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4 Jan 2015

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The Downside of Meeting Requests

“Expectation is the mother of all frustration.” – Antonio Banderas

Meeting requests are an amazing invention. Pioneered, and standardized, almost 20 years ago by companies like Microsoft (as part of Outlook/Exchange), Novell (Groupwise) and Lotus (now part of IBM Lotus Notes) this innovation had great promise to automate an essential, yet completely routine, aspect of modern life.

The ascendency of meeting request usage, also rides several trends:

  • In the 1990s, I had an Executive Assistant who scheduled my time, acted as a “gatekeeper” and also worked on many projects. She was a master tactician who managed to keep 3 or more Type A executives productively multi-tasking. In many ways, sadly, such personal assistance is being subsumed by..
  • Increasing computational power means that automation of routine tasks, personalized to the needs of individuals is much more of a reality,
  • The mobile revolution has made meetings much more multi-modal and virtual, but also means that most executives must be productive even while being mobile nomads, and
  • Calendars have migrated from paper – I switched about 20 years ago – to desktop computers using Outlook and the like, and now to the ubiquitous smartphone and tablet devices. Such mobile devices are both convenient for calendars, but also frustratingly fiddly places to enter complex meeting details.

Thus, enter the humble Meeting Request which has swelled in popularity. I received my first such request from an Outlook/Exchange user around 2000 and they remained rare until perhaps the last 5-10 years. Now they seem to be everywhere.

In homage to my friend and colleague, Jim Estill, the quintessential time management guru, I ought to be cheering this time saving invention.

And, yet my enthusiasm is sorely tinged by a frustrating implementation resulting in suboptimal user experience …

Top 10 Meeting Request FAILs:

  1. Trojan Horse: It has always seemed odd to me that a thiFrustrating Meeting Requestrd party inviting me to a meeting could embed their own meeting information in my calendar, and yet I am unable to edit this “foreign” request that has invaded my calendar.
  2. Split Personality: If Jennifer invites me, Randall,  to a meeting, then why does my meeting title say “Meeting with Randall” instead of “Meeting with Jennifer”? Computers are designed to automate routine tasks so there is absolutely no excuse for this one.
  3. No Annotation: I write comments in the notes fields of my calendar all the time. Why can’t I say, for example, “Joe is a bit dodgy” or “First met back in 2001”?
  4. Duplication: Many times I receive a meeting request for a meeting that I have already carefully crafted an entry in my own calendar. Again, computers are supposed to be smart enough to figure these things out and merge them in an intelligent way.
  5. Bad Versioning: Many times when meeting information is changed, such as time or venue, the update isn’t seamless. For example, it is common to have both the original and the updated version lingering in my calendar.
  6. No Scheduling: Meeting requests are often used as trial balloons in trying to schedule busy people into meetings. The endless rounds of “Accept”, “Maybe” or “Decline” responses can end up being quite frustrating, especially for many person meetings. These, often fruitless, interchanges underscore the fact that meeting requests don’t automate routine scheduling. Instead, people have to resort to tools like Doodle to vote on alternatives, and then manually schedule the winning result.
  7. Verbosity by having superfluous words in the limited real estate of the meeting subject line. E.g. pre-pending “Invitation:” or “Updated Invitation:” onto the front of a subject, effectively burying the important words. Many times they are put there to increase the impact and readability of the email subject line to ensure opening, but distract in the actual Calendar entry.
  8. Invitations from Google Enterprise Apps or GMail tend to be the most arcane and ugly. Originally, I chalked this up to Google Calendar‘s relative immaturity compared to Outlook, but the brutally long notes and long subject lines continue to stand out as worst in class, almost to the point that I dread getting invited by Google users.
  9. Lack of Anticipatory Computing: in an age where mobile devices know location, existing meetings and other personal habits, the trend to predictive intelligence could be incorporated into smarter meeting requests. For example, combining meeting requests with shared “Free/Busy” data could remove many manual scheduling steps.
  10. No Personalization: Like my contact list, I put a fair bit of thought into crafting a calendar that is both useful now, but also provides a detailed audit trail of my business interactions. To do this, I use conventions, categories and other techniques that, sadly, cannot be injected into these un-editable meeting requests that instead reflect the third party initiator’s preferences.

Do let me know in comments if I missed any major points.

Given the power of networked computing to automate, why is there such a lack of excellence and progress in this particular area?

In fairness, I believe that part of the problem lies in the interplay between competition and the vagaries of formal industry standards. That said, this should be no excuse.

It is admirable that, unlike word processing formats, the various pioneers started to develop standards call iCalendar (and later vCalendar) around 1997 to standardize file formats (like .ical and .ics) and email server interactions. I do know the Microsoft attempted to extend the functionality with some very useful things around that time. But, for some reason, a great idea got off to a good start, but seems frozen at an almost Beta level of functionality.

To conclude, please read this post, not as a gripe, but instead as a call to action to developers to help take the humble meeting request to the next level of user experience. Any takers?

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22 Nov 2012

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“How ya gonna keep ‘em away from harm?” – The Sequel

Almost four and a half years ago, I penned what some called the obituary of Blackberry (see “How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm”). My intentions in writing that missive were, in fact, quite the opposite.  Back in 2008, a year after the first iPhone, Blackberry didn’t appear to be heeding the threat of major market disruption, let alone making a response. I thought that writing such a post might incite some action. Sadly, while I got loads of reaction from all over the world, the one missing piece was that this was singularly not registering inside the “Faraday Cage” of RIM headquarters at Philip and Columbia in Waterloo.

For many years, to continuously hone my expertise as an investor and participant in the next generation mobile ecosystem at VERDEXUS, I have maintained a “production” device and a “testing” device which allows me to sample the greatest number of new applications and platforms in my daily business and personal life. At the time of the 2008 blog, I switched from Blackberry as production device and iPhone as testing device. At that time, I promoted iPhone to production and introduced an early Android device into the testing status.

The four and one-half years since then, representing four to five mobile device generations at the rapid pace in which these are deployed, has seen a lot of innovation and change in the mobile universe. The first production version of Android occurred one month after the aforementioned post. Today,  over nine releases later, Android 4.2, known as Jelly Bean, is a mature and polished mobile platform.

Mobile user experience has, as it were, come up from the Farm and we are now definitely in Paree. It’s hard to imagine how things could get much better, yet an even more exciting future in mobile will undoubtedly unfold. The pace of change has been almost mind boggling, with Android appearing to move almost twice as fast as iOS, the more proprietary Apple platform running iPhone and iPad.

As a young platform, Android has long shown promise. Being an open source operating system primarily developed by Google, but customized by various device manufacturers, not to mention the ever-meddling carriers, has been both a blessing and a curse. Initially, Android seemed “rougher around the edges” and more techie in feel than the uber-polished and legendary iPhone experience, which is produced end to end by Apple.

Conversely, the limitations of the Apple closed ecosystem approach are starting overtake the advantages. There are numerous examples. If you simply want to plug in your device via USB and load music and other files, Android shines by bypassing the need to go through iTunes. While iTunes has its advantages, many of us simply want more control over our cross-device media file deployments. Another even more telling example is the recent debacle in which Apple turfed the tried and true Google Maps application in favour of a badly implemented and incomplete version of their own. This is but a single example of where Apple’s legendary quest for control is wearing thin.

While giving more control to mobile application developers has its challenges, it is clear that no one company, no matter how sainted, can determine, let alone sully serve, the desires and needs of the entire mobile universe.

It is a combination of this clear advantage, coupled with the incredible progress inAndroid and its handset manufacturers, that has led me to promote my newest device to production and render the formerly top-billed iPhone second tier status of my test device.

For me that device is the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which with its 5.5″ screen is sometimes dubbed a “phablet” (ie. a combination of  phone and tablet). Essentially a super-sized Galaxy S3, this phone is nimble, fast in computational processing and with speedy network connectivity. I first saw Europeans use it a few months ago, a cool and capable device, but perhaps an acquired taste for some

 

Perhaps it is simply my poor vision, but the large screen size is versatile and a joy to work with for all sorts of browsing, content and documents. The S Pen stylus, even for those who don’t want to do handwriting or line drawings, transforms the mobile browsing experience by removing the navigation problems on many sites with menus which are small on mobile screens. Samsung has even developed an SDK around the S Pen which could create a whole new application ecosystem, assuming this next generation stylus gains sufficient market traction.

Is my recent promotion of Android to top device spot the end of my quest for mobile perfection? Absolutely not! In fact, only one week ago, I personally promised my colleague Alec Saunders, the ubitquitous and transformational new VP of Developer Relations for Research In Motion, that I will definitely  give the new Blackberry BB10 devices a serious try. And, not just because “Devs, Blackberrry Is Going to Keep on Loving You”. I truly do like much of what I’m hearing about their capabilities.

Stay tuned – the mobile world is a fascinating and ever changing one.

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29 Oct 2012

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Tech Terroir

In the world of wine, the concept of terroir describes a centuries long process in which the climate, soil, grape varieties and dedicated vintners, symbiotically develop a unique “sense of place” for a wine region. A favourite of mine, the garrulous  and quintessential Californian vintner, Randall Grahm, while trying to establish the old World notion of terroir in California postulates that it is a long term proposition and can take centuries to develop.

As both a wine lover and serial tech entrepreneur, I firmly believe that building a tech cluster is similarly a very long term process. Ironically, the epicentre of tech clusters is in California. The Silicon Valley, which got its start in the 1950s remains the major cluster worldwide as “… no other place as yet has the Valley’s scale and resilience.”

Although I started my tech startup career in the US, it was in the Canada’s leading tech cluster of Waterloo where I built major companies and was one person who got that cluster started. Like Silicon Valley’s origins in Stanford University, the Waterloo cluster was initially fuelled by University of Waterloo. Over time, a combination of executive and programming talent, capital and professional services capabilites led to the current state of almost 1000 technology companies. By contrast to Silicon Valley, Waterloo is a must younger cluster, having started just over 25 years ago compared to the 60 years of Silicon Valley. It continues to mature around some key ingredients such as global strategic marketing capabilities and sufficient capital to fund on a globally competitive basis.  Experienced people may well be the most important ingredient in a cluster’s maturation.

Further, I feel that all who have been fortunate to build wealth and experience in business, owe an obligation to “pay it forward” to the next generation. My own contributions include significant startup mentoring, Board and strategic roles in organizations like Communitech and Innovation Guelph, and for the last 3 years a Board role and chairing Selection Committee for the Golden Triangle AngelNet (GTAN). In just 3 years, GTAN has grown to about 150 paid accredited investor members who bring a wealth of experience to the 25 funding transactions to date. And, it goes without saying, that many of those financings might not have happened without GTAN having emerged to fill a significant funding gap as VC’s became largely extinct. Acting as a superangel to syndicate angel network deals is a tremendously labour intensive exercise, but one that I and others believe will pay off in the long term economic prosperity of our region.

I firmly believe knowledge-based companies to be the key ingredient of our future economic prosperity, so such company-building competence is mission critical for our region, province, country and globally. As globalization occurs, we see more and more regions clambering to reap the riches of the innovative, tech startup world.

To that end, at Verdexus, we have always taken a transatlantic perspective, primarily to have a more global window on building companies that can achieve world leadership in their chosen businesses. Over the years, I’ve worked with startups across the United States and Europe in the dominant clusters such as Boston, Chicago, Silicon Valley, London, Munich, Berlin, Stockholm and more. To round out my experience, over the last few years, I’ve sampled some key emerging regions by volunteering as an expert judge in places as diverse as Brussels area, Warsaw and Torino. A week ago, I had the opportunity to judge startups associated with the European Space Agency in Toulouse France as well as in Istanbul, Turkey. The latter Istanbul venue, EU Venture Forum was jointly sponsored by EUREKA (the pan-European research and development funding and coordination organization) and Europe Unlimited from Brussels. Collectively, these more than a dozen regional events ultimately feed into a pan-European venture prize in Berlin in December.

It has been very instructive to visit various clusters. This grassroots view, from the perspective of startups, reveals much in common globally but also a few surprises. Based solely on interacting with local startups, on a global perspective, it is clear that culture and experience vary greatly across various Euroopean regions. For example, I was pleasantly surprised that Warsaw had some of the smartest and most sophisticated business startups I’d seen anywhere. And, remember, they are pitching in English which is not their native language. Conversely, the cluster around Torino appeared to have a long way to go before its startups would begin to measure up globally.

Pitching in Istanbul

Similarly, the startups I saw in Istanbul were impressive. Some companies, following a model also common to the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe, were essentially cloning an existing business model into the 80 million strong Turkish market. More significantly  others were clearly building globally strong technology startups. One pleasant surprise was that, of the eight companies that I coached the day before the forum, three had women CEOs. This was a surprise for Turkey,  but sadly women-led companies remain all to rare in Canada

The calibre of engineering and basic technology talent was very impressive. That said, it was also clear that the level of support ecosystem around these startups is very limited – at least compared to what we see here in North America. One direct challenge was that in Europe companies appear to receive generous R&D funding which seems to encourage more of an engineering mentality than a market-driven one. In essence, projects stay too long as “science projects” and the culture and skills to get projects to market seem to suffer as a result. Although this is a generalization, there are many exceptions.

In the area of capital, the meltdown in Venture Capital A Round investments is about 3-4 years behind what already occurred in Canada. One particularly European challenge is that more and more of the VC funds have moved their offices and focus from regional markets to London, meaning that companies in the regions often have less direct access to capital. Conversely, the growing role of Angel Networks and Superangels to fill the gap is still in its infancy in Europe. I suspect that will change over the next two or three years. Venture funders like to either be close (1 hour travel) to their portfolio companies or, at the very least, to have a local investor who can “provide adult supervision”. Increasingly, experienced serial entrepreneurs will be called on to fill that key local role as Angels and Superangels. It is clear that the notion of Tim Draper going to Estonia and finding Skype is definitely the exception rather than the rule.

And that takes me right back to the notion of “tech terroir”. As global innovation increases, and people around the world vie to build ever stronger tech startup ecosystems, it is the dedicates entrepreneurs in the sector who magically nurture these maturing ecosystems. As one of the entrepreneurs that I coached mentioned, she wants to:

“make innovation easier in Turkey and to make life easier for entrepreneurs”

So, in addition to building a great global business, she also takes time to help move the needle of her local ecosystem forward. It’s a very encouraging sign that continues to inspire me as I engage with the new globalized world of tech startups.

 

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2 Sep 2012

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[Book Review]: The Innovator’s Dilemma

The innovator’s dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen

Published by HarperBusiness
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This summer I took time to re-read an oft-overlooked volume that I believe to be the essential to anyone working in marketing and innovation. In this review, I’ll provide a few examples of why this book needs more attention, particularly here in Canada where we definitely need to up our game in marketing of innovation and technology.

Clayton Christensen, as Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, is a leading academic researcher on innovation. Yet, he still manages to provide practical and pragmatic strategies that real companies can use. And, most importantly, his theoretical groundwork is based on extensive, data intensive research over longer period of time with real companies and markets going through disruptive innovation.

The latter term is often thrown around lightly in technology company circles. A Disruptive technology (or innovation) typically has worse product performance in mainstream markets while having key features that interest fringe and merging markets. By contrast, sustaining technologies provide improved product performance (and often price) in mainstream markets.

The book covers real markets, including the various generations of disk drives starting with 14″ drives in the 1970’s to today’s 2.5″ (and smaller) drives. By studying hundreds of companies that emerged, thrived and failed over a 25 year period, some clear patterns emerge. Further examples across a broad range of markets, include he microprocessor market, the transition from cable diggers to hydraulic “backhoes”, accounting software and even the transition of industrial motor controllers from mechanical to electronic programmable models.

The key message of the book is that the playbook for normal (“sustaining”) technology innovation must be thrown away for disruptive technologies. Disruptive technologies break traditional rules in many, often counter-intuitive ways:

  • Financial – typically disruptive technologies are more expensive and have lower performance than existing products. This effect causes financial managers to kill many such innovations.
  • Marketing: the normal rule to “listen to your customers” must be thrown away – instead many educated guesses with repeated failures are the only path forward.
  • Organization: given the ability of normal strategies to reject disruptive innovations, such practices as heavyweight teams (which silo the team with more autonomy) and even spin-outs are the order of the day.

Entrepreneurial writings, not to mention my own experience, encourage us to celebrate failure. Beyond the power of learning by trial and error, The Innovator’s Dilemma, for the first time, provides an analytical framework as to why such failure is so critical in new markets.

One area where the book could provide more guidance is that of differentiating disruptive from sustaining technologies. Such discrimination is absolutely critical to ensure the right strategic approach to the new technology is adopted. Generally easy with the benefit of hindsight, such determination can be very tricky, and error prone, when first confronted with such new technologies.

This is a book that anyone working with products in fast moving markets needs to re-read regularly. It surprises me that, 15 years after publication, how few product marketers and senior executives appear to have benefited from the deep wisdom Christensen imparts.

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3 Aug 2012

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[Book Review]: The Idea Factory

The idea factory by Jon Gernter

Published by Penguin Press
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A marvellous exploration of a research and innovation powerhouse that, even viewed from this age of innovation, surprisingly anticipated many approaches we think of as modern breakthroughs.
I’ve long admired Bell Labs and feel that many of its researchers and innovations interacted with an impacting my own career. While in University, the notion of working with or at Bell Labs was the highest aspiration for top thinkers in many fields. The Idea Factory is an engaging read and showed me how limited my understanding of that institution really was.

First of all, from the 1920s to the 1980s, it was way ahead of its time as an agent of innovation. The approaches were brilliant and could be applied today, including the notion of building architecture and organization structures to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. Breaking down “knowledge silos” was definitely countercultural in a century known for specialization.

Secondly, the sheer number of transformational inventions, including the laser, transistor, fibre optics, satellite communications, the cellular mobile network, integrated circuits and the notion of information as digital that came from a single institution is both surprising and would be impossible in today’s world. Sadly, in the modern competitive marketplace, there is likely no room for a monolithic regulated monopoly, as was AT&T, to support such a single engine of innovation and basic research.

My primary connection with Bell Labs was through computer science with innovations such as UNIX and C Programming Language. The historical context this book outlines shows how surprising this is because AT&T was, by regulatory decree, precluded from entering the computer industry. That said, it is ironic that most of the inventions of Bell Labs, collectively contrived to make telecommunications as a separate industry obsolete. Instead, as predicted as early as 1948 by the remarkable information age seer, Claude Shannon, much of the modern economy has by transformed by our current digital age of networked and pervasive computing.

Lastly, Gertner explores the culture of those who drove innovation. Often eccentric, and to outsiders perhaps impossible or unemployable individuals, had the sheer force of will and brainpower to achieve breakthroughs that others either hadn’t even considered or thought impossible. Given my own small town origins, the deliberate strategy of finding these small town prodigies to populate the largest research-oriented brain trust in the world resonated.

All too often, societies believe that they are the first to master innovation. Sometimes we should stop and consider successful strategies from the past. Far from being solely a modern preoccupation, innovation has always been a hallmark of human advancement. Yet, with no clear place for a lucrative and regulated monopoly to fund pure research, where will the fundamental research of the future originate?

The book cites John Mayo, a former Bell Labs chief,

“Bell Labs substantial innovations, account for a large fraction of the jobs in this country and around the world”

In a world driven by global markets and the quarterly thinking of Wall Street, we really do need to consider how our next leap of fundamental research will be unleashed. John Pierce, another Bell Labs chief summarized the “Bell Labs formula” in four main points:

“A technically competent management all the way to the top.
Researchers who didn’t have to raise funds.
Research on a topic or system could be, and was, supported for years.
Research could be terminated without damning the researcher.”

Beyond learning from the wisdom of the leading research institution, where will we find the vision and resources to enable innovation on such a transformational scale? Beyond the Venture Capital and now Angel funded technology startup ecosystem, perhaps exemplars like Mike Lazaridis‘s pioneering Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics will chart a course for the 21st century.

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14 Jun 2012

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Who Will Revive Canadian Venture Capital (Part I)

Today was a banner day for announcements involving a reset of the technology funding ecosystem in Canada.

For a long time, the slow demise of Canadian Venture Capital has concerned me deeply, putting us at an international disadvantage in regards to funding and building our next generation of innovative businesses. You may recall my 2009 post Who Killed Canadian Venture Capital? A Peculiarly Canadian Implosion? which recounts the extinction of almost all of the A round investors working in Ontario.

Since then, many of us have worked to bridge the gap by building Angel Networks, including Golden Triangle AngelNet (GTAN), where I chair the Selection process and using extreme syndication and leverage to replace a portion of the missing A rounds.

Today, the launch of Round 13 Capital revealed a new model for venture finance centred around a strong Founder Board whose members are also  LPs, each with a “meaningful” investment in the fund.  My decision to get involved was based both on this strongly aligned wealth of operating wisdom coupled with the clear strength of the core team.

The launch was widely covered by a range of tech savvy media, including:

To illustrate the both the differentiation of Round 13 and show the depth of founder experience, Bruce Croxon, indicated that the founders board has, measured by aggregate exit value, built over $2.5 billion of wealth in Canada. It is this kind of vision and operational experience that directly addresses the second of my three points that Canadian Venture Capital needs to solve.

It is exciting to be involved with the unfolding next generation funding ecosystem for technology companies of the future. Time will tell the ultimate outcome,  but I’m certainly bullish on Round 13.

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Dennis-Ritchie

1 Jan 2012

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Dennis MacAlister Ritchie (1941-2011) – My Inspiration by a Great Man Who Quietly Shaped an Industry

NOTE: The intrusion and profusion of projects in my life, has prevented blogging for some time. As 2011 draws to a close, I thought I needed to make an effort to provide my perspective on some important milestones in my world.