Disqus - Latest Comments for bhc3

Re: How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Google: MORE HUMANITIES PLEASE!

Hutch Carpenter — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 12:00:22 -0000

Is there a possibility that a minimum competency in STEM is required, then differentiation becomes based on these other qualities? I'd guess that Google seeks STEM excellence in its hiring decisions. So employees generally have a minimum level of competency.

I pose this as an alternative to the idea that more theater and English majors should be hired, regardless of whether they have solid STEM capabilities.

Re: Spinning Lincoln

Hutch Carpenter — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 11:48:21 -0000

Bravo!

Re: IDC MarketScapes Name IBM a Worldwide and European Leader for Enterprise Social Networks

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:38:09 -0000

Look forward to catching up at ConnectED Luis. - Hutch

Re: The SF K Files: Hello From Confused (but hopeful) Parents From Pac Heights!

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:37:37 -0000

Small item. Technically, Stuart Hall is not a parochial school. I guess you could say it's independent Catholic. It's not affiliated with a Parish.

Re: Silicon Valley bigwigs rally behind Alchemist, an incubator for enterprise startups (exclusive)

Hutch Carpenter — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:14:26 -0000

SendTask link is bad (includes VentureBeat URL in the link)

Re: Why Nate Silver Won, And Why It Matters - by Dan Lyons

Hutch Carpenter — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:26:43 -0000

Scarborough and others are still valuable. They're on shaky ground challenging the models, which appear to have left their soothsaying behind. But issues, strategies, gaffes...those are still part of the campaigns. I want both: discussion of issues that affect us humans, and models that accurately portray the state of the race.

Re: How Jobs-To-Be-Done Helped Launch The Chevy Volt - Effective CRM

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 09:31:45 -0000

Wim - the price is about the same for the hybrid? That's the thing that's held me back. The price of a hybrid here is so much more than you get in return on saved fuel costs. When pricing comes down, it will make a lot more sense financially. Expect that to happen over time. Gas engines have had decades and huge volumes to work the prices down on their technology.

Re: Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a killer value proposition | VentureBeat

Hutch Carpenter — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:54:39 -0000

Michael -

I love the framework here. These are the tough questions, and they are generally predictors of the potential for a startup.

But then...I think of counter examples where I'm not sure one could have answered 'yes' for a majority of the U's. Yammer. Badgeville. Instagram. Path. Pinterest.

Perhaps I'm taking too narrow a view of answering those 'U' questions.

Re: The Hidden Power of Mundane Ideas

Hutch Carpenter — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:00:39 -0000

This makes a lot of sense, as customers are generally grounded in the product they know. Along the same lines, I looked a number of MyStarbucksIdea idea related to longer hours. Here are 6 actual ideas from that site:

> I need a 24 hour Starbucks
> Have late night locations near hospitals
> Later Weekend Hours
> More comfortable seating and extended hours
> New/additional 24hr locations
> Open late

To your point about patterns, I stated a hypothesis based on the ideas:

"People want the solo intellectual pursuits of reading a book, creative writing, researching or getting projects done on a computer. They could do this at home with their own coffee brew or tea. But there’s somethingsocial about being around others, even if you’re not engaging with them. You’re connected to the world, as you view it through the periphery of your mind’s focus.

People want to pursue their individual interests, but do it in a way that let’s them feel connected to larger society, be around kindred types and keep tabs on what is happening."

This goes to the larger point that customers know their needs well, even if they are challenged to suggest groundbreaking ideas. I think that's the future of customer engagement in innovation - elicitation of needs vs. generation of groundbreaking ideas.

Re: Be Careful What You Wish For...

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:33:24 -0000

I want to take a different perspective here. Yes, both Steve Jobs and Henry Ford said those things other commenters noted (well, Ford's quote may be apocryphal). Those funny, insightful things about customers and their gosh-darn inability to know what they want.

Except...our economy is built on people purchasing things that satisfy something they want. Huh...what a conundrum, you know?

Bryce, in this case, you do have a job-to-be-done. It's to know the calories count of the food you're eating. Hold aside any solutions to fulfilling that job. It's enough to know the job exists.

Next, how do you define whether you're successfully getting that job fulfilled? Pretty easy answer, when you can estimate the calories within a reasonable range of the true number (say +/- 10%).

Great, we have a job-to-be-done for you, and a metric for knowing whether you've fulfilled it.

Here's the critical, missing part of the analysis: how satisfied are you with the fulfillment of the job? Are you way off on your goal of the +/- 10% range for calories count? Or are you pretty tight on that?

Because that satisfaction level is a critical determinant of whether the Meal Snap app would be valuable to you. Turns out, your existing satisfaction with the job-to-be-done defined your adoption of the app. But others, like Jake Kaldenbaugh (another commenter here) are not satisfied, and are more likely to use the app. Although, I can see that eventually he will get the hang of the calorie count, thanks to Meal Snap. And then he too will be able to estimate accurately with a glance.

My sense is that Meal Snap needs to look at this functionality as a start, then build out to satisfy other jobs-to-be-done. For instance, my calorie intake over some period I've defined. Linking it to calorie burning activities as well (as commenter Daniel Horowitz notes). Connecting it to something I really care about, my weight, by graphing calories to daily weight.

Bryce - you may be satisfied with your ability to estimate calories on a plate. But i'll bet there are some jobs-to-be-done that you're not satisfied with. And you don't need Steve Jobs telling you what those are.

Hutch
@bhc3

Re: What Customers Want (Except When They Don't) | Blog | design mind

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:42:33 -0000

Matias -
That's a really great point about the difference between the core job-to-be-done and the usage of the app. As Bryce writes, he *still* wants to know the calorie count of food at restaurants. The job is still quite alive and valid for him.What was missed was the level of satisfaction he has in fulfilling that job. Turns out, he's pretty satisfied with his internal estimation of calories. Conceptually, if an app maker knew that (i) the job-to-be-done was valid; and (ii) that satisfaction with current outcomes was high; they'd have tackled an adjacent JTBD. Such as...

"When I eat my meals each day, I want to keep a running total of my calories intake. I define success as knowing the number of calories I've taken in over some period defined by me."

And Adam - thanks for taking on this topic.

Hutch

Re: I’m joining SAP AG.

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:53:23 -0000

Oh yeah! Congrats Sameer.

Re: Customer Needs = Outcomes + Features

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:42:39 -0000

Your stylus example is clarifying, and a good one re: jobs-to-be-done. It's not enough to think of the tactical job ("I want to enter and edit data"). Context is critical. "When I travel by train standing up, I want to be able to enter and edit data."

Without the right context, it's hard to fulfill the job.

Re: Don't love your idea. Hate it. — Vignesh Rajagopalan

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:01:08 -0000

Oh OK. I was reading it as an idea, which should solve a core problem. If you can't validate that the market actually has a problem, well...I guess there's no way your idea will fly either.

Example of idea vs. problem (in my own head at least).

Problem: People need inexpensive places to stay when they travel.

Idea 1: Auction off unused hotel space in the area.
Idea 2: Build a low cost, DIY chain of hotels.
Idea 3: Rent-a-tent in urban parks.
Idea 4: Allow private homeowners to rent their space for short terms to strangers.

Fall in love with the problem. Be ready to shift on the idea.

Re: Don't love your idea. Hate it. — Vignesh Rajagopalan

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:46:02 -0000

Along these lines, Caterina Fake had a smart way of putting it:

"You shouldn’t get attached to a feature set. You should get attached to a problem you’re solving."

http://allthingsd.com/20120...

Re: Google+ Has a Perception Problem

Hutch Carpenter — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:06:22 -0000

Jeremiah - remember when you got temporarily more active on FriendFeed? I seem to recall tweeting you that one of your tweets was getting a lot of discussion there.

FriendFeed was uber-cool for a while. Then, engagement slowly diminished. I recall comments about Twitter and Facebook being the place where people either had stayed, or were returning to.

It's as if FB and Twitter have essentially created a huge barrier to entry for others via network effects. If you're going to tear people away from those, you need something that's "9x" better (http://andrewmcafee.org/200.... Or perhaps 9x different.

Twitter is fundamentally different from Facebook (one-way follow vs. two-way connect; forced brevity; publicly searchable). That's allowed it to grow rapidly even as Facebook grows.

As a basic posting and commenting platform, Google+ isn't 9x better. I've atttached a graphic that outlines the overlaps.

It needs to be based on something different. Otherwise, why switch?

Hutch

Re: BIG Brands Collaborating to Accelerate Performance. [#e2conf Preview]

Hutch Carpenter — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 11:32:51 -0000

Would love to hear more about the SuperValu story. Sounds really cool.

Re: Why I Paid $774.00 for Windows Live Writer

Hutch Carpenter — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:46:53 -0000

Got me curious here Kent. I use wordpress, never heard of Live Writer. Does it work offline? Going to download it now (on my non-Apple PC).

Re: louisgray.com: Google+ 1 More: I'm Joining Google Monday

Hutch Carpenter — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:15:06 -0000

Awesome Louis, congrats!

Re: How Iteration-itis Kills Good Ideas

Hutch Carpenter — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:51:26 -0000

I love the idea of experimentation, because nothing brings an idea to life like seeing it in practice. Question for enterprise types: do you see the ability for employees to self-organize, pool their own resources and experiment as culturally viable? Essentially, is it feasible to offer a blank Google 20% time, or 3M 15% time equivalent? I ask that in the sense of the busy-ness that permeates life these days. Will organizations give a free hand to people throughout the organization to conduct their own experiments?

I also suspect there may be ideas that are too big for localized experimentation. Probably will need something approved beforehand to get the cross-org and external resources needed to trial such ideas.

Scott, you may touch on these issues in your above mentioned future blog post about experimentation.

Re: http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/eeschumpert/~kIbaM

Hutch Carpenter — Tue, 24 May 2011 18:37:16 -0000

Awesome

Re: http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/insitevc/~cRYWJ

Hutch Carpenter — Fri, 20 May 2011 17:42:27 -0000

* they're

Re: There’s a Formula for Making Ideas Happen

Hutch Carpenter — Thu, 12 May 2011 09:24:03 -0000

Found your article via Google, and admit to some skepticism about any type of "innovation formula". But the title did get my attention! After seeing how you articulate the formula, I agree here.

Ideas of course are the raw ingredients. Even if the original idea is not taken up, it often spurs others. Like a game of marbles, one idea can put others in motion.

Organization is critical. I say that in the sense of the whole organization is often needed for innovations. At least the bigger ones. I like the way Don Norman (for VP of Apple) described this in "Why Great Ideas Can Fail" (http://www.core77.com/blog/...

"A product, however, requires the support of the entire company: design
and development, engineering and marketing, sales and service, supply
chain and distribution chain. Products enter into a complex eco-system,
both within and outside of the company. Successful products have to
navigate a complex path. The idea and initial design is only one piece
of the story."

I really like the way you put it under the Communal part of the formula: "the sense of accountability that comes when you broadcast your intentions to the world". That is a great observation. By broadcasting, you create more of an advocate. And ideas benefit from advocacy to move ideas forward.

Leadership - without a doubt, absolutely critical. If ideation is an sideline exercise without resources and commitment, innovation withers.

You ask about tools organizations use to get ideas into the marketplace. I'm the VP of Product at Spigit, an enterprise innovation management software company. I don't know that you want a vendor response. But we do have over 100 large enterprise customers, so I can tell that people are deploying tools for innovation management out there.

Again, thanks for the insight re: an "innovation formula".

Hutch Carpenter

VP of Product

Spigit

http://spigit.com

Re: There’s a Formula for Making Ideas Happen

Hutch Carpenter — Thu, 12 May 2011 09:07:53 -0000

Found your article via Google, and admit to some skepticism about any type of innovation formula.

Re: The Four Personas of the Next-Generation CIO

Hutch Carpenter — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:09:51 -0000

Like it Ray. One point I'd hedge on: #4 - Chief Innovation Officer. Which you do as well: "Only a few with a business bent will grow into the Chief Innovation Officer role"

That's an area I get to see a lot of with big enterprises. Certainly the technology component of innovation is important. But innovation is a much larger spectrum than that. Business models, products, operational improvements, open innovation with customers and partners. Nestling the innovation role in a function with historically technical bent probably shades the innovation view accordingly.

Given the importance of innovation in terms of organic growth, the position of head of innovation (if such a thing could exist), more generally needs to come out of a business-centric area. Not in every case (one Spigit customer's innovation effort comes from the CTO's office).

That being said, the CIO ought to be in sync with whomever leads the innovation charge. Organizations need to be ready for new advances, particularly on the infrastructure and integration fronts.