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Guy Kawasaki, gave the opening Plenary at the 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference yesterday. It was titled, ""The
Art of Innovation." Guy’s
speech was inspiring and funny. More notes are in the second part of this post.

Technorati tag: ntc06

Guy began by noting that he’s sat through too many sucky unending corporate speeches to not have learned a few things. So he’s decided that although his speech may suck, at least he can let people know how long it will suck. So all of his speeches follow a top 10 format. Here we go…

Guy’s Tips for Revolutionaries

1. Make Meaning
Organizations that are successful and innovative are those that aim to make meaning. Those who fundamentally want to change the world, not just make a better widget.
How?
End bad things.
Start good things.
Make people more creative and more productive.

2. Jump to the next curve
Example #1: When Bezos started amazon.com, the largest bookstores had 250,000 titles. Bezos didn’t just offer 300,000 titles, he offered 2.5 million titles.

Example #2: Inventing another font for a daisy wheel printer is not innovation. Inventing a laser printer is innovative.

3. Don’t worry, be crappy
When he looks at a 128K Mac, "I am filled with warm nostatia," said Kawasaki. But he also thinks, "boy, did we ship a piece of crap." No RAM, no software, no hard disk. Well, why would you need a hard disk, there was no software! To be clear, your revolution can have elements of crappiness, But you can’t ship total crap. Ship, and then test. Don’t ever apologize for the shortcomings.

4. Churn, baby, churn
Your crap must get better. Version 1.1 must become version 1.2. Version 1.2 must become 1.3. Revolution is not an event. It’s a process. Revolutions take a very long time to succeed. It’s not just shock and awe. It takes 20 years (in Apple’s case, for example).

5. Polarize people
Create that great product or service that you yourself would want to use. If you tried to create a car that does everything for everyone, you’ll end up with mediocrity. Macintosh polarizes people. You either love Macintosh or hate Macintosh. Harley Davidson polarizes people. You either love Harleys or hate Harleys. TiVo polarizes people. People love them, advertisers hate them. Guy then spent several minutes talking about why TiVo is great and dispensing TiVo tips such as the old 30-second skip enabler (select-play-select-30-select).

6. Niche thyself

I can teach you everything you need to need to know about marketing in the next slide.

Shows diagram of x-y axis:
x= ability to provide unique product or service. y=value to customer

-Competete on price (lower left). Example=Dell computers.
-Stupid in lower right (you provide something of no value with no competition)
-Dotcoms are in lower left. Products with low value and high competition. (selling dog food online when shipping heavy dog food is so expensive).
-You want to be in upper right. Example: filmloop. Pushes photos to people’s desktops. You can push photos to your constituency. Pointcast for pictures. Real time collaborative. Everyone drags people in. You push pictures to people, not pictures to people. (notes that he’s on company’s board).
-You need to be like our president: "high and to the right." (laughter).

7. Make a mantra
A 3-4 short statement about why you exist. Don’t make a mission statement.

The mission of Wendy’s is to delivery superior quality products and services…
Wendy’s: "Healthy, fast food."
Nike: "Authentic athletic performance"
FedEx: "Peace of mind."
Target: "Democratize design."

How to create a mission statement: Don’t do an expensive retreat. Instead…
Go to the dilbert mission statement generator web site!

8. Follow the 10/20/30 rule
As a venture capitalist, He hears lots of bad pitches with 60 minutes and 60 slides.

10 slides
20 minutes
30 point font

If you put lots on the slide, you don’t know your slides, and you need to read the slide.

9. Make evangelists, not sales
Nike doesn’t come to a woman and say, give me "$100 and I’ll give you two pieces of leather and rubber manufactured in somewhat controversial conditions." No, they tell a story.

10. Let a hundred flowers blossom
Two theories of research. Find out why people AREN’t you buying our product. Find out why people ARE buying your product. Listen to those who are buying. "It’s always hard to convert an atheist." And even if people don’t use your product as intended. Mac was designed for spreadsheet, data and word processing. PageMaker saved Apple. No one at apple anticipated desktop publishing.

"I believe in god because there’s no other explanation for Apple’s existence." And god loves digital music at 99 cents/track.

11. Don’t let the bozos grind you down
(Guy’s top 10 actually had 11)
The dangerous bozo is successful with a fancy clothes, car and watch. And you think that this rich, successful, famous bozo is right. When that bozo says "it can’t work" you think you should listen to them.
Examples: Chairman of IBM in 1943 (world needs only 5 computers), Western Union in 1870s (telephone is inherently unuseful), Founder of Digital Equipment Corp. in 1977 ("there is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.").

"It’s too far to drive, and I don’t see how it can be a business." -Guy Kawasaki on Yahoo! (15 yrs ago) when offered an interview for CEO of Yahoo!

In closing…
Heaven is an airplane. Hell is a car.
You want to be in first class in heaven on Singapre airlines where seats go flat and you have your own entertainment device and personal flight attendent.

You get there by making the world a better place.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 11:10 am and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.