Cool R&D

What are the best / coolest Research and Development Departments you can think of?


History teaches us a thing or two:

Xerox Parc once had one of the best known to man (or pooch). Widely credited with bitmap graphics, the WYSIWUG text editor, Ethernet, Object Oriented Programming and of course the Graphical User Interface. Not bad for a photocopying company. Apple did well to swoop in and take credit for a lot of the above.

In modern examples who do we have though? Who is really pushing the boundaries? Steve Ballmer of Microsoft mentioned in a recent interview @Techcrunch that Microsoft spend $9.5 Billion a year on R&D.

A pretty impressive figure, but when you consider most of that investment is in the 5 core business functions, Microsoft are investing heavily to stand still and then move forward in a very fast moving technology market.

Paypal have announced Innovate 09 a conference dedicated to their new upstream payments and future innovations. Even in a traditionally compliant market, the internet and networking is having an impact and changing the rules. Rules we now have to question.

Then you have the startup big three of social media. Facebook, Twitter and Google (What blog would be complete without name checking the biggest dogs in the yard?). These have to be the prime examples of human based interaction and Interest led innovation. The key with all of them is they have managed to tap into something brilliant about humans. When inspired we will work our socks off, and almost for free.

Not everyone has a killer budget to blow on "Cool R&D" but there are some steps we can take in the right direction. We're witnessing a changing of the guard in the working population. Generation X now holds the key the baby boomers once had, and Generation Y is finally making it's presence felt. We have two digital natives in the working crowd, but we still work in our compliant business speak / mid-90s ivory towers, hidden behind the Baby Boomers.

Business Gametheory is all together quite a useful tool. So is your Google Fu and ability to demonstrate personality from miles away. Business always felt stuffy and full of protocol. There is defintely a place and time for professionalism. It's losing it's traction as a key tool though. The population wants your company to show its human side.

Chris Brogan wrote something wonderful about "How to Level Up" taking the RPG concept of building your character and applying it to your business life. It can be applied to all life. It can be applied to the gym too! The idea of making achievement measureable and satisfying is something that seems to mistify our education system, yet we naturally seek it out.

Just like we naturally seek out our interests. Cool R&D requires understanding the massive benefits of the long term view, but crucially understanding ourselves better.

It's time

It's time, after years of speculation about maybe doing something amazing with my life, the light at the end of the tunnel seems a little closer.



The question: If you could design your own life, what would it look like? Struck me as quite an easy one to answer at the high level. It's only when you have to start detailing it, suddenly it seems a little harder. Maybe this makes me a geek, but I always wanted to travel, be on the leading edge of technology and network my way to the top.

The problem was I could never square that with a day job that was basically project management or some variant thereof, for quite a few years. I was in effect a reasonably successful wheel turner.

Something in the raw evangelism and hope of "Think and Grow Rich" first jumped out at me in 2005. What followed were my first few steps into trying to make something happen, and the ill-fated ourbook/webook.com idea. As any of you who have tried and failed will know, at the exact second you have an idea, at least 10 others do. The aim and focus is to just get something out there. I didn't, and regretted it like crazy when something remarkably similar popped online in 2008.

I met this crazy talented networker in 2006, shortly after having read "The Game" by Neil Strauss and again altering my perception of life. Having seen ourbook.com go nowhere for a year due to immense inexperience and having not "just executed", I wasn't about to allow the same to happen again. Within 4 months we had a website online, and a community building. What's more my career at work was moving somewhere. I weilded real power and respect, and I liked the taste.

A year later we weren't much further down the line, my health took a turn for the worse and my career in BT was little to write home about. Despite this, my ability to network and really engage people was beginning to blossom. It was a transition period from talented raw lump of clay, into something resembling self sufficient and useful. Like any transition it was painful and wrought with near misses, false starts and soul searching.

While 2008 was the toughest year yet, it was also probably the most important in shaping the build up. I tried in vain with a few more "big ideas", but the passion just wasn't there. Convinced that if my stock was ever going to rise, it would be through one on one networking. The result was quite a bit of perception altering travel. A porn convention, spring break and leaving a very safe comfortable job with regular income...

I loved the freedom of not working 9 to 5. Despite starring down the barrel of moving back in with the parents, it felt right. At these times instinct guides far better than logic. Logic says take the money, reduce costs and get rich slowly. Who ever met a happy vulcan though?

It's also no secret that whilst for the first time, I find myself in a career position where I could very slowly work my way through the ranks, the traditional way. Logic again says get rich slowly...

But then there is this other thing. If I could design my own life what would it look like?

Big question indeed.

Testing Disqus

So I may have finally found the missing link between social networks and my blog. It's called Disqus and it's an interesting middle man! One identity, everywhere, always.

3 Steps to Innovation

Of the many companies out there who have reformed their horrible customer service records in the past few years, Dell have really caught a wave. They like Apple figured out they don't own their customer. The customer owns the interaction, and should be allowed to shape the products.



So how can we innovate within our sector, and company? Can we take lessons from Silicon Valley without appearing utopian and naive?

Every company outside of the ancient whales (AT&T etc) will have good management *somewhere*. In my particular case our Sales department wins more work than we can handle. By solving a problem in their world you grab attention, and maybe get yourself a very useful contact on the way.

Step 1: The Sounding Board. Until you find your key contact, who's going to tell you if your ideas suck? This is where twitter and a good network comes in handy. Good ideas will prompt responses.

Step 2: The Nugget. Senior Management has a short attention span, and a PA sifting through emails. Ideally you want a killer nugget to throw in person, but if like me genius tends to strike at 3am, a punchy little email will do it. Something about the competition innovating, and how you could steal their clothes? A way to cut out the workload for smaller clients? The Nugget grabs attention and may lead to the meeting

Step 3: The Meeting: Take a book to be reading before the meeting, "What would Google do" is a good start. If you strike it lucky your meeting will be that mania filled "this is where the company should be" affairs. If so you have found yourself an ally with genuine stroke in the company.

Now you need funding and a business case for innovation. This is the fun part. Being Generation Z and very visually motivated that shouldn't be a problem for you though ;)

Blog Number two today

It would appear I'm on a roll, and that the answers to all our questions come from doing nothing all day. Or at least being a little anti social and reading, then writing all day.

We are as a species fundamentally pleasure seeking creatures. The dopamine reward response is so incredibly powerful, and gives you a binary choice. Pleasure now, or disappointment in not having pleasure now. There is no tomorrow as far as your reward circuits are concerned.



Even knowing you saved money, is something you feel immediately. When the moment passes you no longer have a connection to how you felt about the action a moment ago. This means we humans are capable of tricking ourselves, and so on a regular basis because it feels like the right choice.

The hard choice is usually the right one, but not always. Without any indulgence we either become boring or bhuddist, a byword for boring. Although maybe bhuddists do have it figured out. By not attaching to outcome, they enjoy simply being.

How can I apply this in daily life?

Enjoy making the harder decision, and see it as character building. I've done this before, and still consistently fall back into bad habits. Are there any other tools besides willpower to beat temptation? Preferably that don't involve making lists or going out of your way too much. I need dopamine for avoiding temptation. Can I associate being happy with making the long term choice?

I have not signed up for an egg 0% card to transfer some debt balance, because I forgot my password and don't use the email address I signed up with. So it probably won't happen. It means ringing up, which is LONG. That "LONG" is like a fear of loss, or loss aversion, but what am I losing, comfort? Failure?

Untitled.

It always starts with a notepad, an idea and a spark.

Then the notepad gets unwieldy and the plain text is not good enough at formatting for my visually dominant brain. I can't sing, my dancing is almost acceptable and my writing is nothing short of not bad.

There must be a hundred or so texts around of me ranting on my troubles with ideas. So forgive me if this comes off a little hopeless. Deep down the problem is that it feels like I should be better at this.

Do thoughts get lost in translation between the spark and the fully formed text? (Oh look I posed myself a question to answer in another paragraph, original technique there).

Crap, I write like the woman from Sex and the City.

Stephen Fry described his writing process as a traumatic marathon of early mornings, and mid 80s hardware purchases. I worry if mine is nowhere near as epic. Throw on some big sounding emo (yes emo) and leave whatever words feel right on the screen. All the sites teaching you to write say revise, replace and simplify. For some reason my stubbornness insists that these short bursts of creativity are the answer. In a couple of hours time it will be gone, and seem futile. Maybe if I could tie all these bursts together with some editing...

That said I've wanted outsource tasks that baffle and frustrate me for a long time. One of you out there has to be a brilliant editor missing a spark. Be the yin to my yang.

But you know what really pisses me off? If someone else asked these questions I'd have an awesome answer like. "Well it takes practice and discipline to get good at something, force yourself to do it until it works". Yet I don't want to feel like a part of history, the grass is greener on the other side syndrome.

The quarter life crisis was supposed to end with the illness and introspection. The arrogance of it all doesn't escape me, that the number one topic I blog about is me. But then it's the key battle too. Being a success in the eyes of most just kinda happened. The apartment, car, and career.

I am not my apartment.

I am not my car.

I am not my job.

Who am I? Right now the only answer comes back, is a potentially talented nobody with good ideas but nothing to show for it but half finished, almost brilliance.

Maybe it's a pessimistic outlook, but it feels right. I need to learn this lesson. It takes forcing yourself and working to get results. Here I am holding on to the hope, that usually when you're about to give up something good happens. Although, I've held on to that one a few times for it not come through.

Fundamentally I bought into the idea that I could achieve greatness. Head above the parapit, Mark Zuckerberg world alerting brilliance, or just reverence in my field. The guy who hired me at work told me "You are the most exciting talent I've seen in a long time". Not good enough. Why should I believe middle management? Give me something to believe in myself, something that is real.

Something I can point to, in a moment of reflection and say "I did that", without having to explain what it is. Tim Ferris lives the 4 hour work week. A fantastic utopia of life balance. I could actually spend more time working, if I found something I loved enough and could STICK at it. Instead of once a week, or every two weeks.