Occasional Musings

Seth’s Blog

via Solving the problem isn’t the problem.

The problem is finding a vector that pays for itself as you scale.

We see a problem and we think we’ve “solved” it, but if there isn’t a scalable go-to-market business approach behind the solution, it’s not going to work.

This is where engineers and other problem solvers so often get stuck. Industries and organizations and systems aren’t broken because no one knows how to solve their problem. They’re broken because the difficult part is finding a scalable, profitable way to market and sell the solution.

Take textbooks, for example. The challenge here isn’t that you and I can’t come up with a far better, cheaper, faster and more fair way to produce and sell and use textbooks. The problem is that the people who have to approve, review and purchase textbooks are difficult to reach, time-consuming to educate and expensive to sell.

Or consider solar lanterns as a replacement for kerosene. They are safer, cheaper and far healthier. But that’s not the problem. The problem is building a marketing and distribution network that permits you to rapidly educate a billion people as to why they want to buy one at a price that would permit you to make them in quantity.

Sure, you need a solution to the problem. But mostly what you need is a self-funding method to scale your solution, a way of interacting with the market that gains in strength over time so you can start small and get big, solving the problem as you go.

— seth godin

xkcd: Temper

via Every Majors Terrible.

Seths Blog

via When execution gets cheaper, so should planning.

If you’re going to build a $10 million skyscraper, by all means, plan and prototype and discuss and plan some more.

On the other hand, if the cost of finding out is a phone call, make the call. No need to spend a lot of time planning how to call or when to call or which phone to use when execution is fast and cheap.

The digital revolution has, as in so many other areas, flipped the equation here. The cost of building digital items is plummeting, but our habit is to plan anyway (because failure bothers us, and we focus on the feeling of failure, not the cost).

The goal should be to have the minimum number of meetings and scenarios and documentation necessary to maximize the value of execution. As it gets faster and easier to actually build the thing, go ahead and make sure the planning (or lack of it) keeps pace.

A very nice series of blog entries are available from Scientific American blog pages. Its is based on one of my favorite literary character – Sherlock Holmes. Each entry in the series begins with “Lessons From Sherlock Holmes” as part of the title, which I think is most appropriate. Here is a sample entry blog..

“Lessons from sherlock holmes: perspective is everything, details alone are nothing

Details are important, often crucial. But focus exclusively on the details, without taking a step back, and you run the risk of getting lost in minutiae – and more likely than not, of missing any actual importance the details might contain. In other words, don’t forget the old proverb, “Don’t miss the forest for the trees.” It’s a cliché for a reason. Holmes reminds us repeatedly to avoid the rooky mistake, and even shows us how we might best be able to do so. In following his advice, we are likely to see a marked improvement in the quality of our own decisions and thought process.

“…

Previous titles from the series:

Don’t Just See, Observe: What Sherlock Holmes Can Teach Us About Mindful Decisions
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Paying Attention to What Isn’t There
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Cultivate What You Know to Optimize How You Decide
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Perspective Is Everything, Details Alone Are Nothing
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Imagination
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Confidence Is good; Overconfidence, Not So Much
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Situation Is in the Mindset of the Observer
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Power of Public Opinion
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Tangle Two Lines of Thought
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Breadth of Knowledge Is Essential
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Decide Before You Decide
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Trust in The Facts, Not Your Version of Them
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Judge a Man by His Face
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Importance of Perspective-Taking
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: From Perspective-Taking to Empathy
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Why Most of Us Wouldn’t Be Able to Tell That Watson Fought in Afghanistan
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Preconceptions and the Blunting of Imagination

More of this here: [The Link]