Welcome to W3: Analyst’s Bootcamp
And Happy Victoria Day for those celebrating!
I enjoyed your critical commentary on the reports, predictions and analyses about the future of global learning technologies marketplaces.
What I hoped everyone could take away from this effort is that the horizon is maddeningly rich and vibrant, and that nobody “owns” it. Whether brave individuals or high-priced research conglomerates, the trend-spotters don’t have compellingly clear crystal balls. In other words, your own intuition and experience has as much real value as other sources. It is important to find and review sets of sources you ‘trust’, but you never need to feel that you could never win because you’re not part of some exclusive club that knows what is going to happen next.
In this coming week we’ll continue to refine analytical skills by breaking down the essential ingredients of a credible venture pitch. The idea is that be reviewing how pitches fail, you’ll be in a better position to compose one that might not!
Let’s see!
David
Posted in: Week 03: Analyst Bootcamp
Donna Forward 9:25 am on May 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Happy Victoria Day to you too David.
I like your comment when you mention that we should never feel that we could never win just because we’re not part of some exclusive club who knows what is going to happen next. It means that we all have the same fighting chance to create a venture that could possibly be successful in the world of cyberspace:)
Cheers,
Donna
David Vogt 10:42 am on May 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Donna –
Going further, one idea that always inspires me about the creative industries (everything digital) is that Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc, have no intrinsic advantage over me or anyone else who has an original, burning idea. Sure, there are a few people like Steve Jobs who are an amazing creative force, but humanity is like that and there’s always room for more.
Indeed, once you have a large company like a Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc, every new idea is hobbled by the constraints of your existing enterprise, so you can never be as nimble or daring as a new enterprise. That’s why most ‘innovation’ today is accomplished by large companies consuming small ones for their ideas.
You’ll see this week when reviewing Elevator Pitches that the proponents aren’t business geniuses of any kind – they’re just ordinary people, like us, who have become passionate about some idea that could potentially change the world.
Bravo to the brave, I say!
David
Sherman Lee 11:23 pm on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is slightly off topic but to feed to David’s comment about how the creative industries have no intrinsic advantage over anyone who has original and burning ideas… I came across this today as I was browsing for some resources for a part of the project I am working on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cJCYM624YJU#!
Enjoy,
Sherman
Hussain Luaibi 12:46 am on May 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Sherman, thank you for the nice youtube. ORIGINAL and burning ideas can’t be stopped once they are born.
Hussain
Hussain Luaibi 1:12 am on May 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hello David, in 2.7 Deconstructing a Pitch, you referred to an article ( as a further reading)”How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea” by Elsbach K. The article is really interesting. But don’t you feel that the writer is inclined towards creating impressions more than anything else. The impressionistic approach in business is risky. And it makes the line of demarcation between real and unreal very thin.
I also have one more question, Do you think setting up rules in pitching one’s ideas is a good thing to do in a fast changing world?Do you think these rules should change from time to time?
Hussain
David Vogt 10:30 am on May 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for these thoughts, Hussain –
On your first question, everyone’s immediate reactions are usually significantly decisive, so cultivating a positive first impression is clearly valuable. However, if there’s no substance behind a positive first impression that’s deadly. I guess the key for me is that if you’ve got a good idea, you’ve got to find a way to hold peoples’ attention until they understand and appreciate it. If people don’t respond to you well they will stop listening very quickly, before they have a chance to ‘get it’. So cultivating a good impression is simply a way of extending their attention span, and therefore increasing your chances of success.
And with respect to pitch rules, no way. Your only objective is to convey a powerful idea in a positive way, so breaking conventional rules of communication is often the best way to succeed with that.
David
Hussain Luaibi 11:33 am on May 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
David
Thank you for the informative reply. I still have a question about the same concept we are talking about. what if someone has a great idea but he or she is hopeless in presenting it. And this can happen not only in business but in teaching as well. For example sometimes you see a teacher who has a great lesson plan and great material but they are unable to convey it effectively. Probably in business it is different because the project holder will suffer if he can’t sell his product but when it comes to education , I think , the students will suffer instead. Back to my question, so what is your recommendation here for those who have great ideas with a kind of inability in presenting them they way they should be? It is sad to see sometimes vibrant projects killed by their creators for not presenting them the way the market asks for.
Thank you
Hussain
David Vogt 12:13 pm on May 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think the answer is very simple in both business and teaching – if you’re not good at presentation, find someone else who is.
In business, so long as the CEO quietly exudes integrity and intelligence they can delegate the presentation of their ideas to someone with sales or marketing or business development talents. However, the CEO still needs to drive the vision, and communicate it effectively to their presentation proxy, so if they aren’t dynamic onstage they need to do everything they can to develop those skills.
The same is true for teaching, I suspect, in that there are lots of guide-on-the-side methodologies that can reduce the requirement for sage-on-the-stage excellence, but won’t make it disappear.
In short, I feel leadership is about effective, commanding presence more than appealing performance, but both entail significant, credible visibility.
David
Hussain Luaibi 10:48 am on May 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
David
Thank you!
Have a great day
Hussain