Last night I attended a lecture at the Pino Entrepreneurship Center at FIU by Dr. Jeff Stamp. Jeff is a college professor who specializes in research on creativity, but he has also launched 5 successful startups. His claim to fame is that he created the baked Lay's potato chip for Frito Lay, which is now a billion dollar product. The key points in Jeff's presentation were:
- New ideas scare people because it takes people out of their comfort zone
- Creativity comes about by changing contextual perception; effectively one needs to escape ones background and preconceived ideas in order to be creative
- To sell new ideas you have to change the context of the audience
He illustrated these points through a consulting assignment he did for HP to develop a new printer. The printer Jeff designed prints on non-paper surfaces and is not stationary like a desktop printer. When he first presented it to HP he said that the new printer could be used to do temporary tattoos (the context change). The HP executives immediately turned down the idea because "HP is not in the tattoo business". He then explained that the printer could be used to print children's names on their clothing, to put identifying descriptions on shelves, etc. The HP execs immediately loved the idea and the product is coming out in 2008. By introducing the "crazy" idea of a tattoo printer he immediately displaced the notion that printers are stationary and use only paper.
Another interesting finding from Jeff's research is that the more you become a domain (subject matter) expert the less likely you are to be creative. Maybe that's why so few companies survive 100 years and so many of the great thinkers in history have focused on multiple disciplines, e.g. Descartes, da Vinci, etc.
Jeff is also part of the "you don't need a business plan" school, but he then went on to explain what he thinks are the three key parts of every business plan:
- Defining the customer need you are satisfying
- Developing your differential advantage
- Detailing the path to profitability
Pretty good short form business plan. I would add defining the target customer and determining the size of the market opportunity to Jeff's list, but after five successful startups Jeff's probably entitled to his own methodology.
Jeff is a very entertaining speaker and well worth hearing if you have the chance.
