Chris Winfield w/ Guy KawasakiThe first keynote at Pubcon was from Guy Kawasaki on The Art of Innovation. To say that Guy has positive energy emanating from him would be an understatement. Guy was the chief technology evangelist at Apple and is now the managing director of Garage Ventures.

Guy LOVES Apple. Guy got into his background starting out in the Mac division at Apple — working directly for Steve Jobs — an “interesting experience to say the least.” His division was all about innovation and that’s what his speech today is about. Most high tech CEOs “suck as speakers and they have no concept of time.” Stupid and arrogant is a bad combination.

This speech reflects as much as he did right as he did wrong. Guy is a late-comer to blogging — he started on January 1, 2006. He got the feeling that most bloggers were ego-maniacs and he had to get over that hump. As soon as he did — he know loved it! He spends about 3 or 4 hours per day on his blog. If he spent as much time in the VC world as he did in the blogosphere, he would be “filthy rich.” He wants to be in the Technorati Top 10 and wants tips as to how to do it. He is currently at 47.

The Art of Innovation

  1. Make meaning. The people who really innovate have a pure heart and they have pure motivation. Too many people try to pitch him as “we have the next great IPO.” The three worst kind of people to start a company with are MBAs, investment bankers and consultants. You want people who care about your company,
  2. Make mantra. You need a guiding light. As an MBA you learn that you need to create a mission statement through a 2 day offsite. Usually led by Moonbeam, the facilitator. Day 1 is “koombaya” building stuff. Day 2 you are in a room with people and come up with some long mission statement. He used Wendy’s mission statement as an example. Wendy’s should be “Healthy fast food.” Nike – “Authentic athletic performance.” FedEx — “Peace of mind.” eBay — “Democratize commerce.” Use the Dilbert mission statement generator: You need a MANTRA, not a mission statement.
  3. Jump to the next curve. Most people stay on the same curve. Most people try to just do things 15% better — they don’t try to innovate.
  4. Roll the DICEE. D=Deep (example Fanning sandal by Reef on the sandals there is a way to open a beer bottle). I=Intelligent: BF-104 flashlight by Panasonic (three kinds of batteries can be used). C=Completeness: GS Hybrid by Lexus. E=Elegant: Nano by iPod. E=Emotive: Harley Davidson.
  5. Don’t worry, be crappy. Version 1 never means having to say sorry! We ship and then we test – welcome to Vista ;) If they had waited for everything to be perfect on the first Mac the world would have passed them buy. Ship revolutionary stuff with elements of crap in them.
  6. Polarize people. Create the product that you yourself would want to use and people will either love it or hate it. TiVo is a product that Guy loves but some people hate! Toyota Scion SUV is another one that people would actually love or hate.
  7. Let a hundred flowers blossom. At the start of innovation you might find out that people you didn’t anticipate would buy — are buying. If this happens to you, “take the money.” This is a good thing (obviously). This happened to Macintosh. The product that saved Mac was desktop publishing PageMaker. Guy believes in God because “there is no other insight into Apple’s continued success”. Ask people who are buying your product and ask them why — then give them more reasons along those lines.
  8. Churn, baby, churn. You cannot just ship crap. You need to constantly improve. Part of being an innovator is that you have to be in denial. Ignore the naysayers. Version 1 must become Version 2.
  9. Niche thyself. Look at an axis and on the vertical is Ability to provide unique product or service and on the horizontal is Value to customer. On the right lower corner is Price. Top left is Stupid. Lower left is Dotcom (example of selling dog food online and the problems with shipping prices). The corner that we want to be in is high and to the right! His example is Fandango (due to having lots of kids). Another example is Breitling Emergency and the LG Kimchi refrigerator.
  10. Follow the 10/20/30 rule. As an innovator you will have to pitch. Pitching for everything (money, sales, partnerships) — you pitch, therefore you are. Guy has to listen to pitches all day that are out of control. The rule is: 10 slides that can be given in 20 minutes, and the optimal size font is 30 point. Rule of thumb – find the oldest person in the audience and ask them what their age is and then divide by 2 — Bonus point:
  11. Don’t let the bozos grind you down. There are always bozos in this world. The dangerous bozos aren’t the fat, dandruff, miserable guys but they are the skinny, svelte well-dressed ones that look successful and you think they are.

    1. “I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers.” — Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM – 1943
    2. “This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — Western Union Internal memo 1876. Shouldn’t Western Union be PayPal nowadays?
    3. “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olsen, Founder, Digital Equipment Corp. 1977
    4. “It’s too far to drive, and I don’t see how it can be a business.” — Guy Kawasaki — Bozo. Guy was asked to interview for the CEO of Yahoo! by Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital and Guy didn’t want to drive there and didn’t see a business model. This statement cost him by his rough calculations – 2 billion dollars.

Check out Guy’s blog at http://blog.guykawasaki.com/ and let’s try to help him break that Top 10 :)

Update: Andy Beal points out that Guy’s speech might have been the same one he gave at TiECon earlier this year. Good catch but it was still a great speech.


Posted by Chris Winfield at 4:47 pm
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