WebVisions 2007: Inventrepreneurship

by May 4, 2007

Paul Ingram’s Inventrepreneurship talk at WebVisions 2007 outlined the importance of getting your ideas into the world and some simple steps for doings so.

  • There’s potential in every thought. So do something about your ideas: get your head in the right place, prototype your idea, recruit a team, launch, build, and tweak.
  • “If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good I am satisfied.” =Alfred Nobel
  • Prototyping gives you a way to communicate ideas to people. Tell a story.
  • Artsy: Ideas, Brand, Information Architecture, Visual Design, Usability, CSS
  • Geeky: Ideas, Platform, Data Model, XML/Web Services, Javascript/Ajax/DOM, CSS
  • To create a civil union, arsty people need to crossover toward geeky. If a designer hands something to developers that kind of works, it smoothes the transition.
  • To create a civil union, the geeky side needs to grow their awareness of markup and CSS.
  • Private Virtual Partnership: Use simple agreements to get the ball rolling for designer & developer collaboration. The idea owner covers most of the business overhead but provides significant percentages of ownership to those involved. This creates an arrangement where both sides are working hard on something interesting.
  • Beta stickers are for wimps: Indicates I’m afraid to say this is done. Assumes it will be done at some point when really most Web products are never actually done. Beta label gives you a lot of excuses for things not to work.
  • On the other hand, not having a beta label, gives people a reason to contact to you to discuss what’s working or not. It’s a great way to engage with customers.
  • Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Deliver half a product, not a half-assed product.
  • Putting something online forces you to take action on it as people begin using it. Building live guarantees there is a launch date.
  • Rapid prototyping provides many opportunities for course correction.
  • We all have ideas and it’s important to make them happen. Give more consideration to those things that pop into your heads.