I’ve been thinking about this lately and distilled 4 ways to push your thinking and get more insightful.

Change your shoes

This is all about changing your perspective. Looking at things from the outside can be daunting and unfamiliar. One approach is to put yourself in other stakeholders’ shoes.

Imagine yourself as the customer, business partner, colleague, etc. Think about struggles and challenges they face and what motivates them. Now that you’re wearing their shoes… what do you want? What excites you? What makes you mad?

Getting inside others’ heads can uncover overlooked motivations and opportunities.

Find parallels to things you know

Relate new scenarios to similar scenarios you understand well!

Maybe you’re trying to think of loyalty programs for enterprise software… Think about the loyalty program at your local sandwitch place. What about it works? What doesn’t? What are other products and services you’re loyal to?

Though parallels may seem dubious at first, even distant relationships can lead to surprising insight.

Ask ‘how’ and ‘why’ to dig deep

Wearing ‘new shoes’ and drawing parallels leads to early insights. Dig deeper by asking why. Ask over and over until the root causes of successes and set backs become clear.

How and why are also keys to understanding deep connections. Everything is connected – figure out those connections by asking how things are connected, how the connection works, and how it could be changed.

Get super specific

It’s easy to get into the habit of thinking the abstract. This lets you speed through lots of ideas, but when you catch something exciting – stop to make it real. Think about specifics of the implementation, specific actions required, and the implications of those. Go further to the secondary and tertiary implications.

Getting “real” can open up new avenues of curiosity and will ultimately make your insights more powerful and actionable.

Hope this was useful – please chime in with other ways to boost insight!

Instapaper is a “read later” service that has changed my life. It allows you to easily capture content from multiple sources and store it in the cloud so you can consume it at your leisure.

Simply click, “read later” across Instapaper’s many incarnations and the service comes through the internet to capture text and images from an article. That content is now available to read whenever and wherever you have some free-time.

It’s a ubiquitous and beautiful reading experience that I never knew I needed.

• You’ll find new time in your day
• It goes where you go

Read on to find out more, and check it out at instapaper.com.

You’ll find new time in your day

Like I said… HOURS per week – and I’m smarter, more amused, better informed as a result.

On the subway I pop open my phone and read an article or two from McKinsey Quarterly, WSJ, or the Times on the way to work so I can say smart things to clients.

Standing in lines or on the way home is a great time to catch up on articles from twitter, friends blogs, or the latest angst from href=”http://thoughtcatalog.com/”>Though Catalog.

Waiting for friends is still a great time for facebook and texting, but once that’s done… Instapaper! When waiting on chronically late comrades, I get way ahead of my intellectual article quota and have something interesting to talk about.

It goes where you go

On my iPhone, on my Kindle, and in my browswer… Instapaper is there, which means I never miss an opportunity to capture content or read it.

On my iPhone/iPad I have the Instapaper app, which lets me capture content from twitter, tumblr, and email by sending it right to the app. A simple copy-paste allows the phone to capture links and save them for later. Also, since the iPhone is always in my pocket, I can always squeeze in a quick read. (I don’t actually have an iPad -yet- but I imagine this still holds true)

On my Kindle. Instapaper sends daily updates of your “read later” queue to your Kindle. These articles arrive as a ‘periodical’ so they are easy to navigate… This allows me to catch up on articles from all-over within Kindle’s delightful reading experience.

In my browswer. The plug-ins available for browsers allow you to capture content from any website (including Google Reader, twitter, news sites, etc.) with a simple click. You can also navigate to Instapaper.com to read articles you’ve captured. The simple interface is charmingly devoid of ads and on-screen distractions.

Competitors and other uses?

I realize that Instapaper isn’t the only app like this. ReadItLater, Spool, Reading List, etc. all offer similar functionality. Do y’all have ideas about which is better or why I should switch? How about other ways to use Instapaper? Leave it in the comments!

I recently worked with a colleague who uses a work-planning structure that breaks big, wide-open questions into actionable next-steps. The Question-Data-Action framework is thorough, thought provoking, and easy to communicate with 4 simple steps:

1. Define key questions
2. Refine to sub-questions
3. Determine what data is needed
4. Identify actions to get the data

Each step gets you closer to an actionable workplan that will make your life easier and help you communicate timing and deliverables with clients and colleagues.

The 4 steps

1. Defining key questions is the first step of any pursuit. These should be the questions that sum up what are you trying to learn or accomplish. They may come from a manager or client, but ultimately defining and agreeing on a written set of key questions ensures everyone is aligned and prevents scope-creep as the project gets under-way.

2. Refining to sub-questions may or may not be necessary depending on the complexity of your key questions. Create sub questions by asking what you would need to know to answer each key question. Iterate until you’re at a set of answerable sub- (or sub-sub-) questions. You end with a tree of increasingly-specific questions. Check the tree by working your way back up. Make up answers to each question and think, “if I had the answer to each of these sub-questions, could I answer the question above?” If not, revise your questions or add new ones!

3. Determining data/analyses needed to answer each question will depend on your resources (i.e., what data/analyses will be easy), your level of rigor (i.e., how thorough do you need to be?), and your judgement (i.e., what will really help you answer the question?). Again check the needs by asking, “If I had this data (or completed this analysis), would I be able to answer the question?”

4. Identifying actions to get the data or do the analysis is the critical last-step that gives you an actionable work-plan. For each necessary piece of data or analysis, think about next steps to get it or create it. This could mean conducting primary research and analysis, searching online, tapping friends/clients/colleagues, or a host of other techniques to get your hands on what you need! Take the time here to think how long getting each piece will take.

Tips on communication

Building a workplan with this structure eases communication with your managers, direct reports, and clients because each engages at a different level.

Everyone involved in the project will benefit from the clearly defined objectives and scope that result from articulating and agreeing on key questions.

Managers and clients can engage on key-questions and sub-questions to feel confident that the team is bringing a valuable answer with an approach that makes sense. The presence of actionable next-steps and a hierarchy of questions gives the ability to predict timelines with more accuracy.

Direct reports can engage on sub-questions, data, and next steps. Sub-questions inform work-streams and facilitate delegation of work. Direct reports can then create a first-draft of the data/analysis needs and next-steps. As a manager, you can then suggest improvements and ensure the level of rigor matches available resources.

Examples

Here is a quick example answering the key question, “Where should my friends and I go to dinner?”

How will you use this? Have you had success with it, or can you suggest improvements? Put it in the comments!

• Part 1: Branding Yourself and Making Making a “Wow” Resume
• Part 2: Preparing for Your Case Interview to Get Bulletproof
• Part 3: Talking about Your Experience and Sounding like a Bad-ass

Leaving academia and joining consulting firms is a something many PhD students (myself included) are getting interested in. Firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Associates once hired mostly MBAs but are now branching out to hire MDs, lawyers, and PhDs.

I wanted to make a big impact with the skill I learned during my PhD. I got excited when I heard about consulting because it promises just that. In the next three parts, I’ll take you through the big lessons I learned while preparing and interviewing: How to get an interview, how to nail the case, and how to dazzle them with your experience.

Part 1: Branding Yourself and Making Making a “Wow” Resume gives you pointers to polish that scruffy science look off your C.V. and generally control your “personal brand” so that interviewers are impressed with you long before you walk in the door.

Part 2: Preparing for Your Case Interview to Get Bulletproof talks about how to approach the case and how to practice so that you can shine while others look dull. I’ll give you some simple exercises that will improve the structure and creativity of the “case” portion of your interview.

Part 3: Talking about Your Experience and Sounding like a Bad-ass covers an important and often overlooked portion of a consulting interview… talking about yourself! I know you have some amazing stories to tell. This sections shows how to make your stories say the right things about you.

Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I recently went through the application and interview process with a top firm, came out with an offer, and signed it! In this series, I share my experience and give some ideas for people on a similar path. However, at the time of writing (July 2009), I do not have any inside information on how any company conducts their hiring. These are just my thoughts!

In short, the techniques called “Market-based Management” (MBM) described in the book are string of very sensible ideas. The true power of the book is that it shows how to join these sensible ideas together into a cohesive and effective management strategy. In this review, I’ll briefly describe the points that really hit home with me.

1. Opportunity Cost – Surely everyone knows that an opportunity cost is “the cost of the best alternative forgone to do something.” Koch stresses how this simple principle is under-utilized in most companies, and that by paying close attention to the opportunity cost of EVERY action, companies can be sure to work on the most valuable thing.
2. Comparative Advantage – Here, Koch reiterates the idea that each person should do what adds the most value. This builds on the idea of opportunity cost saying that appropriate distribution of tasks causes people, teams, divisions, and companies to work on what they do best and not forgo their comparative advantage. Doing this all the time at all levels ensures minimal waste.
3. Decision Rights – This term is used as an analog to “property rights.” By distributing the “ownership” of decision making privileges in the same way that property might be distributed, decision makers have clear responsibility for decisions they make. This means that they will reap all of the benefits for good decisions as well as the repercussions of bad decisions. Allowing a person’s decision rights to grow based on how well they use them makes more sense than allowing them to grow based solely on seniority or rank.
4. Appropriate Incentives – Finally, Koch describes how incentives are put in place to encourage long-term growth and value creation. A quote I particularly liked was that a company should, “take from each according to their ability and give to each according to their contribution.” Thus, incentives are firmly rooted in how much an employee actually contributes rather than being fixed to seniority, rank, or title.
5. Principled Entrepreneurship – Furthermore, Koch suggests rating performance not just on contributions but also on missed contributions. Hence, if an employee misses an opportunity to make $1 million, that should be judged as if the employee lost $1 million by failing in any other way. This encourages employees to take prudent risks and remain entrepreneurial at all times.

All in all, a very interesting, but quick read. It seems that these principles really work as evidenced by Koch Industries success. I fear that established companies would be very hard pressed to start incorporating these ideas, but new managers or managers with a great deal of freedom should read this book twice before starting to plan how their company or group will operate!

This is a 128 question test where people mark whether or not adjectives describe them. Thus a person might check yes to “Good Leader” and no to “Hard to Impress.” Once all the appropriate answers are marked, each one is weighed and put into an appropriate bin. The size of each bin marks the prominence of that personality trait in the person.

I’ve used this program as my first e-commerce venture. Visit http://www.shawnlankton.com/icl to get information about the program, download the fully-featured demo, or purchase the full program!

I just have a couple pictures to share. I’ll tell you what, the rooms at the Ritz sure beat the hell out of the rooms I stay in when I travel to conferences! Gigantic beds, big bathtubs, marble counter tops, full closets, and what a view.

When we weren’t eating, drinking, hiking, and socializing I worked with a small group of five people to study, analyze, and solve a practice consulting scenario. David, Judy, Sauraub, Yi and Elizabeth were all bright, funny, and capable. If consulting means working with only top-notch people… I’m in. Here’s the group on a mountain during a hiking trip (minus Yi who decided to go white water rafting instead).

Hopefully this trip was a preview of what being a consultant is like because if it is… I like it!

Stephen Flemming
“Transforming Innovative Tech into Business”

As with any other person who has been a VC or angel investor, Steve was incredibly sharp, and seemed like he would be impervious to BS either on the giving or receiving end. Steve began his talk discussing the pros and cons of starting a business in the Southeast. He went on a diatribe about how ludicrous the spending in California is. Then he pointed out that although there isn’t much VC investment in Georgia and the surrounding states, there is a better tax situation, and much better access to real estate, talent, and customers.

Steve continued by discussing the cyclical relationship between institutional investors, VC’s, and entrepreneurs giving some insight into how that relationship drove VC’s behaviors. Some interesting take-aways were that VC’s want the entrepreneur to get rich, and that they’ll only have to be brutal and cruel if they have to in order to make the returns they promised their investors.

After giving some insight in these areas, he began enumerating the things that you must convince investors of when trying to raise capital for a business.

1. You have a large, fast-growing market segment
2. You have a technological advantage that will block competition
3. You have reasonable financial terms
4. You have measurable milestones for success

He went on fleshing these out for most of the remainder of the talk, but kept peppering in useful tips. I’d like to point out some here:

1. Get a good referral (from another investor, an attorney, etc.) If you’re plan comes pre-qualified it. You’re in.
2. Make a 20 page business plan with a 2 page executive summary. No More!
3. Power-Point deck using the 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type)
4. In all of these documents, sell the company, not the product.
5. Do your homework on the investors you’re presenting to and tailor the presentation. It will help you and impress them.
6. Choose your investor wisely. Don’t just follow money; find someone that can help you with experience, expertise, contacts, etc.

Check out Steve Fleming’s website as well. Here you can find his blog as well as some useful information about starting companies.

Furthermore, here is a list of other resources and websites that Steve
suggested:

• Tesla Motors
• The Elements of Style
• Edward Tufte
• The Art of Start (Guy Kawasaki)
• Presentationzen.com

This short, fast read talks about the myths that people have about the process of innovation, and some steps on overcoming these myths and innovating well anyway! Although I found the book inspiring and informative, I think I can sum up all of Berkun’s talking points briefly below and save you the trouble of reading the book : )

• Work hard.
• Work on meaningful problems.
• Work on hard problems.
• Work diligently and tirelessly, but take well-earned breaks to reflect. He belabors the point that innovation comes from persistent effort, not “ah ha” moments.
• Frame and re-frame the problem you’re working on. By following the same rules and same metrics for success that everyone else follows, you’re doomed to mediocrity. Re-examine the problem and re-frame it.
• Work really, really, really hard.

Finally, here is a video from the “Google Tech Talk” series. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ll bet you can get the gist of the whole book over the 1 hour video.

Seam Carving

This is brilliant (and brilliantly simple work). It solves a problem, and in doing so gives us tools to solve problems we didn’t even know we had! Its hard to explain, check the video out.

Dr. Ariel Shamir has a host of other interesting research as well: link.

Read on for more great research:

Vision-aided multi-touch collaboration

This is a fantastic application of computer vision to do something that was done expensively and not as well before. Using computer vision, the guys at MSR in Cambridge, UK built a multi-touch interface that not only acts as a natural way for people to use a computer solo, but aids in collaboration in what looks like a very natural way. Check out the demo video. This is out of Microsoft research labs, so we may well see this in real-life soon!

3D tracking from 2D videos

Another nice webcam collaboration-type application. These guys can track rigid objects by fitting a 3D model to image data collected. After looking at their paper, I’m skeptical at how widely applicable the algorithms could be, but the posted results are very impressive! Check the video.

3D models from uncalibrated video

I’m seeing a pattern that a new push in computer vision will be to make sense of a 3D world from 2D images (just like our brain does). Dr. Pollefey at UNC has several projects related to this goal. Below is a video of a sculpture. From the video (taken from a hand-held camcorder) a 3D computer model of the sculpture is obtained.

Mixed Reality Billiards

Here’s another application deserving of study: Game-Playing. With the success of the Wii I am certain that interactive games (read: games requiring more than button pushing) will become more and more popular in the coming years. Here, someone is trying to design for that market. In the video below, the player uses real-life objects seen by a camera to control a billiards video game… I’m impressed.

Expect more posts on this type of thing as I try to flesh out my understanding of what the entire industry is doing. By all means! if you know of some cool research, send me a link or leave a comment.