Bored?

One of the things that continually strikes me is how a lot of large companies under-use their people. Often, they don't appear to be under worked as they spend plenty of time in the office, but for many hours of the day they are bored. You're awaiting approval from the boss who is waiting for IT to sign off, IT is too busy handling something else at the moment, so you need to wait... and so on.

It happens quite often in large organizations where the getting -things-done-process is complex. The more steps involved the more potential bottlenecks and the more time you spend waiting. This downtime is costly for the company (who is paying for idle minds) and it's costly to the individual who feels frustrated by a lack of accomplishment.

Systemically, one solution could be to simply increase the company's reliance on outsourced labor. Many operational consulting shops provide those services - and beyond additional 'strategy' often are in effect contract labor for the client organization who pays just for the hours they need. This works for some companies, but there are positions that are tougher to outsource in the traditional sense for reasons of institutional memory, incentives, etc.

I'd like to propose another approach that could help keep the employees tied closer to the company. That is for large companies to outsource their own employees' down time. In effect sourcing limited jobs that can be accomplished remotely and then putting their down-timed employees to work for these other companies. I am not sure whether the solution is first driven by the individual or the company (my guess it's going to have to be the former).

This could be something along the lines of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, for example. There's a lot of possibility to make this kind of system much more robust and tailored for this kind of 'consulting' type of work. By placing the emphasis on the genius of their engineers, for example, a company could also continue to build it's image as an industry thought leader all while taking greater advantage of labor force and keeping them much more engaged.

This is still very much of a brainstorm, but I think there's is a kernel of an idea here...

Thinking in Numbers

I've started following this little start-up called Wolfram Alpha a while back, let it fall off my radar screen for a bit and now have recently started poking around again after they've resurfaced (they've also made it into mainstream press with an article in The Economist).

And I've been quite impressed with what I found. For those of you who haven't heard of them yet, think Google for all things numbers.

Founded by the creator of Mathmatica, these guys are building an engine that allows you (in a single search box) to input formulas, find statistics, track financials and all sort of other searches based on numbers. In their own words, it's a "computational knowledge engine."

And in the spirit of understanding everything in quantitative terms - Antoine (my brother) sent me this little comparison with my name vs. his name.

Comes complete with age distribution, number of births per year and the expected total number of people in the US today with our names. Talk about the epitome of putting everything into numbers - exactly what the founders hoped for, I believe.

Internship Opportunity at Venture-Backed Startup

This summer I'm helping out my friends at Give Real, an exciting start-up that is going to revolutionize the way we give gifts - bringing gift-cards into the the internet age and allowing merchants to start really leveraging social networks (beyond simple advertising).

The first service (Drinks) is already launched (allows me to buy you a drink at any bar by linking my credit card to yours - so that as soon as you swipe your card at any bar, you'll be using the gift $$ from my credit card. To see how it works (or to buy me a drink :) click on the yellow button in the right column. The next product will be building on this and if you thought this was cool...wait for the next one! I'll let you know as soon as it launches.

And so we're looking for a few amazing grads or recent grads interested in a biz-dev/ marketing internship to help with the launch of the new service. Here's a link to the job-post. You'll be part of a small, need I say entrepreneurial team, finding and leading creative marketing efforts.

Please pass this along to anyone who might be interested - and feel free to give them my direct contact info: JB [at] GiveReal [dot] com.

The Charms of the Medium (of communication)

So as most of you know, my new favorite gadget is Amazon's Kindle. I can't help but talk about it and how much it has changed the way I read, think and generally access literature. Good job Amazon... talk about creating a product that connects deeply with its user's turning them each into little marketers (that work for free).

One of the most common reactions I get to those who are skeptical of the Kindle is: "but there's just something special about the feel of the book." And I completely agree with them. Just as we form deep connections with the characters in the story, the medium through which the story is told also inserts itself into our experience. And so a "good book" has a feel, a smell, an aura to it. There's a certain kind of reverence we feel in a library, almost like walking into a church and a time machine at the same time. Standing in awe at the physical presence of centuries of human thought coded, categorized and set in type.

And I am sure there were plenty who thought that the essence of manuscripts might be degraded with the advent of the printing press. But as we know today - new charms arose with the new medium just as the old ones died (or changed). And so I don't think any of that actual essence is lost when books are converted to digital. The sensations are different, but the reverence is still very much present if not magnified.

Instead of pages, my fingers tread the brushed aluminum and plastic finish. Just like a good book, I feel a certain emotional attachment to my Kindle as my mind is whisked away through a good story. But in addition to this book-like love, there's also a bit of that library reverence.

Access to an entire library, from Socrates to Blink with one touch of that little gadget, is an incredible experience. And because of this I am also much more likely to actually read often. I can read multiple books at once (without lugging them around) and so best match the story with my current mood- and what I am most receptive to. A metro ride with Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (in my case in French), or a waiting room with Dale Carnegie. I now can't wait to get "stuck" somewhere as I can now sit down and read. This completely mobile library then brings with it new charms. Try it out...I'm sure you'll be quite surprised.

Tiramisu for two million

I made Tiramisu for a wedding (about 40 people) a few weeks ago and made a little stop action film just for fun. I got the recipe from this sweet site: cooking for engineers. It came out quite well and I would highly recommend it!

What you don't know doesn't exist (?)

If we can understand the nature of the building blocks, than we can understand the larger structures or organisms they create. Any thing is the sum of its parts.

This is the standard scientific methodology and it has brought us to astounding new heights of understanding. But with this understanding often comes an overconfidence of our own knowledge and the pool of "what we don't know, we don't know" shrinks in our mind (but only in our mind, unfortunately).
- And so we ignore the anti-oxidants in fresh fruits and focus on getting the necessary vitamins. - We focus on rising real estate prices and stock markets and ignore rising debt levels.
- We focus on enemy countries and ignore the sub-state terrorist groups.

It's natural to focus on what we can see, but obviously not always effective: like the joke of the man on a dark parking lot looking for a lost cell phone - but only looking for it in a tiny corner where the street lamp shines.

Taking a holistic approach, as oppose to a reductionist one is not without it's problems too, however. As you then have to swallow all of the mythology behind un-proven causes and effects to make sure you happen to eat those ant-oxidants you didn't know existed. It's not unsurprising that there's a lot of interesting questions to answer at this intersection.

Perhaps it's just my short memory or anecdotal evidence, but there appears to be an increasing acceptance of a blend of reductionist & holistic approaches in a variety of different disciplines:

Food & health: The whole foods movement (The Omnivores Dilemma)
Psychology: The behavioral psychology movement (Blink, Nudge)
Economics & Finance: acceptance of randomness (The Black Swan)
Exercise: The cross-fit movement

(I'm not sure about political science, TSA certainly hasn't learned anything about the lack of predictability in security threats.... why are we still confiscating little bottle of water?)

The Presentation Flu

Presenting is a skill/art that everyone seems to need but that is rarely taught. Across my travels over the past month, I attended several entrepreneurship minded events including the Cornell Entrepreneur Conference - a great get together of entrepreneurs, investors, academics and wanna-be's of all three (myself included). And so, I attended a fair number of presentations, largely back to back.

I was shocked at the massive variance in presentation skills. There were some stunning ones and some miserable presentations. Interestingly some of the best were done by the undergrads in their business plan competition - and some of the worst were done by industry veterans. Maybe 20 years in a cubicle exposes you to "presentation-itis."

Whenever I found myself bored to tears, I started taking notes of all things that bothered me so I don't repeat the same mistakes. Here's the list I've compiled for myself as a vaccine against "presentation-itis:"

• Establish a connection with the audience through varying emotions
  
• Build tension and then break it (repeat)
  
• Smile at some points (if not often), even if it's a serious topic
• Vary tone of voice and emotions
• Seth has a great post on this
  
• Visuals - make each slide count
  
• Have them elicit one emotion a piece
• Have them organized for maximum impact
  
• View questions as a conversation
  
• Use "Judo" with tough questions - defensiveness just makes you look weak
• Anticipate questions and be ready to work them into your point
  
• Short on time?
  
• Don't speed through the rest - have a 'closing punch line' ready
• When moderating a panel, always be in control
• Don't waiver or ask procedure questions (you're in charge...that's why your moderating)
• Keep the questions on target and kindly cut off those who are using it as a soap-box