Conventional wisdom argues that every company, whether that be a start-up or a mature business, should have a Business Plan, unless, of course, like Lewis Carroll’s character, you don’t much care where you want the business to get to.

An alternative view is emerging, nicely summed up in this article on Inc.com, which claims that the ‘secret to a great business plan is not to write one.’  The author, Geoffrey James, gives 3 reasons for not writing a business plan:

1. Trying to forecast 3 years into the future, let alone 5 years, for a start-up, and even for mature businesses, is a waste of time.  Everything is changing so quickly that assumptions made today will be redundant in 12 months time.

2. Nobody has time to read a formal document.

3. Potential investors would view the time spent on writing a Business Plan as having a wrong sense of priority.

Instead, the author highlights what could be used as a replacement for a Business Plan by referencing some eminent experts in the field.

Guy Kawasaki would prefer to see a 10 slide, 20 minute presentation built around a prototype or product demonstration.

Henry Wong (founder of CNET, among others) recommends a similarly minimalist approach that hits five key points: 1) team, 2) market, 3) technology, 4) customers, and 5) special connections (people you know who can help).

Author and entrepreneur Chris Lipp says your pitch must communicate only four simple points: 1) problem, 2) solution, 3) market, and 4) business.

Stanford professor Eesley says that a successful pitch today can even be a “one pager” and recommends that the time is better spent doing something useful: such as making your idea work in the real world.

Personally, I believe every company should have a Business Plan, but critically, one that is ‘fit for purpose’.  It needs to a living, breathing document that communicates the strategy to all stakeholders, especially employees and shareholders, and it must be used to measure the performance against the targets set.  How else can you assess performance if you’ve no plan?!

Finally, there is one other approach that could be considered, also taken from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Who needs The Lean Startup with that kind of advice?!

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It should be no surprise therefore that Equity Crowdfunding has exploded in popularity over the last 5 years.  What started in the US with a whimper in 2011 has now seen triple digit growth rates in the last 3 years.  A recent change in US legislation this month whereby anyone can now invest in private companies, as opposed to having been an accredited investor with minimum net assets of $1m means we will now see another upsurge in activity in this area.

The UK has woken up to this as a mechanism for startups to raise funds quicker and cheaper over the last 3 years and activity in the industry in 2015 is expected to be 50% up on 2016.

One clear benefit of a company using equity crowdfundraising as a vehicle to raise new monies is the way in which a company can sell part of the company to the customers.  For a B2C business, I can’t think of a better way to engender loyalty than having your customers as shareholders in the business.  What better brand advocates could you have?  I’m surprised we haven’t seen some more established companies do this to either raise funds for new products/territories or simply to take some cash off the table.  Personally, I never sold a single share in any previous companies I established and that is a regret.

But equity crowdfunding democratises fundraising in a number of ways that are not immediately obvious.  Up to now, funds would have traditionally been allocated to a business located in major city, in a business run by a man, in a hot sector, such as tech.  As a male, living in a capital city and with a reasonable understanding of tech it is very easy to take this for granted.  Online crowdfunding changes the dynamic entirely because everything is done online.

Today, a fundraising campaign launched by a female entrepreneur, living in a rural environment with a business idea in any sector with strong prospects has as good a chance (in theory anyway) of raising funds for the new venture on a crowdfunding platform as her male counterpart described above.  I sincerely hope that when equity crowdfunding takes off in Ireland and we look back at the figures after 5 years that the playing field will have been truly levelled and democracy will prevail across genders, sectors and geographies.  Don’t hold your breath!

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However, there is good news for anyone trying to decide whether they should take the plunge or not.  According to Jessica Stillman in this article on Inc.com, new research shows that people handle failure and embarrassment far better than they think they would.

Imagined failure is way worse than the real-life kind.

To come to this conclusion, a team of Dutch researchers told study subjects they were going to complete a series of tests in pairs, informing them that if they scored above a certain level, each pair would earn rewards. Half of the participants then predicted how bad they’d feel if they failed. The other half actually took the tests and, whatever their actual performance, were told that they were personally responsible for their team’s failure to earn the reward. How bad did they really feel, the researchers then asked them.

How good were the participants at guessing how bad failure would make them feel? In short, pretty terrible. Imagined failure apparently feels way worse than real-life failure.

“Forecasters overestimated how much guilt and shame they thought they would experience (as compared with the actual emotions reported by the experiencers)–this is a classic example of the intensity bias,” according to the British Psychological Society (BPS). What’s the intensity bias? “A recurring finding in psychology is that people tend to overestimate the strength of their future emotions,” explains BPS.

Failure might hurt a lot less than you think it will, but it still hurts!

Conor Foley

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What Ford did to the motor industry in the early 20th century, Apple has done to the communications, entertainment and tech industries on a truly global scale.  So, when an industry veteran of 12 years at Apple reveals the lessons he learned about innovation during his time there, it pays to sit up and listen.

You can read the full article by clicking here, but I summarise the 3 key points made by Kelli Richards as follows:

1. Consensus is not your friend.

The key takeaway here is that nothing slows down work like trying to get support from everyone.  Companies need to give their Team Leaders a high degree of independence in order for innovation to thrive.  Once budget and authority have been given, Team Leaders need to take advantage of both.  Talented artists don’t ask for permission – they just create.

2. Don’t run back and forth seeking Interim feedback.

You don’t need approval to experiment and put innovative ideas into action.  Companies that require interim approval and constant progress reports hamper innovation.  Real breakthroughs can’t happen if you’re constantly stopping to present your work midway through, second-guessing yourself all the time.  That doesn’t mean a completely hands-off approach, of course, but it does require a culture where innovators are trusted to see their own work through.

3. Be Wary of Received Wisdom

If your team is unwilling to question received wisdom, it’s your job to push them to do it.  Kelli says: “Oddly enough, convincing the powers that be at Apple that music and entertainment were key markets was actually a real challenge for me. Then Steve Jobs returned to the company and launched the iPod and iTunes, both of which leveraged the foundation, legacy, and relationships we’d created, often hand over fist, in previous years.”

Richards ends the article by highlighting some of the ways in which you can convince reluctant corporate leaders about the merits of innovation.  This is best captured in this quote: “It’s better for an internal department to innovate than for an external competitor to gain an advantage.”

According to Richards, a book called The Innovator’s Extinction by Dave Ulmer delves further into these issues, so it’s probably worth checking out if you want to get a greater insight into this whole area of innovation.

Conor Foley

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• A: Yes
• B: No
• C: Can’t be Determined

Decide on an answer before you continue reading.

According to this article in The Guardian, almost 80% of people answered this question incorrectly.  I must confess that I would be in that 80% category, but when I read the answer and the associated explanation I did find it a very useful exercise in creative or innovative thinking.

The correct answer is A – it can actually be determined if a married person is looking at an unmarried person.

We know that Jack and George are married but we don’t know whether Anne is married or not.  But it doesn’t matter whether we know whether she is married or not.  We do know, however, that she must be either married or not – she must be one of those two options.

So, if she IS married, and we know she is looking at George, then a married person is looking at an unmarried person.

Or, if she is NOT married, and we know John is looking at her, then a married person is looking at an unmarried person.

It can only be one of these two scenarios, and in both cases, a married person is looking at an unmarried person.

It’s very simple when you hear the answer!!

Conor Foley

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“I’m far too honest”, she replied.

“Honesty is not a weakness”, a different interviewer interjected.

“I wasn’t speaking to you, was I?” she replied.  (Honestly!)

In terms of old hat interview questions, “What is your biggest weakness?” can only be matched with “Sell me that pen.”

The sensible thing to do if you’re asked that question is just to get up and walk out (after stabbing the interviewer in the eye with the pen), but if you really want that job, the way to answer that question is by not answering it.

Or, to be more accurate, by answering it with a question or series of questions.

Because what an interviewer is really trying to find out, or at least should be trying to find out, is …… if you ‘do discovery’.  Do you try to find out the customer’s needs before you try to sell them something?

So, instead of fumbling with the pen and mumbling a few inanities about the pen, throw it back on the Interviewer – “OK, so what do you need the pen for?  Every day use or to create an impression at meetings?  What sort of a budget do you have to spend on a pen?” etc.

In a worst case scenario if the interviewer says “I’m not answering any questions about it” you have bought yourself a few precious seconds to think of some sales lines and you can always say “I would always try to qualify someone before selling them anything.”  You may not get a compliment for it but your approach will impress.

I did hear of one guy who when handed a Mont Blanc pen at an interview and was asked to sell it to the interviewer, broke it in half and said “You need a new Mont Blanc pen.”  I’d have believed that story more if he had stabbed the interviewer in the eye with it.

Conor Foley

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In this Forbes article, Innovation is defined as “a ‘big new’ for your business or a ‘big difference’ in how you operate your business”.  Innovation exists along a continuum which extends from “material improvements to existing products or processes all the way to the rare ‘disruptive innovation’.”

How does it occur – through “ideation, exploration and experimentation.  Innovation occurs when we “create something with customers or when we create new value by combining seemingly unrelated things or ideas in new ways, transferring something from one environment to another, or finding new insights in patterns or aberrations.”

Innovation does not come naturally.  We are “blind to challenging ideas”.  We don’t want to see them. Thinking differently is also “hard emotionally”.  That is because we are programmed to use “the 3Ds – deny, defend and deflect”.  Fear is one of the biggest barriers to innovation, particularly fear of failure.  This fear is developed and rewarded in the work place and in education.  We are programmed to think that failure is not smart, but “being smart is knowing what you don’t know, prioritising what you need to know and finding best evidence-based answers”.

Progressive organisations “simultaneously tolerate mistakes” while insisting “on operational excellence”.  Failures are viewed in such organisations as “learning opportunities”.  Failure helps to develop humility, which is necessary for empathy – “a critical skill in user-centric innovation”

Within an organisation, innovation requires “idea meritocracy” where the “best evidence-based ideas win”.  It also requires a new culture in which there is “humility, empathy and a devaluation of hierarchical rank”.

In summary, innovation is difficult because it can only thrive in an innovation conducive environment.  The first difficulty is to devise an environmental model suitable for the organisation, The second is introducing the model.

Conor Foley

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Before the article downloaded I asked myself what I thought it could be.  Cynically, it brought back memories of a joke that used to do the rounds when I was in the derivatives markets:

Q: How do you make a small fortune trading Futures?

A: You start with a large fortune.

So, assuming the answer wasn’t going to be as churlish as having a rich daddy I asked myself what answer I’d give if asked the question.  Personally, the characteristic I always observed in successful people was their ability to ‘get things done’.  That might sound pretty intuitive but when contrasted against people who always found an excuse for not doing something, usually in the form of ‘We need to do a lot more research before we do this’, I’d always pick the guy who does it over the guy who spends too much time thinking about it.  Don’t take my word for it – read the first 3 chapters of The Lean Startup.

But no, the answer was not ‘Just Do It’, although it’s not a million miles away from that either.  According to Justin Bariso, Founder, Insight, the key to becoming successful at anything is ‘creating habits’.  (Good habits, presumably!)

And the reason why habits are vital for success is because habits turn into routine.  And routine increases efficiency and makes it easier to keep up with those difficult or undesirable tasks.  Makes sense, although the article probably should have gone on to explain how someone creates habits.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Bariso ends with a note of caution: It takes significantly longer to break free of a habit than it does to build a new one.  I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

You can read the full Inc.com article here.

Conor Foley

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I never really paid much attention to those classical definitions of intelligence because I considered both of them flawed as ways in which to measure intelligence.  To me anyway, a person scoring highly in an IQ test is only demonstrating and ability to do an IQ test – how often do you have to count the number of triangles in a mass of lines in real life?!  Regarding the university exams, I viewed them as little more than memory tests and I don’t have a brilliant memory.

As an aside, but interestingly, I am studying for a Masters in Digital Marketing in the Smurfit Business School at the moment and because of the practical nature of the material we don’t have to sit a single exam.  My grades to date have been the highest I have ever recorded as a result.

So, what other types of intelligence could there be?  A Harvard developmental psychologist, Howard Gardner, believes intelligence comes in an incredible eight different varieties.  In addition to the two kinds of intelligence captured by IQ tests, namely language and logical, he lists another six types of intelligence that these tests fail to measure at all, as follows:

1. Musical Intelligence – People who are good with tones, rhythms and timbres have a form of intelligence that is comparable to people who are good with words.

2. Spatial Intelligence – This is a type of ‘big picture’ intelligence that airline pilots or chess masters have.

3. Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence – This type of intelligence centres around the use of the body and comes in two forms.  The first refers to the use of the whole body to solve a problem or perform well at something.  Think athletes or dancers here.  The second refers to the use of your hands or other parts of your body to solve problems or make things.  Think of a craftsperson here.

4. Interpersonal Intelligence – This refers to how you understand other people, how you motivate them, how you lead them, how you work with them, according to Gardner.

5. Intrapersonal Intelligence – This refers to a person’s self-knowledge and their ability to have a good understanding of their own goals and motivations, in both a professional and a personal context.

6. Naturalist Intelligence – This refers to “the capacity to make important, relevant discriminations in the world of nature between one plant and another, or between one animal and another.  It’s the intelligence of the naturalist, the intelligence of Charles Darwin”, according to Gardner.  He goes on to say that “everything we do in the commercial world uses our naturalist intelligence, from deciding which jacket to buy over another one, or determining the difference between a tasty small animal and a poisonous one.”

Modesty prevents me from saying how well I think I score on each of these.  Could someone pass me that guitar?

Conor Foley

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Creative Researchers carried out a practical experiment in the US in the 1960’s in which they put a group of highly creative people, including author Truman Capote, in a house for a period of time and observed their behaviour.

The results of the research highlighted one particular trait of creative geniuses and it isn’t your typical ‘high IQ’ result.

“The common traits that people across all creative fields seemed to have in common were an openness to one’s inner life; a preference for complexity and ambiguity; an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray; the ability to extract order from chaos; independence; unconventionality; and a willingness to take risks,” write Gregoire and Kaufman, authors of a new book entitled ‘Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind’.

Put simply, what differentiates the Creative Geniuses from the rest of us is openness to complexity.  Creative-minded people openly and boldly confront themselves and the world around them, and they appear to find an unusual synthesis between healthy and ‘pathological’ behaviours.

As Jessica Stillman highlights in this Inc.com article on the subject:  Nothing is stopping you from nudging yourself in the direction of greater openness if you’re looking to boost your creativity. Why not try following the simple but powerful advice of WayUp CEO Liz Wessel and just “say yes” more to get started? All you need to do is, whenever someone proposes as activity or idea, simply default to saying yes unless you can think of a damn good reason not to.

Drink anyone?

Conor Foley

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