Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Like many people I know who consider themselves good-natured–or at least are doing their best–I have a tough time saying “no.”

My instinct is always to take on more, to acquiesce, to give the answer people want to hear. Those who know me are perhaps raising an eyebrow of skepticism right now–okay, it’s true that I have no problem being assertive when there’s something that I want. It’s more an issue of declining or pushing back when it’s something others want: My natural inclination is to please at all costs. I even took a personality test at the behest of my first boss in advertising, and right under the Strategic heading, I displayed a quality called Woo, which means, if I remember correctly, a desperate need for people to like me (it may not have been that harsh, but that’s how I interpreted it).

I would never advocate that anyone try to become less generous or more stubborn. Openness, generosity, and a willingness to change one’s mind are some of the most important qualities a person can have. But there are also times, in business and in life, when you just have to say “no.”

1. Say “no” to clients if: They’re asking for something that’s truly detrimental to their business. This is a tough one, because we all become attached to the work that we do, and it’s very hard to honestly evaluate whether or not we’re digging in our heels in a way that’s self-serving (i.e. we love the work so we insist they love it too, period). In many ways, clients know their business better than an outside partner ever could, and it’s crucial to respect that. We also have an ability to push back in a way that internal staff never would, which we must use wisely and sparingly. My partners and I rely on each other for this valuable perspective–whoever is least close to the process will weigh in on whether or not a battle is worth fighting. And it’s only worth fighting if it’s truly going to help your client succeed (or prevent them from making a big mistake). The good news is, if you limit the number of times over the course of a relationship that you flat out refuse to do something, they’re much more likely to take it seriously.

Always say “yes” when: clients can justify their request with a strategic business decision that’s a whole lot bigger than your involvement.

2. Say “no” to favors when: Someone tries to make you an unofficial advisor to their business or project, without requesting that you take on an ongoing role. I am always happy to meet with people who are starting businesses or looking to rebrand–I would be nowhere today without generous souls who freely gave me their perspective. But this should really only happen once or twice. If someone is requesting ongoing meetings or a series of favors, then it’s appropriate for them to acknowledge your involvement in some sort of official capacity. Whether it’s creating an advisory board, compensating you for your time, or even just having a conversation where they outline their needs and ask you to define how much you are willing to be involved–any of these routes are preferable to casual but continuous contact. Your time and advice are extremely valuable and should be treated as such by those benefiting from your expertise.

Always say “yes” when: someone is just starting out in their career and needs advice. Every one of us relied on mentors to get started, and success means it’s time to pay it back.

3. Say “no” to plans when: You haven’t had a night to yourself in far too long, and you need some time alone. This includes business-related plans, as well as catching up with friends, even those you haven’t seen in ages. If you need a night off for your health and well-being, say “no.” Somehow it’s not socially acceptable to say that you can’t do something because you’re not busy, but it should be. So for our collective, overscheduled sanity, let’s make it so.

Always say “yes” when: you are just being lazy, and you know deep down you’ll have a great time or a meaningful experience if you get off the couch and go.

“No” is not a word that we typically associate with anything positive. But “no” is an inherent part of prioritization and defining what you stand for. When we think of it that way, saying “no” can actually open up the space for greater potential and possibility.

Image: Flickr user Adam Naddsy

This year marks the third anniversary of the Rotman Design Challenge. It started out as a commendable experiment by the school’s Business Design Club to expose MBAs at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management to the value of design methods in business problem solving. This year, the competition drew teams from a few other MBA schools and some of the best design schools in North America. As a final-round judge, I had a front-row seat to the five best solutions to the competition’s challenge: To help TD Bank foster lifelong customer relationships with students and recent graduates while encouraging healthy financial behaviors.

Designers fared significantly better than MBAs because they shared real user insights.

Both this year and last–the two years that Rotman invited other schools to participate–business school students were slaughtered by the design school students. Of the 12 Rotman teams this year, not one of them made the final round. And while only seven of the 23 competing teams were from design schools (including California College of Arts, Ontario College of Art and Design, and the University of Cincinnati), design teams scooped the top three places in the competition, doing significantly better than their MBA counterparts. So what does this tell us?

It might tell us that MBAs significantly underestimate the skill and expertise a designer brings to the table. After all, about 80 MBA students volunteered their evenings and weekends, believing they had a chance of winning a design competition with minimal, if any, design training. Would you go toe-to-toe with even a purple belt in jiu jitsu having never taken a lesson? While the typical design-school competitor has (at the least) studied the design process in depth for several semesters and practiced it in co-ops and internships, for many MBA students, this was their very first exposure to the discipline. So while we should applaud the organizers’ efforts to open MBA eyes to the importance and value of design in solving business problems, it seems that even its most forward-thinking students may not have fully digested that design is a serious pursuit that requires serious training.

The competition outcome might also tell us that designers have reason to be encouraged. With only 15 minutes to convince a skeptical panel of experienced professionals about a new idea that doesn’t exist in the world today, they fared significantly better than their MBA counterparts. Why? Because they shared real user insights to engage us emotionally, used narrative and stories to compel us, drew sketches and visualizations to inspire us, and simplified the complex to focus us. It’s proof positive that numbers and bullet points, while important, aren’t necessarily what drive executive decision making.

Design should not be tacked on to business education but infused throughout it.

Finally, it tells us that we still have a long way to go to develop business professionals who both appreciate and can engage the tools of design effectively. Rotman gets kudos for taking a step in the right direction. But a few workshops and an extracurricular competition won’t produce business leaders with real design-thinking skills. Business education must be completely redefined to include the best, most appropriate principles of design in every curriculum. Marketing classes should teach a deep reverence for the user in context and the power of observational research methods. Finance classes should teach the art of storytelling and information design. Strategy classes should teach systems thinking and synthesis. If the goal is to create great “hybrid thinkers” who will have real impact, design should not be tacked on to existing business education but infused throughout it.

I’m not letting design schools off the hook either. While design students fared much better than their MBA counterparts that Saturday afternoon, I should point out that only the winning team from the Institute of Design at IIT actually charged a fee for the service they developed (a fact that was not overlooked by my final-round co-judge Ray Chun, the senior vice president of retail banking at TD). Some competitors were able to offer a vague notion that their ideas would generally create economic value, but crisp articulations of a profit model and underlying assumptions were hard to come by.

Design education needs as much of an overhaul as business education.

And I was less than impressed with the business-thinking skills of designers the following Monday morning, when I interviewed 10 of them at the Institute of Design in Chicago for jobs at Doblin. To most candidates, I asked of the ideas they presented in their portfolios, “But how does it make money? Who will pay for that? How much would you need to sell to be profitable?” and was met with far too many blank expressions when I did so. Design schools have a long way to go to integrate good business thinking into their programs. In order to make their value known to the world, designers need to speak the language of business–that’s where great ideas get funded and developed. Design education needs as much of an overhaul as business education if we are to benefit from the talents of design thinkers in the business world.

I hope that we see meaningful reinvention of both design and business education so that the business world can realize the true value of design thinking. Until that happens, Rotman’s Business Design Club would be wise to require challenge teams to comprise both designers and MBAs. At least it would level the playing field, and it may improve the educational experience for both–assuming each can decipher what the other is saying.

Image: Morphart Creations Inc., sextoacto and ueapun via Shutterstock

The publishing industry has a problem. The old guard haven’t innovated. And neither their business models nor their products embrace the digital books revolution.

Take the ongoing and complicated spat between Apple and the Justice Department over the agency pricing model and alleged collusion which ended up with consumers being forced to spend more than they needed to. The battle may expand internationally, in fact. Apple tried to expand its 30% revenue share model, which has done very well in the billion-dollar app economy, into books. It also pushed publishers to agree to a very different way of selling their products: Instead of buying books traditionally, at a pre-agreed wholesale price and then pricing them as Apple saw fit in the iBookstore, it would let the publishers set their own price and extract its usual fixed share of the income … as long as the publishers wouldn’t sell e-books elsewhere.

It was a bold move, and one that could and did shake up the industry a bit. Amazon, the publishers contend, had established a monopoly on e-books, and was selling their wares at overly discounted prices. With Apple’s model they could choose to price e-books lower than physical books cost (appeasing consumers who expect to pay less for a non-physical product), and yet extract more money due to the cost-savings of e-publishing.

The DOJ disagreed, and says Apple’s deal meant consumers ended up spending much more than they needed to, hence its action against Apple and a laundry list of the bigger U.S. publishers. Amazon is now free to renegotiate deals with these publishers and push cover prices lower, which will save consumers cash but may both eat into publisher’s profits and, ultimately, author’s payments.

As such, it’s not a wholly well-received decision as Scott Turow, president of the Author’s Guild, recently noted: “Today’s low Kindle book prices will last only as long as it takes Amazon to re-establish its monopoly. It is hard to believe that the Justice Department has somehow persuaded itself that this solution fosters competition or is good for readers in the long run.” Because when Amazon does re-establish its monopoly, and nudges prices upward, it’ll be operating on the wholesale model–with the extra money sunk into its coffers, not the author’s or the publisher’s.

But as novelist Barry Eisler notes in the Guardian newspaper, there is actually a glimmer of hope in the DOJ’s decision. Amazon could, by sheer pressure of business, force a breakup of the old guard of publishers in the U.S., and make them adapt to the new digital realities or face extinction. In short, they’ll have to radically adjust their business models, and also embrace writers who can deliver new rich-media books, if they’re to keep the book-buying public enthralled and thus make money. Amazon’s quick-growing self-publishing enterprise is an example of how the publishing business may evolve without them if they don’t do this.

And what do we, the book-buying public, want? Cheaper prices, as ever, but we’re also all expecting books to move beyond dead text and into something much more dynamic, something loaded with rich media, something that makes use of the color and graphics of our tablet screens, and perhaps the social networking powers they also sport as apps. Because those kinds of books sure as heck aren’t in Amazon’s top-selling Kindle list right now.

Image: Flickr user dno1967b , and Isriya Paireepairit

Slate Ballard, cofounder of the coworking space The Grove, and Derek Koce, CEO of the product-development firm Independent Software, share five things you need to know about starting a business in New Haven, Connecticut.

UNITED STATES
OF INNOVATION

New Ideas, New Markets, New Insights

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startups new options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick.

CLICK HERE to see how innovation takes many forms

New Haven is a modest town perpetually in the shadow of greater things–most notably Yale University and the two metropoli it’s sandwiched between, New York and Boston. What’s lesser known about New Haven is that is has long been a hotbed of startup activity: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin here, as well as interchangeable parts for guns, sparking a small arms-manufacturing industry that encompassed Winchesters and Colt revolvers. (The city took on an unpleasantly different association with guns when a famous Black Panthers murder in 1970 put New Haven on the international map.)

Today New Haven still offers surprisingly rich opportunities for entrepreneurs. Home to biotech and financial giants like Bristol Myers Squibb, Covidien, GE, and, United Technologies, New Haven counts Kayak, Priceline, and SeeClickFix among its homegrown startups. (SeeClickFix helps governments and citizens act on non-emergency fixes reported on 311 hotlines.) Other recent IPOs include an $88 million exit in 2011 for Tangoe, a telecom expense management solution, and $100 milllion in 2010 for HigherOne, a service facilitating student-loan payments.

We asked Slate Ballard and Derek Koce to share five things budding entrepreneurs should know about New Haven. Ballard is cofounder with Ken Janke of the coworking space The Grove, and Koce is founder and CEO of Independent Software, a prototyping and product-development firm for technology projects.

New Haven has a solid support system for burgeoning businesses.

Koce collaborates with Slate and others on New Haven’s chapter of Startup Weekend, a national event challenging would-be entrepreneurs to whip their project into shape in just 54 hours. Those who can’t get enough pressure-cooker incubating can participate in Launch Haven, a monthly event co-sponsored with The Grove. Their “cram sessions” tap the room’s collective brainpower in lightning rounds that clarify your value proposition, shore up your weaker points, and ensure you fully milk your idea’s potential.

New Haven Economic Development Corporation (EDC) steps into the breach to support entrepreneurs ready for a formal business plan and starter financing. C-Tech and TechStart, both state-sponsored accelerators, shepherd young businesses from their seed-financing round toward maturity–at which point VC firms and investment bankers in Greenwich and elsewhere infiltrate to take mature businesses to a successful exit.

Do-gooders welcome.

“New Haven is home to a plethora of nonprofits–there’s a rise in social entrepreneurship here that the Grove is very invested in,” Ballard says. He cites an upcoming bill in the state general assembly to promote social-enterprise businesses in Connecticut. As a case in point, Slate offers YouRenew, a refurbisher of used cell phones and one of “America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs” in 2011 according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Founder Robert Casey is a “product of Yale, and now he’s decided to stick around,” Ballard says.

Yale isn’t the only game in town.

Ballard and Koce are quick to praise Yale’s involvement in the New Haven business scene–but just as quick to downplay its 800-pound-gorilla status. “Yale is well-known everywhere in the world; New Haven is not,” Ballard says. “That said, there is life outside of Yale here.” Koce’s take is more philosophical: “Yale is obviously a huge brand, but they’re invested in New Haven becoming a vibrant city in its own right. I think of New Haven business as an interesting patchwork quilt. Yale contributes a big piece, but it doesn’t dominate as much as you might think.” New Haven sits in enviable proximity to the entire New England brain trust, with top-tier research facilities under an hour away in every direction.

Stock up on Metro-North and Amtrak tickets.

New Haven’s proximity to New York and Boston offers entrepreneurs a big advantage. “In the middle of the Northeast Corridor, you can get so much done just by jumping on the train,” Koce says. “Go hit your major customers, make a pitch in person, collaborate with someone else in the Northeast–it’s an incredible hidden asset for the city.” But be prepared for a long, expensive commute: A round-trip to New York City can easily involve 4 to 5 hours of travel time, only part of which can be spent productively. Boston is even longer and, because it’s Amtrak, costs as much as a plane ticket.

New Haveners work hard and play easy.

“Lots of outsiders think Connecticut is all yachts and I-bankers on the eastern side, and here in central CT you have crime,” Koce says. “That impression is just wrong.” Well, not entirely: Last year, New Haven was ranked the fourth most dangerous city in the United States. It’s also deeply segregated. Still, New Haven has much to offer residents in the way of quality of life that other, larger northern cities, such as access to secluded Long Island beaches. “The work-life balance here is great,” Ballard says. “I bike to work almost every day in 10 minutes.” Punctuate that commute with a quick beer in the iconic Anchor Bar on the historic New Haven Green, and you have the recipe for an ideal work-hard-play-easy locale.

Image: Flickr user C_Ambler

Once again, New York Design Week is just around the corner, and while it may strike dread into some (convention-center malaise and obligatory parties), it also bears the promise of a few inspiring projects, even if one has to search high and low to find them. Co.Design will aim to bring you the best of the lot, starting with a brilliant interactive installation featuring a tessellated ceiling that will appear to recoil from human presence.

Prior to Design Week, the Brooklyn-based studio the Principals will teach 20 students from the Art Institute of New York City how to network sensors, motors, and microcontrollers to assemble what they call the Cosmic Quilt, a reactive architectural environment. The project, designers say, demonstrates how physical spaces may behave in the future, when the kind of interactivity we have come to expect in our devices makes its way into the places we inhabit.

To gin up $8,000 in funding, they have launched a limited-edition design collection on Kickstarter. All three pieces–a coaster set ($25), fruit bowl ($75), and side table ($225)–are patched together from wood scraps using custom jigs. “The design of the furniture line came from a desire to use the pieces of wood in our shop that often get left over,” the Principals’ Drew Seskunas tells Co.Design. “We found a way of breaking down geometries to smaller templates that could be ‘quilted’ together into larger furniture pieces.”

The dual project encapsulates the studio’s ethos of embracing new technology (interaction design) while holding on to traditional craft (furniture-making). The Kickstarter campaign ends on May 12 (go here to pledge); the Cosmic Quilt will be open to the public from May 19–21.

I once killed a plant in less than 24 hours. Bought it on the hottest day of the year, took it home, left it out on my fire escape–plants need sun, right?–then woke the next day to a yellowed, shriveled wisp of a thing that looked like it’d been thrown in a deep fryer. As gardening ineptitude goes, that has to be a record.

Koubachi, an app-based plant growing system by alumni of technical universities in Switzerland and Germany, is something approaching a godsend for dummies like me. Using a Wi-Fi sensor and an iPhone app, it lets plants talk to their owners–to share how much light they need, when they’re thirsty, and even how hot the water should be.

Here’s how it works: Choose your plant from the Koubachi’s “plant cyclopedia,” then insert the sensor, a Red Dot-award-winning gadget that resembles some kind of Jetsonian meat thermometer, into the plant’s soil. After an initial calibration period, the app draws up a care plan based on biologist-developed growing models that consider everything from the plant’s species and water cycling to the climate and growing season.

From there, it’s super easy: The sensor monitors soil moisture, ambient temperature, and light, then checks those metrics against your plant’s needs and alerts your iPhone (or web) app when it’s feeding or watering time. You don’t have to check your plants at all, just your phone (which you do every 2 minutes anyway).

The catch: The sensor costs 129 Swiss francs (about $140) online. That’s awfully steep, unless you’ve got a greenhouse full of ghost orchids or something.

Koubachi says on its website that a single sensor can be used to monitor multiple plants (once the app gathers enough information about your plant, it can basically operate on autopilot). You can also use the app by itself, for free; it includes the care plan and alerts, but doesn’t monitor growing conditions in real time, so it’s not quite as accurate. Still, it’s smart enough to know not to leave ivy on a fire escape in the middle of July.

Images courtesy of Koubachi

STANFORD, California — Ferrari President and Chairman Luca di Montezemolo sat down with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook for an exclusive meeting of the minds earlier this week. The Ferrari chief, in the San Francisco Bay Area for the season opener of Stanford University’s View From the Top lecture series, gleaned insight from Steve Jobs’ successor and found shared values between the two brands.

Speaking to the assembled masses of students at Stanford, di Montezemolo honed in on each company’s core tenets, saying “attention to the brand, exclusivity, attention to the people, attention to the environment” and control from a central location are fundamental to each company’s success and continued growth.

Di Montezemolo drew a parallel between himself and Jobs’ role in Apple’s renaissance. The Ferrari president and former chairman of FIAT S.p.A took the reigns of the ailing supercar manufacturer in 1991, helping to reestablish the marque in Formula One racing and position Ferrari as a leader in automotive performance and technology.

During his meeting with Cook, di Montezemolo came away with a few insights into Apple’s methods and goals, specifically the company’s focus on simplicity, design and “a passion for product.”

Di Montezemolo went on to praise the management style and leadership at Apple, including its employees’ commitment to producing world-class products and the continued inspiration that Jobs instilled in its workers.

“When you’ve got a leader in a company like Steve Jobs, people have big respect and big gratitude for what he’s done.”

“When you’ve got a leader in a company like Steve Jobs,” di Montezemolo said during his talk, “people have big respect and big gratitude for what he’s done.”

The talk was primarily aimed at Stanford’s MBA students, with di Montezemolo espousing his own management style and what it takes to succeed on the world stage.

“Vision is something crucial for your people.” di Montezemolo said. “Give them clear goals, clear priorities and give everyone the possibility to grow up internally.”

He also took the opportunity to throw a few barbs towards Ferrari’s competition from Germany, admitting that, “Porsche, after Ferrari, is the best car,” but while “they’re perfect, they’re like a freezer. Cold. I prefer the red technology; the hot technology.”

Technological advancements were an underlying thread during di Montezemolo’s talk, with the Ferrari head citing the automaker’s push towards maximum performance and maximum efficiency, not just for outright speed, but in his words, “emotional driving.”

In an interview with WIRED, the Ferrari president touted the advances the automaker has made with its Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS), specifically the hybrid V12 drivetrain shown at this week’s Beijing Motor Show and destined to power its next mid-engine, flagship supercar later this year.

When asked about the possibility of moving beyond hybrid technology and into fully electric vehicles, di Montezemolo shakes his head and simply answers, “No.”

“To do electric you need big batteries,” di Montezemolo says, citing both weight and technological concerns. “I believe a lot in the hybrid. I want to build cars that have performance and can travel far. I want to drive from here to New York if I want.” But he concedes that smaller cars for inner-city travel are better suited to electrification and that the Chevrolet Volt – with its plug-in hybrid drivetrain and range-extending engine – is a solid concept.

“I’m not here to sell. I’m here to let you dream.”

He also admits that Ferrari is looking at the possibility of a plug-in hybrid, but for now a KERS-based hybrid system is what the automaker will be focusing on for the foreseeable future.

However, what Ferrari isn’t considering is an SUV – a competitor to the recently revealed Lamborghini Urus.

“Ferrari has to remain a dream and has to remain a car with very innovative technology,” according to di Montezemolo, who chuckles when he says, “It must remain a hedonistic car.”

“Because we have Maserati in our group, they can do as they do,” he says, referring to the forthcoming Kubang SUV from Ferrari’s corporate sibling and its planned launch next year. “I want to maintain our identity,” and di Montezemolo maintains an SUV would dilute the brand.

Towards the end of his address, Ferrari’s president recognized he was speaking to future customers, joking that he’d happily show them one of the 458 Italias parked outside. But after pulling off his tie during the Q&A session, di Montezemolo concedes to a round of applause that, “I’m not here to sell. I’m here to let you dream.”