nature of work is striking. Automated knowledge work tools will almost certainly extend the powers of many types of workers and help drive top-line improvements with innovations and better decision making, but they could also automate some jobs entirely. Advanced robotics could make more manual tasks subject to automation, including in services where automation has had less impact until now. Business leaders and policy makers will need to find ways to realize the benefits of these technologies while creating new, innovative ways of working and providing new skills to the workforce.

and later: 

One clear message: the nature of work is changing. Technologies such as advanced robots and knowledge work automation tools move companies further to a future of leaner, more productive operations, but also far more technologically advanced operations. The need for high-level technical skills will only grow, even on the assembly line. Companies will need to find ways to get the workforce they need, by engaging with policy makers and their communities to shape secondary and tertiary education and by investing in talent development and training; the half-life of skills is shrinking, and companies may need to get back into the training business to keep their corporate skills fresh.

as is my wont, my tendency is to read the paper from the perspective of the oft-mentioned "business leader."  it strikes me that the advice MGI gives business leaders is the advice we should all take, albeit to varying scales (emphasis and comments below are mine):

As these disruptive technologies continue to evolve and play out, it will be up to business leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and citizens to maximize their opportunities while dealing with the challenges. Business leaders need to be on the winning side of these changes. [snw: yeah... individuals too.] They can do that by being the early adopters or innovators or by turning a disruptive threat into an opportunity. The first step is for leaders to invest in their own technology knowledge. Technology is no longer down the hall or simply a budget line; it is the enabler of virtually any strategy, whether by providing the big data analytics that reveal ways to reach new customer groups, or the Internet of Things connections that enable a whole new profit center in after-sale support. Top leaders need to know what technologies can do and how to bend it to their strategic goals. Leaders cannot wait until technologies are fully baked to think about how they will work for—or against— them. And sometimes companies will need to disrupt their own business models before a rival or a new competitor does it for them.

ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide he own path through a shifting landscape.  but the opportunity is out there, and it can only be realized on the individual level if the individual decides to act as his own business leader, his own policy maker:

Policy makers can find ways to turn the disruptions into positive change; they can encourage development of the technologies that are most relevant to their economies...The challenge for policy makers—and for citizens—is enormous. It is a good time for policy makers [snw: and individuals!] to review how they address technology issues and develop a systematic approach; technology stops for no one, and governments [snw: again: and individuals!] cannot afford to be passive or reactive.