GPT Tools and Thoughts on Education

 In my prior post it was evident that I was quite impressed by the LaMDA chatbot. Since that experience I encountered a number of other surprises: 

First was that some of the Google guys of LaMDA started Character.ai and made it possible for anyone to experiment with building their own bot to see what happens. I did it, and you can check the last iteration of the bot "Front" here (it is worth your while to create a login).  [Sidebar: my first bot implementation was as Yoda of my novel "The Yoda Machine", but the network knew nothing of my novel and lots unrelated about the Star Wars character, so it was untrainable for my purposes.]

Shortly after that I encountered chatGPT the bot made by Openai.com and opened to the public for experimentation which you can try here (it is worth your while to create a login). I have tried that a fair bit. Smart move on their part as they get the whole world to train their network.

Last but not least I stumbled upon a post in NY Post by professor Darren Hick who encountered his first provable case of plagiarism-by-bot and documented its uncovering. He detailed it further in his FB page.

My conclusion from all this is that GPT for now is nothing more than a language manipulator limited by the factual information it has. It writes incredibly nicely structured gibberish from what it knows to satisfy the request it receives. That is how  Prof. Hick uncovered his guilty student. ChatGPT was writing BS that could be uncovered by somebody knowledgeable of the subject matter and not distracted by the form. Any ignorant person would be in the opposite position. Any lazy student would not check what the bot wrote. 

The problem professor Hick correctly identified is that as time goes on ChatGPT will acquire the necessary information (about Hume in his case), if anybody chats with the bot about it (Hume), so that, eventually, it will be able to write something credible even to him.

This brings me to a subject that I have touched repeatedly in this blog over many years which is the use of mind maps as a means of communication, summarization and organization. In the example above professor Hick asked students to "write a 500-word essay on the 18th-century philosopher David Hume and the paradox of horror" and chatGPT spit out 500 words of beautifully worded gibberish.

What if the request had been to produce a mindmap that summarizes concepts and supporting and dissenting arguments for Hume's Paradox of Horror with each node containing no more than 20 words?  I tried my hand at a very abbreviated and unresearched version of it below inadequate for a student. I am not a student to trying to pass his course (72yo, semi-retired SW developer, former prof, and still a researcher).

In my opinion, these outcomes would follow such a request:

as of today, no tool like chatGPT could produce something like this 

Students would have the incentive to learn to summarize their thoughts instead of embellishing words for the sake of increasing the work-count

structuring thoughts as in an outline is the key to effective verbal and written communication

Anyone could use the best of those maps as a cheat sheet for quick learning about Hume

Hume's Paradox of Horror (bogus) Map 

Another thought regarding tools. 

In the 70s, before PCs and Visicalc and lastly, Excel were either invented or became popular, the use of any such tools for an assignment would have been considered cheating. Eventually, people caught up with technology (I taught using Excel and fundamentals of database systems at Seattle University in 1983) and today we take it for granted that much math work not only can but should be done with spreadsheets. So it will be with text generators and it will become necessary to figure out how to grade the intelligent use of tools such as chatGPT. Clearly in this case the student not only did not know the subject matter but did not bother to find out what garbage chatGPT had created, so she failed on multiple fronts due to laziness, but kudos for trying to use a new tool. 

As time goes on perhaps being able to give appropriate instructions to a bot so that it can generate the MINIMUM amount of text to COMPREHENSIVELY explain the matter will become the rule. As with word processing versus handwriting, why write if you don't need to but you can think effectively? We are not there but it will come.

Full disclosure: Much of this post is written with dictation and tools for automatic error corrections since I have familial tremor of the hands that makes writing a painful chore

Patents - Great News and Not So Great

Today, the news below is GREAT news.  One of the worst Patent Trolls (it's synonymous with scum bags) has finally been thrown down the toilet where it belongs along with all its peers "non practicing entities"

The Web’s longest nightmare ends: Eolas patents are dead on appeal

Web pioneers united to stop "interactive web" patents at an East Texas trial.

For entrepreneurs pitching investors the glories of their patents, filed and issues, however, the news has also another slant. It reminds investors that even issued patents can be disallowed if prior art is brought to the PTO. It is a tough and expensive battle, so a patent is still well worth having.  However from the many instances similar to this one (some reported in this blog) investors have learned that patents have also real costs beyond filing and prosecution. They need to be defended, and that is expensive, or they need to be enforced, even more expensive.  Are they ready to see their investments re-purposed to IP litigation fees?  Probably not and certainly not before our company has grown very fat cash reserves.

Conclusion: if you have a patent it is better than not, point it out as an asset, but (outside the pharma sector) do not count on it making the impression it used to.

Marco Messina

Apple - The Great Innovator Or a Bully And a Con?

Check the below article reprinted from ReadWrite.com.  
Apple's glorious "pinch and zoom" patent just got invalidated.  Only a company with the deep pockets of Samsung could pursue the fight all the way to "invalidation", and even after paying Apple about $1 billion awarded by an incompetent jury.Something is profoundly wrong.  Ask yourself how many smaller companies have been put out of business by similar Apple tactics? The irony is that consumers have been bamboozled into believing that Apple is the great innovator on account of these cons.  Was Jobs brilliant at seeing value in other people's ideas and make something of it with brilliant repackaging? Yes absolutely, all the way back to the mid 80's when he ripped off Xerox PARC's mouse, icons and windows UI (Gates and others that saw exactly the same stuff, could also have done the same, but did not "get it" for a few years longer than Jobs).  Unfortunately Apple's deep pockets also allowed it to become a destructive IP bully for which all consumers pay a price.  Small startup innovators cannot defend, they just get put out of business.  The optimist in me likes to think "all cons come to an end", to wit some companies like GM sold junk and lost shareholders value for years but eventually came to their deserved end (unfortunately we also bailed it out and now taxpayers are losing 1/2 their investment thanks to Treasury's decision to unload the stock - but that's another story).

Next time you hear that Apple is king of innovation, remember the story below and ask how many true innovators have been squashed by their con.

Another Apple Patent Gets Smacked Down, And Its 'Thermonuclear War' Becomes Even More Of A Farce

Dan Lyons yesterday

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This time it's the so-called "pinch and zoom" patent getting rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and this is a big deal since that patent was one that Apple used to achieve that huge $1 billion verdict against Samsung in a California kangaroo court last summer.

Now what happens? Does the court in California go back and subtract all the damages that the jury awarded to Apple based on this patent that Apple should never have been granted?

Apple took a big victory lap after that ruling but it's looking like maybe it popped the champagne too early.

The ruling by the USPTO is not final, and no doubt Apple will appeal the decision, but suddenly Apple isn't looking so powerful. In fact, it is looking a bit, well, ridiculous. (And  that's the kind word for it.)

The patent was struck down because the USPTO found prior art. Meaning Apple didn't actually invent the stuff it claimed to have invented. It copied it from others, then went and got a patent on it anyway, and then used that bogus patent to sue rivals.

Worse yet for Apple, this new ruling from the USPTO comes just two weeks after the USPTO smacked down another of Apple's patents, one that related to multitouch and was known as the "Steve Jobs" patent.

I wrote at the time that Apple's "thermonuclear patent war" was a farce. Now that farce seems even sillier.

These Ideas Were Around Long Before Apple 'Invented' Them

Entrepreneurship, Not for Everyone, Salesmanship Is for Everyone

It may be because of where and with whom I hang out, but these days Entrepreneurship seems to be the magic word of the day. Policy makers and economists tell us that with more of it the country will be more competitive, jobs will be created, we will stand up to China, we'll fix the national debt, we'll have a credible national medical insurance, etc. If only we had a Steve Jobs at every corner, the American Dream will be assured. It is all true, but it does not follow that it is true for all.

The message to high school and college grads these days seems to be: it's easy, be an entrepreneur, be a Jobs, or a Zuckerberg, or a Gates,  have an idea and make it a Google. All true and as possible like winning Olympic medals, entering the NBA, winning the lottery, but let's be honest with the youngsters who struggle with figuring out how make a living for their future.  The odds of all of that are pretty low and it takes much more than an idea.

To keep the discussion short, I developed the roadmap below as a way to look at the principles and the details of what I think is in play. As in some of my other posts, I try to synthesize the issues and the logical relationships to be considered to reach a clearer understanding.  The objective is to not waste energy in impossible quests (see "Working Backwards" and "Angelcalc" for when not to bother seeking funding from angel investors, or "Should I Get a Patent?", etc.)

This roadmap, as in other cases has no absolute answers or recommended solutions, only considerations to be explored and used in seeking a best answer for oneself (notice ONEself not ALLself). 

One, and only one of many conclusions, is that a temperament for risk-taking is mandatory for entrepreneurship. Salesmanship on the other hand is a skill fundamental to entrepreneurship, BUT also applicable to all other activities in human activity and commerce.

So, the question for which unfortunately I have no answer is: Why salesmanship is not a primary skill taught at all high schools, colleges and graduate schools?  Why as a society we leave it to Xerox, IBM, Proctor & Gamble and similar companies or to multi-level marketing companies to impart that training with a planned and focused process?  The Introduction to Dale Carnegie 's How to Make Friends and Influence People pointed out that tragic circumstance decades ago.  Why are we still at the same point?
Why is it so hard to find a high school or college grad with even only a cursory idea of how to sell an honest product to a respected customer that has a need?
Perhaps it is time for some bright entrepreneur to design and roll out an effective online sales training program for all those recent grads that are not finding the job they trained for or the countless unemployed displaced by technological change.


Marco Messina

Deep Insight - Daniel Kahneman: Beware the ‘inside view’

How many times do you remember projects, ventures and adventures turning out faster or easier than expected?  Better than expected returns, financial or otherwise, are not uncommon, but easier or faster, next to never.  Why?

Here is Daniel Kahneman's  insight in his words (whole post reported below):

Why the inside view didn’t work   (a book writing project)

This embarrassing episode remains one of the most instructive experiences of my professional life. I had stumbled onto a distinction between two profoundly different approaches to forecasting, which Amos Tversky1 and I later labeled the inside view and the outside view.

The inside view is the one that all of us, including Seymour, spontaneously adopted to assess the future of our project. We focused on our specific circumstances and searched for evidence in our own experiences. We had a sketchy plan: we knew how many chapters we were going to write, and we had an idea of how long it had taken us to write the two that we had already done. The more cautious among us probably added a few months as a margin of error.

A Pirate's mind

Supreme Court Justice Potter famously said of pornography "I know it when when I see it".  After 35 years of serial entrepreneurship I felt "I feel it when I read it" reading Michael Harrigton" Are You A Pirate? -

"... That thrill of your first hire, when you’ve convinced some other crazy soul to join you in your almost certainly doomed project. The high from raising venture capital and starting to see your name mentioned in the press. The excitement of launch and…gulp…customers! and the feeling of truly learning something useful, you’re just not sure what it is, when the company almost inevitably crashes and burns.Now that person is interesting. That person has stories to tell. That person is a man who has been in the arena. There are lots of things that I will probably never experience in this life. Military combat. Being dictator of a small central American country. Dunking a basketball. Being a famous rock star. Or walking on Mars. But one thing I have been, and will always be, is an entrepreneur. And damn it that feels pretty good. Because if I was a lawyer right now, even a rich lawyer, I’d always have wondered if I had what it takes to do something a little more adventurous with my life than work for someone else."

I do not know about the pirate analogy but the profile of the entrepreneur is laid bare in that final description. My first experience in the arena at 27 instantly created an addiction that determined my future. I do think that entrepreneurs at least try to reduce risk any way they can. That may explain why we keep looking fro insights from Steve Blank, Nathan Furr and other brilliant analysts of "pirates and pirate ventures". But I also know that they offer only warning flags along the trail - Watch out for this - Consider that - Do A before B - Avoid C - helpful warnings derived from careful study. 

The risk remains high and either you like it or you don't. For most, the Wagnerian golden ring at the end of the quest, in most cases, will prove to be illusory, what drives is the temperament, foolish most would say, to confront the dragons along the way, often alone or in a small band of fools for the quest as much as for the gold. On that path, the point of no return is the first step. . If Michael's closing summary speeds up your heart, you owe it to yourself to try, at least once, stepping, alone, into the arena. You may never get out and if you do you won't be the same.

Marco Messina

Belief is the key

As a serial entrepreneur I have experienced many times the thrill of following my own path to success, however I  defined it at that time of my life: change the world, make a fortune, make an insight into reality, whatever.  Eventually all ventures evolved into a state of mind best explained by this picture.  The only way to go forward was to "press on" no matter what, believing that the top of the mountain was not far and then it would be, oh so sweet, downhill all the way.  My mother often asked "how far do you still have to go?".  The answer, always, "I am below the rock, I cannot see, I cannot stop, but I am an optimist, it is not far".  And so the rock slowly got pushed up the mountain with minor "strategic" directional adjustments to suit the landscape, but moved primarily by total commitment powered by belief.

Belief (not stubbornness) is the root of achievement, that internal voice that makes us persist in the game.
Toady we see one such game playing in front of our eyes, on Jeopardy.  It is the latest chapter of IBM's pitting  the machine against the human.  The last match was in 1997 and Garry Kasparov was our knight.  He had belief to spare.  He lost to Deep Blue and went into a deep depression as a result - some mountains are too tall and rocks too big, but letting go is always tough.
How would you like to be the Humans' knight in shining armor: Brad Rutter or Ken Jennings?  It takes true grit and great belief.  In the other corner, despite appearances, it is not Watson, it is the IBM team behind that multicolor-cyberface-cum-mawhawk, with seven years and $1-2 billion worth of dreams and persistence on the line.
 
It is a quixotic battle: like that against Deep Blue before. Watson will eventually win for no other reason that IBM will find the Rutter and Jennings of artificial intelligence and put them to work pushing that rock to the mountain top. In this sense defeat of the Humans is inevitable. It may happen tonight or tomorrow or by an average of three nights (BTW Deep Blue won not all matches, only 3.5 to 2.5 over 7 matches). Perhaps we'll have to wait longer yet, but it will come. Our brightest Humans can make machines "smarter" over time but we have not yet found a repeatable and fast way to make ourselves smarter.

Regardless of who wins Jeopardy, the human ability to imagine, belief and commitment will have won again.  And now go back to pushing your rock, you don't have far to go.

Marco Messina

The Multiparty Line (over and again)

Suddenly more and more of my friends and family of the "not-early-adopter" personality type are signing up for Facebook.  They think I am a digital technology early adopter, so I am flooded with "how to" and "why" questions. 

We must have reached the tipping point in social media. In most of he country it is now presumed that you can read and write, watch plenty of TV, own a personal computer and a cell phone AND that you "are on Facebook". If not, you'll feel that you have to explain why not: After all, if you want to hear from your children or get photos of your grandchildren you better be on Facebook.  Furthermore, many of your friends probably have given up email and switched to Facebook, social gatherings will announced there - be there or be square.  The more hip only "do Twitter" and text from smart phones.

As I look at how most people use Facebook and Twitter I see a similarity with past chapters in the evolution of telecommunications: The tolerance for multiparty line communications and loss of privacy swung as follows:

Telephones between 1930 to 1960's and even beyond for outlaying rural communities: Seniors still remember that in those years, presuming to have private telephone conversation in a small town was a joke.  Either your neighbor(s) or a bored switchboard operator was presumed to be listening on. 

Automatic switchboards and sufficient telephone lines brought privacy back.

CB radios became popular, not only with long distance truckers, but also with aunt Mae and cousin George from 1972 (because of the First OPEC Oil Embargo and resultant gasoline shortage) until the early 80's.  With some planning (for a trip in convoy) you might manage to talk to someone you knew, but by en large it was the "first Twitter" where you told strangers what was on your mind or "in the road" - listeners "followed you" and you were "Buddies" only because you had in common the same piece of interstate highway at the same time:  10-4 Good Buddy...

Cell phones eventually brought an end to CB radios and brought privacy back.

Computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) created the first multiparty communications for computer users around 1975, their use exploded with personal computers in the early 80's until supplanted by the internet in the early 90's.  Again you could "talk" (type) on an open line to all those that had a similar interest: computer software,  computer games (text-based, before-video), dating services (professionals or lonely hearts), etc. 

The first user friendly Internet Browser (Netscape) in 1990 opened the Internet to the masses and with email, privacy was back. By 1999 you had better be ready to explain under what rock you lived if you did not have an email address. 

Web2.0 Social Media Arrives

Social Media  could be said to go as far back back to the PLATO system (1973) at University of Illinois, but in its current Web2.0 form it started with Friendster in 2003, followed by the explosion of  MySpace (driven by the high school crowd), Linkedin (the professional crowd), Facebook (the college grads crowd) and Twitter (the short comments crowd). 

All provide a choice of communication channels that vary from open-line to private-line telephone emulation. In Linkedin and Facebook anyone known or unknown can be friends by invitation and mutual agreement. Friends of friends can be more or less shared depending on user choice and the fee paid for one's account. In Twitter anyone can be anyone's friend, just because they are there.  With something valuable to say and consistent effort nurturing the audience one can garner 200,000 followers or more. In Facebook, with a "poke" you can be "friends for 3 days" and show a little tease (A "poke" is intended to get someone's attention allowing them to see your Facebook page for 3 days, so they can know who you are, and hopefully add you as a friend).  

Those who bother to manage their privacy can hide their Facebook friends, but most users are pretty open, by accident or by design.  Some do not know any better (instructions for adding friends are jammed down your throat while those to manage privacy are far from clear), so they have all their friends visible to all friends of friends. Then they write on one friend's wall a private message (trivial or important) only to discover they were shouting on the town's party line.  

We are back to telephone privacy circa 1945, but this time the technology is not to blame. 

The psychology and sociology of multiparty lines

At this point you can go on to something more productive than reading the remainder. Following are my speculations and opinions on the subject, and you know what they say about opinions.

I always interpreted the user's tolerance of a multiparty line as the price to be paid in the early stages of a new technology introduction: When the resource is limited, the price of privacy is high and beyond the budget of most, but eventually mass adoption scales the system to where privacy is affordable to all.  

Today, however I see the commonplace use of open communication channels for private matters, seemingly with little concern, when means to achieve privacy exist.  Why?

Is there a group psychology in play here, similar to that found in American high schools or colleges: The dynamics of wanting to belong, wanting to be heard, wanting to be included, wanting to be popular?  It would surely explain why the first big successes by social media sites were with students in high school  (MySpace) and college (Facebook), whereas the membership process and the chatter in Linkedin (business leads and job hunting professionals) have been far more private and resulted in slower growth.  

Is this why some feel compelled to announce to the world "I at the airport waiting for a flight to London" (as if we would care) or "Stranded in Paris on the way to Moscow" (it happens to everyone that changes planes in Paris), or "traveling from A to B stopping at C to walk the dog" (as if we all were waiting for them), or "standing in line to buy my iPhone tomorrow morning" (so you are one of a million)?

It's easy to say - just stop following them, drop them from your friends lists, etc. But that is not the point. 

First, those same people at times make public announcements of value ("iPhone proven to lose call" - Good to hear, I am not crazy, "X just released a multitasking xPad" - Good to hear, now I can skip the iPad). 

Secondly, the riddle I wish to unravel is why private comments aimed at a single person find instead their way into the chatter of the public town square. Has the need for privacy been abandoned?  If it is evolving we better understand why and how, because the public town square is changing and we cannot stay away from it - it is the new language we must learn to use correctly.

Please, comment with whatever insight or guesses you care to share (BTW, not just with me but with all my followers!).

Marco Messina

Planets, Aristarchos, Ptolemy, Copernicus and Entrepreneurship

The power of discovery
I just came across this interesting news of one more step forward in the discovery of earth-like planets elsewhere in our galaxy. The increasing frequency of news like this supports the idea that we are getting close to proving once more that our plane is not only "not the center" but is also not unique, in which case various "other life" considerations inevitably follow.

The Greek philosopher Aristarchus of Samos had already figured the "not center" idea in 43 BC; he was ignored for 1500 years and even today is hardly given any credit.
Aristotle and Ptolemy with the flawed but more intuitive idea of Geocentricism (earth at the center of the universe), and with a better "sale pitch" got and controlled mind-share for 1500 years.
Copernicus and Galileo eventually sold Heliocentrism (sun at the center of the planets), a v2.0 of Aristarchus ideas, with better "showmanship" (drop balls from the Tower of Pisa and incarceration for heresy) to win the  mind-share race.

Centrism and Entrepreneurship
Humans would seem to have an instinct to imagine ourselves unique as much as permitted by ignorance, dogma and lack of facts. Possibly there is a survival value in brains intuitively "provincial" since it would limit the amount of data to be dealt with at any given moment: worry about immediate local threats (tigers), less about future and distant ones. With that trait, individually, we can intuitively and locally develop the notion that what we do is unique.  In reality however, we just have not looked for and found our competition.

For innovators and entrepreneurs, the remedy of this blind spot is getting out (talk to customers, talk to others in the same industry) and looking (search the blogosphere, academic research and industry press). Investigation will make us discover "another planet" like us, our competition. Loss of the myth of our uniqueness will require a radical change, a new perspective just as human psychology was impacted by the Copernican revolution. Finding our competition will demand a far less self-congratulatory and more guarded state of mind (i.e.we found the tiger, now what?).

Some more lessons from Aristarchus
Just as it happened to old Aristarchus, as an entrepreneur and innovator you may well have the right answer to "the question", but the market may not be  ready for it (e.g. there is lots of that happening now in the new green energy business!).  Pursuit just the same.

Recognize the possibility that the market will eventually accept your answer, but it may be in a version 2.0 advanced by a more compelling salesman.  The antidote is to strive to become a better salesman.  Meanwhile speak ( and twitt) loudly and consistently  "around" the established thinkers (the Aristotle and Ptolemy of your day).  Don't give up, the mind-share race is won one brain at a time.

Strive to find a way to stay in the game that is not totally dependent on the disputed idea you are championing. Staying power (most often enabled by capital) is the answer to the challenge. If you go out of business pursuing only the unpopular idea you will not survive to the day when reality will prove you right beyond dispute.

Marco Messina

Patents and Due Diligence

I frequently run into investors that seem to find a great deal of confidence in the fact that the company the are doing due diligence on has an "issued" patent.  They seem to believe that once the PTO issues it we are in Safe Land.  I wish I could be that optimistic, instead I often find myself "raining on the parade" suggesting that there are still big questions to be addressed:

Markets covered

If the projected market is global, but the patent is only issued in the US, what will the cost be to cover other countries?  

Is there still time to file abroad in desired markets? 

The rest of the world works on the basis of "first to file", so if someone invented well after the US inventor, but filed first in the country in question, it would be quite hard (not impossible) and expensive to contest the foreign filing.

Cost and means cost of enforcement

The PTO issues a patent but does no enforcement. Protection and enforcement of the rights implicit in the patent are up to the inventor/holder: Does the holder have the means to enforce its rights?  No cash to pay for litigation is about good as no patent.

If a company is granted a permanent irrevocable exclusive license to the patent by the inventor, the holder is the one that has to protect it through litigation, unless the right to prosecute infringers is granted along with the license, which normally isn't since the licensor is expected to protect the patent rights as consideration for the royalties received.  Does the holder have the ability, financial means and will to protect the patent rights? If not and the company does not either, it may have no means to prosecute infringers and in practice have no patent at all.

How "real" is the patent?

This is the question that seldom seems to be considered. In "Patents: what do they mean to you" I referenced the debacle of Research In Motion (RIM the maker of Blackberry) whose issued patent had one claim  invalidated years after being issued.

Another interesting case is that of so called "bogus patents" as this "Must Read" case reported by ReadWriteWeb.com: 

The notorious U.S. patent 6,411,947, a broad "method" for automatically classifying and responding to email inquiries known as the Firepond/Polaris patent, has finally been invalidated after 12 years on the books. (continue)

The warning here is: if it looks to you to be too easy, too obvious to be patentable, have an expert check the details, not just validate that the patent is issued. If it does not quack like a duck, it may not be one regardless of the stamp put on by the PTO or it may be so only for a short while.

Are patents useful?

Of course they are.  They certify to a good degree the novelty of an idea if not to its economic value. By virtue of the prior art research done, they attest to the difficulty of finding competitors.  Competitors could well exist that have prior art but never bothered to file a patent and they could come out later as they did for RIM.

Should inventors file them? Of course, but with the awareness that they grant no explicit protection. They only give one the right to spend money in litigation  to protect the rights implicit in the patent. 

Should investor value them?  Certainly, but, in my view, subject to the above considerations and making sure that due diligence includes looking carefully under the hood.

Marco Messina

Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Working with startups I have the good fortune of dealing regularly with highly motivated energetic and imaginative people who feel a drive to change their world. To some the world is the immediate vicinity, to others it is the whole globe, but in all cases they all see themselves destined to make a big difference. Most, not all, hope to be well compensated for their novel contribution and hard work. Even in this specialized group, however, invention, innovation and entrepreneurship are frequently confused. There are standard dictionary definitions of each readily available, but their frequent interplay complicates things. Let's look at how:

Invention (Inv)
An invention is an idea developed by a person, the inventor. To be recognized as such by the US PTO it requires 1. Novelty and 2.Non-obviousness to others skilled in the domain.  Note that there is no reference to usefulness, implementation, results, etc.

Innovation (Inn)
Is the process by which a useful outcome is obtained by a the implementation of either a new idea (an invention) or of an old idea in a new way or under new circumstances.  Note that invention is not  a requirement, but novelty of application, usefulness and most of all implementation are.

Entrepreneurship (Ent)
The activity of an entrepreneur: from its French root it implies starting something, particularly in business, taking risk for the outcome. Only initiative and risk taking a required, however common sense would also recommend a useful purpose that justifies the risk taking.  Neither invention nor innovation are required.  By this definition an entrepreneur could be one who opens a delicatessen selling the same products at the same prices and with the same level of service as the competition. So long as there is excess demand to be met the risk would be compensated by happy customers.  Growing from there would require innovation.

Most founders of startups I run into have some of all of the above. They are risk takers (Ent), they act (Ent) to achieve a useful purpose or meet a need (Inn, Ent) and they do so in a novel way (Inn) sometimes starting from a new idea (Inv), sometimes from a novel reshuffling of an old one (Inn)

With this in mind, some interesting businesses, inventions and entrepreneurs come to mind

Vannevar Bush
Bush in 1945 (yes '45) in an article "As We May Think" in The Atlantic Monthly conceptualized and defined the specifications of a personal information storage, retrieval and sharing machine, the Memex, remarkably similar to a today's  personal computing devices.  Note that he did so before the invention of transistors and ICs that made the digital age possible. Reading the referenced article, you may note that it all depended on photographic data compression.  Today's high density ICs still depend on the same principle, so Bush was correct in his extrapolation of the fundamental technology and only incomplete in the details of the ovolution. This example begs the question of how much do we recognize something as today's innovation only because of short memories.

Zappos
Zappos is frequently and justly touted as having developed a fanatic level of customer service. It is a correct assessment but only relative to on-line retailing. Anyone who dealt with Nordstrom in Seattle around 1970 (interestingly also a shoe retailer in its beginnings), would instantly recognize the same fanatic commitment to service that built their retailing empire. To wit a story reported by the Seattle papers of a sales clerk running out of Nordstrom to buy from a store next door something a customer wanted but not carried by Nordstrom. Without taking anything away from Zappos this example again begs the question of how much do we recognize something as today's innovation only because of short memories.

Cloud Computing
This new holly grail of the information age is a "whole new concept", invention and innovation only to those that began computing in the desktop PC age (the Computing Mesozoic).  Any remaining survivors, Homo Calculans, of the computing stone age (the Computing Paleozoic) will recall IBM's TSO (Time Sharing Option).  In its day a new concept, TSO promised, and largely delivered, ultra-flexible access to computing resources, centrally managed and backed up, capacity seemlessly reconfigured by the Wizards of Armonk to give us, Homo Calculans, ready access (through monitor-less teletype terminals) to the day's "Software Services" (SaS).  The services included pre-Visicalc/Supercalc/Lotus/Quattro/Excel simulation wonders and other similar wizardry.  Then the Federal Trade Commission mandated the end of SaS and a new age dawned. On the carcass of TSO Honeywell, CDC, Amdhal came to feed.  Eventually they succumbed to more nimble raptors: DEC, WANG, IBM-NASD, Prime, who in turn were hunted into extinction by the micro-raptors Apple, the CP/M herd, the Microsoft/Dell/Clones, IBM-PC/DOS and countless other breeds too small to note. And now the CellPhones and Pads are coming.  Few of the species were adaptable enough to come through the ages: IBM, HP and the endlessly adaptable software-jocks that live parasitic lives on any platform. In the end the logic at the foundation of TSO, like a dominant gene survived to see its day again.

We call all this evolution Innovation and Invention for good reason: in all its forms it is always novelty with purpose.  The  true constant, the DNA of it all, is in the entrepreneurs who have that special gene for taking risks with the purpose of doing something useful, to meet a need.  That will not change.

Marco Messina

Markets, Customers and Angels' Risk Aversion

Famous entrepreneur and Stanford Technology Ventures Program lecturer,Steve Blank reports that business failure from technology failure (the business' technology encounters operational conditions under which it cannot perform as hoped) is about 10%. Business failure from misunderstood and miscalculated markets, market failure, is about 90%. Why?  I propose that the nature of the "entrepreneurial brain" has much to do with it.

Entrepreneurs by nature are innovators, problem solvers: they perceive a need (more convenience, more speed, less cost, whatever) and instinctively start seeking a solution, a fix. That initiative and independent thinking is the power of entrepreneurs, but is also a curse. Asking  "what do others think" does not come as automatically. So, the entrepreneur finds a solution to "the problem", a problem possibly perceived by only one person, himself, and presumes it is a widespread need.  Then, enamored with the conceptual "solution" (s)he commits time, effort and treasure to create a prototype.  Sometime for lack of sufficient resources a detour is needed into fund raising to finance the idea now morphed into a business venture.  

Eventually a product is ready for sale and the surprises start coming: customers are not as enthusiastic about it as hoped, they have difficulty using the product because of a million reasons, or they could benefit from using it, but other circumstances prevent its adoption (e.g. supply chain disruption, legacy systems, not invented here, etc.). In a few words our entrepreneur has invented a Bricklin or a Segway, an innovative design with definite benefits but overall unsuitable for the larger market originally targeted. The outcome is then outright failure or a walking zombie of a business.

In product and software development there are long standing disciplines (use case analysis) to ensure that acceptable performance will be possible in specific instances of use.  Use case is a discipline that forces  asking questions, and more questions, and more questions.  The same discipline is needed with respect to markets and customers. Here are the questions to ask:

What are your customers top problems?
How much will they pay to solve them?

      Could they do nothing and get by?
Does your product concept solve them?
      Do your prospective customers agree with you on this? [Your guess that they do is the issue we are trying to avoid!]
Draw a day-in-the-life of a customer (the customer's use case) 

      before & after your product adoption

      what will the product improve

      what will the product hinder/change/complicate

Draw the org chart of users & buyers

     are they the same?

     we must satisfy both, but buyers control

     who has a vested interest in favor or against adoption?

     who is the loser if adopted?

     can your customer afford to upset the loser?

Are there enough buyers NOW to make it worthwhile?

Can we scale our processes to match the market size?

The only way to know for sure is for the founders to go out (out of the office, in the real world) and ask the customers.  Go out and ask are obvious, but would marketing consultants be able or even better at doing this research? Definitely NOT.  Consultants can go out with clipboards to get data and analyze it, but at this stage the critical component is intimate understanding of BOTH the customer and the product concept/prototype.  Only the founders-inventors can "feel" both sides of the equation and catalyze a workable solution based on the customers' responses.  If the consultants could do it, they would have been the inventors-founders.

So, early on, even before prototypes, go out and ask your intended customers how your product will meet their needs and what issues it will cause and LISTEN. The product will almost inevitably be modified by this effort, but at much lower cost than building and rebuilding prototypes or final products. You may discover that your product is perfect at a perfect price with the expected benefits, etc.  Too bad that its adoption would kill another more important part of your customer business and therefore your customer would have to be mad to adopt your product.

Validating your value proposition in person and directly with the customers (taking into account all vested interests involved)  may just reduce the probability of your business' market failure from 90% to something less. Any improvement will likely appease your angel investors' risk aversion.

Marco Messina

The Myth of The Outsider

Innovators are by nature curious people with a strong desire to improve the world around them.  Upon encountering a problem, an inconvenience, or a task too cumbersome, instinctively they seek to find a remedy for it.  That drive has been at the foundation of innovation since the invention of the wheel, the first disruptive technology shaped by man (fire and stone tools were not invented, were "found" and nurtured).

Since then, innovators have nurtured the romantic idea that a single bright mind can find an answer to a vexing need and be recognized (financially or otherwise) for it.  Over the centuries it has certainly occurred, but in modern day, that notion may not hold as well. I lost count of the many ventures I have seen presented whose business plan calls for commercializing  Joe-Invenor's "idea or solution" the viability of which has was vetted only by Joe's friends and other supporters devoid of domain knowledge and experience.

Indeed, "people from outside the industry" have, occasionally, succeeded in seeing solutions insiders did not, but I believe those were the exceptions, or, more often, that conclusion was reached with incomplete information.  For instance, in the popular culture many believe the myth of: "bright college drop out (Bill Gates) develops a computer operating system that mighty IBM could not, thereby creating a bright new world".  The reality, however, is that Gates, due to a most unlikely coincidence, had over 10,000 hours of programming experience before going to college, was indeed very bright, and dropped out to make a microcomputer version of a programming language (BASIC) previously developed by others when Gates was 9, not an operating system.  The staggering success that followed came thanks to a lot of hard work to be sure, but also more coincidences, personal and family connections, quick thinking and, in the end, the wisdom of assembling a team with the brightest industry experts. IBM conversely had all the resources and talents to make their own solution, but simply chose the buy vs. make route. Due to more coincidences it unwittingly helped a major competitor to be born. A similar review would correct the popular myths on the birth of Google or Netscape or Apple and others.

If we dig deep enough for details, there are very few demonstrable cases of successful innovation by an "outsider" blessed with "new eyes" vision. Invention is another matter since invention (including a patent) requires only a "novel idea" with no consideration to any practical implementation potential, let alone actual implementation.  The world is covered with ideas. Most do not see even an attempt at implementation because that requires hard work well beyond "imagineering". A few ideas see implementation only to die early for lack of  practical underpinnings, or of a value proposition that moves customers to act (these are the solutions in search of a problem).

Today, innovations cannot stand alone.  They have to integrate in a complex web of interfaces, other products, services, regulations, business processes, cultures, vested interests, user habits, etc.  On its own each "new idea" may be commendable, but, if its implementation requires changing the world all around it, it is probably dead on arrival.  The same goes for creating new standards or modifying existing ones.

New eyes may appear to see new solutions, but, often, only because they do not see the reasons why the new idea cannot interface well enough with the reality around it.  The only fix for that blind spot is to bring into the team the best domain experts available.

Experts are those that through practice had the opportunity to learn all the interfaces required for any system component to fit its ecosystem. Often they will show why "it" won't work.  I those cases, be grateful: avoiding wasted time, which is even more important than avoiding wasted money.  In the best cases the domain expert may suggest modifying the "new idea" and make it possible to be more than a flash in the pan.

Inventiveness creates ideas.  Innovation creates results through inventiveness checked by practicality.  Beware the single minded genius, particularly yourself.

Whether the entrepreneur or the an angel investor doing due diligence, involve domain experts if you are an outsider. It will lower your risk.

Marco Messina