Because innovative ideas are a f**king dime a dozen. But execution gets you on the field. And brilliant execution can win the game.
So which PEOPLE are innovators? And what drives them?
The folks I’ve been impressed with have some key attributes:
- They are better observers than most
- They ask good questions
- They listen deeply
- They are OK working alone or in small groups, but ideally, connect well
- They are fierce about their passions, and believe deeply in their convictions
- They are courageous and hungry
- They aren’t so wedded to your organization that perpetuating the organization (and their place within it and its pecking order) takes priority
and so…
- They often need care and protection most from the same institution that needs them.
Principles to live by and characteristics to nurture when building a team – whether that team is part of a company or the company itself.
This list captures the relationship between ideation and execution, the nuances of individual personality traits as well as how people relate to the larger whole they’re a part of, exceptionally well.
Read more: What makes companies innovative?
Facebook is the new Google – as in, they are building up an army of the best damn software developers on the planet. But having great engineers is not enough. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have each had a monopoly on great engineers for a period of time. But engineers want to solve hard problems – to build abstractions – to unify 3 different things that seem kinda similar. But this has nothing to do with solving real user problems, which is what Apple excels at. So these amazing engineers need a Product Person to direct them. Someone who doesn’t just unify stuff because it’s neat & challenging. Someone who thinks, “what problems do people have?” and then solves those problems .
Some good stuff in this post around the danger of not maintaining a balance of engineering and product design.
Building a product is easy. But building the company that builds the product is hard.
Love this quote from an interview with Dennis on what lies beyond the check-in.
Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world. It’s even worse because development doesn’t happen in a vacuum — if you have a halfway decent idea, you can be sure that there are two or three teams somewhere in the world that independently came up with it and are working on the same thing, or something you haven’t even imagined that disrupts the market you’re working in.
Really excellent interview with Matt Mullenweg on the importance of shipping a 1.0 version of your product. I LOVE the idea of “usage is like oxygen for ideas.” So much good stuff in here for anyone who builds products for people.
There is an approach called “working backwards” that is widely used at Amazon. We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features
Love this Quora entry on Amazon’s Product Development process. Relatively simple tool that can go a long way toward saving you from yourself.