My notes from the 2012 O+A Sessions

Here are my notes on Peter Sims’ talk about Innovative Entrepreneurs, and how they use little bets to make iterative improvements to their products until they experience the big breakthrough.

The founder of Starbucks, Howard Shultz,  says he had to make a lot of mistakes to learn what not to do.

Twitter started as an idea of one guy inside another company and was slowly developed over 6 months.

Conceptual Innovators = People who come up with ideas and make very little changes during design and production.

• Experimental Innovators = Many scribble outs and changes during the process.

Our education system focuses so much on getting the right answer that we become afraid of making mistakes.

• This is counter intuitive to success. Experimental innovation is what leads to most successes.

Discovery = failing forward through small experimental risks.

Pixar’s creative process is “going from suck to non-suck.”

• It’s a constant process of iteration for 2-3 years.
• They are not trying to prevent errors, they are trying to solve problems.

The design process is just like agile software development. You can’t be afraid to make mistakes and go backwards for a short time to save long term failures.

Immerse yourself in your project and its users. Don’t over analyze.

People who are lucky are also more curious. Being luck actually means connecting with people that are unlike yourself and building a “network of luck.”

Iterate, iterate, iterate, and build with small wins.

Start with small wins and build to breakthroughs.

Small bets focus on affordable losses instead of potential large gains.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay