Proven decision patterns such as those I provide in my Decision Driven® Strategy web service can help stop the brain drain.  They enable:

• Rapid capture and preservation of a strategic decision and roadmap baseline for the organization
• Rapid learning framework for new staff to understand the best thinking that has created the organization's current state
• Consistent methods and visualizations for decisions and roadmaps to aid communication and help folks "pass the baton" to the next generation of workers
• A primed-and-ready innovation framework so that the next generation can immediately create value and see opportunities for disruptive changes to the strategic baseline

I offer a variant form of my Strategic Roadmapping Jump-Start service that can help your organization capture your strategic baseline and hand it off to the team of the future.  I've done this reverse engineering task at least 100 times across a diverse set of high-tech industries, so I know that a model of the top 50-100 decisions can easily be built in a few days.  This usually identifies a few branches of the decision model that contain high-priority "open" decisions that need to be made or revisited as part of strategy refresh and hand-off to the next generation.  The whole package typically runs $5-15K and delivers a decision and roadmap baseline, captured in the web-based Decision Driven® Strategy tool, ready for on-going strategic decision-making and roadmapping.

If this sounds intriguing, give me a holler.

John Fitch

Oh boy...don't we all think we're the next facebook or YouTube here in Silicon Valley? Of course, and who can blame us?!?!?! If a startup's C.E.O. lacks the confidence to say this, then there's really no hope for the rest of the team. The biggest problem, however, is that a lot of these emerging startups are driven by "fads". Yes, you heard it right here..."fads". A "fad" is defined as: an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, esp. one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze (Source: Dictionary.com). So how can you (we) escape this and truly build innovative startups in the years to follow,... or what we call "winner(s)"? Just follow these 3 easy steps and you're already on your way (be sure to contact us to elaborate and provide an initial roadmap for your startup).

Number 1: build the brand.

Number 2: live the brand ™.

Number 3: sell the brand.

As our good friends over at STAPLES say "That was easy".

The American Tinnitus Association (ATA) exists to cure tinnitus through the development of resources that advance tinnitus research. A large part of the population suffers from tinnitus, yet private donations to tinnitus research remain limited. This article explains who pays for tinnitus research: industry, government, and private and public philanthropy. To encourage larger donations, donors who suffer from tinnitus need to see a clear connection between their financial support of research and future treatments. An expanded version of the “Roadmap to a Cure,” adopted in its original form by the ATA, is offered as a vehicle to show how donor contributions can make a difference. Finally, this article gives an overview of certain issues of academic priority in research and the growing role of the financial value of intellectual property, and it explores how these issues relate to advancing tinnitus research.

Your decisions create your future.  This is true whether applied to your life or your business.  Decisions are the events where an act of your will (your commitment to a specific alternative, backed up by the application of resources to make it so) changes the future that will come to pass.

Therefore the ultimate (earliest possible) leading indicators of your future state are your decisions, at the point of decision.  This is true in every situation, but particularly useful in an entrepreneurial startup or whenever a new strategic initiative may trigger a significant change in direction or focus.  In such cases, the future isn't already written; it can't be projected very well from a trend line based on past performance.  It all hinges on the quality of the decisions being made that will create a new future reality.

If you are considering an investment in a stable business with an operational track record, your due diligence research can focus on past performance, operational excellence and the potential for incremental improvements and growth extrapolations.  If you are evaluating a startup built around a new-to-the-world technology, product or business model, all you have is their decisions; you have to understand what they are thinking, their vision of a yet-to-be-created future.  You need to make visible and explicit the strategic decision baseline that undergirds their business plan.

Most investment opportunities are somewhere between the ho-hum operational case and the disruptive startup, so due diligence should be mix of traditional methods (analysis of past financials, the management team, etc.) and exposing critical future-creating decisions and assessing the thinking quality (assumptions, rationale) behind these decisions.

Most business plans don't expose the real logic (criteria, performance estimates, alternatives considered but rejected, summarized rationale) behind the top 10-20 future-creating decisions that will drive business success or failure.  It takes some digging (interviews, tough questions) to get at this data.  This is where a proven decision pattern like the one I've embedded in my Decision Driven® Strategy web service pays dividends.  Every business has to make essentially the same set of decisions; each decision is a "fundamental question/issue that demands an answer/solution".   Armed with this pattern, you can quickly reverse engineer the decision baseline that is hidden in the business plan documentation, make visible the critical decisions and expose inconsistencies or gaps in their story.  This isn't a gotcha exercise, but the start of a mentoring relationship that creates value.

Speed matters in such situations, so I offer a strategic due diligence service that reverse engineers the strategic decision baseline and roadmap behind a business plan.  It typically takes 1-2 days to analyze a business plan document, map it to the decision pattern and present the findings (top 30-50 decisions and gaps or whitespace in the plan).  These findings can then be used immediately to guide further data-gathering and drill-down efforts; it enables a highly focused and efficient strategic due diligence effort.  By capturing the decision/roadmap baseline within the Decision Driven® Strategy web application, it enables the on-going ability to refine the business plan and proactively mentor the management team one decision at a time.

If you are involved in due diligence research to guide investments in businesses with a high strategic decision content, give me a holler.  I'd love to prove to you how a strategic due diligence jump-start can improve the quality of your investments and accelerate value-creation through decision-based mentoring.

The ASIS&T conference looks very relevant to my research interests of data sharing and reuse. The special interest group SIG USE focuses on Information Needs Seeking and Use... definitely something I should check out. Consequently, I decided to apply for their PhD Student Conference Travel Award. The application required a statement that addresses "an issue relating to the current year’s conference theme in relation to information behavior research (how people need, seek, manage, give, and use information in different contexts)." This year's ASIS&T conference theme is People Transforming Information - Information Transforming People. My entry statement is below, in case it is of interest.

People Transforming Information - Information Transforming People

Sharing information transforms Research -
Does sharing information transform Researchers?

Research advances when investigators build upon the results of others. This is possible whenever research results are shared at a sufficient level of detail to allow others to understand, replicate, critique, and expand on analyses; leverage is greatest when raw research data can be explored. Unfortunately, although shared raw research data has many benefits for the general research community, as yet there are few demonstrated benefits for the original investigators who bear the costs of making their datasets available.

I wish to evaluate the transformative effect on researchers when they share their data. Do they, as one might guess, receive more citations because their published results have an expanded usefulness? Do they become more aware of other available datasets, and thus more likely to reuse shared data in the future? Do they become more likely to embrace other mechanisms, such as publishing through open access models, for making their research results widely available?

I am engaged in a long-term effort to identify instances of research data sharing and reuse. I plan to address the above questions, and others, by looking at publication patterns, covariates, and data-sharing behavior of various research communities. Through this work, I hope to quantify incentives for researchers to share their data, identify synergies between open access and open data, and highlight the need to evaluate policies and behaviors to realize the full potential of our research activities.

Travel award winners to be announced at the SIG USE symposium in October.

• 21 Ottobre 2008: Tag KDE 4.2 Alpha 1
• 28 Ottobre 2008: Release KDE 4.2 Alpha 1
• 18 Novembre 2008: Tag KDE 4.2 Beta 1
• 25 Novembre 2008: Rilascio di KDE 4.2 Beta 1
• 25 Novembre 2008: Freeze Documentazione/Guide e manuali Freeze
• 9 Dicembre 2008: Tag KDE 4.2 Beta 2
• 16 Dicembre 2008: Rilascio KDE 4.2 Beta 2
• 6 Gennaio 2009: Tag KDE 4.2 RC 1
• 13 Gennaio 2009: Rilascio KDE 4.2 RC 1
• 20 Gennaio 2009: Tag KDE 4.2
• 27 Gennaio 2009: Rilascio KDE 4.2

This decision pattern contains 26 decisions (a few great-granchildren aren't shown above).  Each decision is a "fundamental question/issue that demands an answer/solution".   The decisions provide the superstructure, skeleton, or framework on which the alternatives (parts of the solution) are hung.

Some of these 26 decisions may call for more than one answer (committed alternative) at time.  I may pursue multiple Application Scenarios (aka Use Cases), so the decision model fans out at this point and I have an "instance" of the Value Proposition decision for each application scenario alternative that I pursue.  Because of this fan-out behavior, my rapid Decision Blitz actually created alternatives for 42 decisions.

All this took just 1 hour - and I have a pretty complete concept for a service that I could offer to numerous clients over the next decade.  Decision patterns create very rapid payback solutions!

I'm not done with my Service Design effort, but my next steps are very clear and simple.  I'll review the service concept decisions with my first client, identify 3 or 4 high priority decisions that call for some deeper thought (innovation and/or evaluation) and use the Decision Driven® Strategy web service to capture my evaluation and share the results.  If I want to, I can also switch to the time-view of these decisions/alternatives and Presto - I can think through and time-align my roadmap for rolling out this service to the world.

If you'd like to learn how to exploit decision patterns for rapid idea framing, give me a holler.

John Fitch

I learned last week that there have been approximately 35 million iPhone's and iPod Touch's sold worldwide in, oh, one year. I'm blown away by this because, after 11 years, this is probably bigger than the installed base we had to sell to. And in one year, Apple has matched it.

So I was thinking about this bit of information and reading my RSS feed on the way home from a meeting and found an article on Palm's recent acquisitions and started to wonder how someone can steal Apple's mojo.

And I came up with the answer:

1. Build a beautiful, touchscreen device
2. Make it synchronize with web-based applications
3. Focus on offline use of online applications

Without that three-some, it's just another iPhone clone.

The touchscreen device is a given anymore, whether it has a keyboard or not. That's the cost of entry.

Second, automatic synchronization with web-based applications is important. Think Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Memos, just to name four. One, it raises the requirements for others to enter the mobile market space. Two, it ties users to the system. It doesn't have to be apps, per say, it could just be a database in the cloud that also syncs back to your desktop or laptop. But the truth is all those people that don't use Exchange need the sync capabilities of Exchange, and this will provide it.

The third point, though, is the most important. To use web standards such as html, css and Javascript means automatically getting a wealth of applications and developers and, by default, would allow every application to sync to their online counter-part. Of course this means the device would have to have local versions of various web back-end technologies (things like Java ME, Ruby on Rails and a little MySQL database, if I'm making a wish list) and some way to promote apps, but figuring out how to make online apps run offline is a good challenge that would make the platform infinitely expandable.

Apple has around 1000 applications in its AppStore, will probably push this onto every one of their devices, and is leveraging every Mac OS X developer in the world. The problem of developing for a new platform is daunting, as I have commented before. By leveraging already accepted standards and courting a group that now feels abandoned by Apple, any new device could instantly have a huge developer community.

Other smartphone makers not named Apple will need a unique hook to get back in the game. Only RIM, with instant push email and their BlackBerry Enterprise Server, has such a hook today. Web sync and localized web apps can do that for others.

Here's a roadmap for an example water filter company that highlights their thinking concerning possible futures (alternatives across multiple decisions); the roadmap bars/text colors are controlled by the Preference (aka commitment level, decideness) attribute:

Here's the same roadmap that communicates Implementation Status based on colors:

Now I've focused on a specific alternative "bar" and run a View Links "traceability" analysis.  I've used the results of that analysis to produce a filtered roadmap that shows just the decisions/alternatives linked to/from the selected alternative.  These filtered roadmaps are very useful for communicating "what-ifs", aligning dates and highlighting problem areas that could cause slippage of a key capability or product.

I've built-in the ability to filter the roadmap view based on existing linkages or based on manually-selected decisions; this enables the user to create a wide variety of composite roadmaps to communicate strategic alignment status and challenges.

Roadmaps display the time-availability and evolution of the alternatives for a set of decisions; the roadmap bar represents the "good-for" period in the life of an alternative during which it creates value.  Most roadmaps apply a color scheme to roadmap bars to communicate additional information concerning either the organization's commitment to the alternative or its implementation status or risk.  The most common roadmap color scheme uses green-yellow-red bars to represent a blend of commitment level and implementation.  Green implies an alternative that the organization is fully committed to implement AND has a fully staffed implementation effort so that the deployment of the alternative is either already complete or nearly assured in the time-frame shown.  A yellow bar signifies an alternative with limited commitment to implementation; it is lacking some needed resources so that it might not be available by the date shown on the roadmap (the start of the bar).  A red bar either means that the alternative is not yet resourced at all or that it has hit a serious snag, a roadblock that demands significant attention.

There are really 2 status "attributes" associated with alternatives.  The first is the level of preference, commitment or decideness that you ascribe the the alternative.  The second is its implementation status/risk.  These 2 attributes may track together, but not always.  When you combine 2 relatively independent attributes together into one metric, you lose some information and create unnecessary ambiguity.  To avoid this, I've kept the 2 attributes separate within the Decision Driven® Strategy and Decision Driven® Life web applications. 

Preference (aka commitment level, decideness) with values:

• Historical
• Committed
• Current favorite
• Worth considering
• Considered, but rejected
• Just an idea

Implementation Status with values:

• Complete
• On track
• At risk
• Uncommitted
• Blocked
• Not planned

Preference is most useful before a decision is made to communicate the current state of your thinking.  Implementation status is most useful after the decision is made and you are tracking decision execution.

I've given users the option of displaying the roadmap "colored" by either attribute so they can share with others "Here's what we're thinking" or "Here's how we're doing".

There are many ways to use these color-coded roadmaps to gain or maintain strategic alignment between technologies, capabilities, products and market strategies.  More on this in future posts ...

Se trata de el artículo Twenty-first century man. The role of men -particularly fathers- is changing and European work cultures are having to adapt (El hombre del siglo XXI. El papel de los hombres, sobre todo padres, está cambiando y las culturas de trabajo europeas se está teniendo que adaptar)

Aquí siguen algunas capturas sobre algunos de los sitos que han sido presentandos en el artículo

Work Changes Gender
Fostering Caring Masculinities
Men equal, men different

We started on FastFigures because we saw an opportunity to support a wider array of smartphones than ever before, in particular the iPhone. When we started FastFigures, Apple was steadfastly claiming no third-party applications. The only way was in the browser. Far into the project -- too far to turn back -- and Apple changed their mind. But it gave me the opportunity to look at what we do differently. What does it mean when we can not only run the numbers but we can save them and share them? And that led me to...

2. It got me to thinking back over years of customer feedback. And it got me to go listen to a bunch of our customers and it got me to talk to potential beta users. And it has led me to get excited about the opportunities in front of us again and it has led me to see a way to take calculation and make it far more meaningful for both our customers and our customers' customers.

Where does this go? I don't know exactly. But what do I do now? That's easy and obvious. Talk to more potential customers. I like how it's shaping my thinking so far.

The difficulty for me has been deciding which idea to throw 'the triplets' behind. The triplets are your scarce resources of time, money and energy.

I think I have finally worked out a simple 5-point checklist for doing this, which I want to share with you.

By the way , I'm assuming you are, like me, holding down a full-time job whilst trying to 'bootstrap' your idea.

1. Understand why you want to start a business. There are many reasons to do so, almost all of them valid under given conditions. The task the wannabe entrepreneur has is to be able to clearly state their particular reason. In my case, it is twofold: Firstly, simply to facilitate a lifestyle - pay off the mortgage; fund the school fees; allow me to open a bookshop without having to worry too much about profit maximisation. Secondly, because there seems to be a genuine need for simplified business planning for the non-expert.
2. Understand your current pressures. A simple spreadsheet may help here. List all of your activities by day, from exercise regimes, to bedtime reading, to meal preparation and so on. Add realistic times to each of these. Then label them according to their degree of necessity. Play-time with my son is critical for me. Watching re-runs of House M.D. less so :) Eliminate anything from your activities spreadsheet that is not a 1 or a 2 on a 5 point scale (where 5 is least important). Show the new activities spreadsheet to your spouse and children, if you have them. No business, especially a bootstrapped one, will be successful without the support of family. They will need to buy-in to this new routine.
3. Understand what's left. Add up all the free time you now have on your activities spreadsheet. It's hard to specify an amount here, but I would suggest you need at least five two-hour blocks per week to be viable.
4. Understand what you can do and where you can ask for help. If you're not a designer, don't try and design a website. If you're not a lawyer, don't try to draft Equity Agreements. Look for free templates online. Ask your social circle for help, recommendations or introductions to experts. Trying to do everything yourself is a huge drain on your energy and time. An hour for me trying to design a website from scratch is a wasted an hour. But in an hour, I can find a good-looking, free template and apply it to my code.
5. Understand what you need to deliver. The trap many people fall into is trying to solve every conceivable problem and lock-in every imaginable feature on day one. Your product does not have to be perfect to be a good product. If you can figure out what one or two features your customers would love to have on day one, you can concentrate on those to the exclusion of all others (unless your customers change their minds...). The 80/20 rule can apply here - 80% of your customers' pain is probably solved by 20% of the features in your 'vision'.

With these 5 points, I have gained much greater clarity regarding my ultimate desired outcomes; what I can and cannot do; the changes and sacrifices needed; and what I need to deliver to make all of these things happen.

Thanks to this simple process, I now have a roadmap to follow to bring my ideas to fruition in a reasonably ordered manner, which has got to be less stressful than just diving in feet-first.

As you can see, this is my first post on this blog, so I'd love to know what else you think should be added, removed or changed from this list. Do leave a comment and share.

Before Microsoft/Intel/IBM relationship in the early 80s, operating systems were either free (relatively given that there was not Internet distribution) or were controlled with the hardware. IBM and DEC, for instance, owned everything about the computer. Apple, too.

But thanks to the IBM relationship, Microsoft established a value for the operating system separate from the hardware and was able to build a massive business out of it. A lot of industry veterans argued at the time that this was the natural evolution of the industry, this separation of church (hardware) and state (software). Even Apple and Palm tried to license their OS' for a while.

It seems, though, that the pendulum has swung back the other way. Operating systems are once again either free or controlled by the hardware vendor. Look at the mobile landscape:

• Apple iPhone: proprietary operating system
• RIM BlackBerry: proprietary operating system
• Google Android: open sourced, free operating system
• Symbian: open sourced,free operating system
• Windows Mobile: proprietary, licensed operating system

With Nokia's acquisition of Symbian and its subsequent open sourcing, this makes Windows Mobile the odd-ball. Apple re-pioneered the closed operating system with iPod and its resurgent Macintoshes. Now, I don't hear much about licensing the OS any more.

Does the new world order spell the end of licensed operating systems? Does this hurt Microsoft or make them more powerful as the only licensing partner in town? In an era of micro-computing -- where computers are in everything and we carry tons of them with us -- do only these models (and a hybrid where proprietary systems are build on a Linux core) work?

There's a lot of money riding on the outcome.

I have found particular application to of the Tuned In principles to product management. Product managers succeed when their products succeed. Their products succeed when they solve previously unresolved problems, or existing problems in new ways. The tuned in product manager identifies problems that the market wants to solve and provides context to help the company create the solution. Successful product managers are:

• Tuned in to the market: Tuned in product managers understand their customers and also their potential customers (the untapped market). Many great blog posts exist about understanding existing customers. Knowing your potential customers -- i.e. the market -- can be more tricky. Finding places where potential customers gather (either in-person or on-line) and spending time with them is one way I've discovered to gather important market data. Relevant industry trade shows can be a great option to meet with non-customers. Tuned in product managers discover unresolved problems and find ways to create products that will fill the unmet needs.

• Tuned in to the product team: Tuned in product managers lead the product team with market facts. They know their team members, understand what inspires them and provide relevant product direction. They work to instill confidence in their ability to lead the products and the team in the right direction. They know what motivates the team to go above and beyond their normal abilities. They take the initiative to make important decisions, and then stand behind those decisions. They foster productivity on the team.

Tuned in product managers are the driving force behind the products that become resonators in their markets. They pay attention to details and provide context to enable their teams to succeed. And ultimately, they have fun doing it!

For more information on this topic please see the article Steve Johnson and I co-wrote: The Tuned-In Product Manager. Join us on July 11 as we present a webinar titled Tuned In Product Teams. Pragmatic Marketing has also published an article I wrote: Five Factors of Leadership. Check out the Tuned In landing page for other great events and articles associated with the Tuned In release.

That's really the best word to describe how I'm feeling.

You know how it is, right? I can't be the only one.

It's that feeling of being unfulfilled -- of not knowing where you're going, what you're doing, or who you are. Of course, you have an idea of each of these, but not that passion you need to succeed.

Why is that? You're special (or at least that's what you were led to believe). You're talented. You're supposed to be somebody. You're supposed to do something.

But you aren't. And you're not sure why.

Instead of tackling some big task or doing something productive, I'm wasting my time in busy work. Checking emails. Cleaning up my desk. Swiffering the office.

It's college all over again; like the time I spent making "the perfect playlist" to write that term paper. It's just an excuse to exist for the time being.

Is it procrastination? Or is it something bigger -- like the lack of a roadmap?

I have an idea of where I'm going, but the finish line keeps on moving. And I think it's my fault.