SOPHISTICATED FINANCE

AutoTutor: AI Meets Education

Image via Wikipedia

PsychCentral has an interesting article about AutoTutor, a software application developed at the University of Notre Dame. The app use artificial intelligence to improve learning outcomes by identifying student misconceptions about a subject and proactively correcting them.

Sidney D’Mello, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Notre Dame, states:

“Most of the 20th-century systems required humans to communicate with computers through windows, icons, menus, and pointing devices.”...  “But humans have always communicated with each other through speech and a host of nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, eye contact, posture, and gesture. In addition to enhancing the content of the message, the new technology provides information regarding the cognitive states, motivation levels, and social dynamics of the students.”

The riddle of educational software has perplexed educators and software developers since the advent of computers. This approach using AI is an interesting direction.

Thanks to Walter Bender for the heads up.

Related articles

• New Software Responds to Students' Emotions, Boredom (neurosciencenews.com)
• New computers respond to students' emotions, boredom (esciencenews.com)

Just-In-Time Mobile Apps

@espitia7 tweeted me an article from Frog Design, one of my favorite blogs. In the tweet he asked if I thought this new technology would be disruptive (as in Clayton Christensen's "disruptive innovation"). Thanks German.

Frog Design forecasts that most apps resident on a smartphone will disappear in favor of "just-in- time" cloud-based apps that provide information on the phone when you need it. For example, the cereal box in the supermarket sends a message to your smartphone and automatically nutrition information appears on an open browser page. Nice idea, but I can search that information in seconds on Google and see little value in an automated version. Where I do see value is in a scenario where I arrive at the airport, the airline recognizes I am there for a flight (like every other week) and sends the boarding pass automatically to my cell phone so I can proceed immediately through security. Or in my dreams, based on a statistical profile that shows I took fifty flights in the last two years, no planes blew up and I can go directly to the gate by showing a special pass delivered to my phone. These last two options would have value to me. This level of convenience would be disruptive.

Another benefit to just in time apps would be lower storage requirements on phones due to less software and updates. Phone manufacturers are looking to replace components through software as a means to lower phone cost in developing markets. These component replacement apps could use the space freed up from traditional resident apps.

Many thanks to all the people who have recently tweeted me interesting articles, including @miam_twopcharts, @john_menezes, @canningcollege, @siontele and @OLPC_Mexico.

Note: the Frog article includes a nice discussion of value creation and customer perception.

Related articles

• Change the Physical Location of the Technology (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)

Design Insights from Charles Eames

Image via Wikipedia

I have written many times about design as a model for entrepreneurship. The last post on a designer (architect) was on Frank Gehry and the last post on design was here. 

Much of the discussion of design revolves around the notion that great ideas do not come from understanding the customer. Steve Jobs and Henry Ford are frequently quoted to support this view. I prefer this quote about Charles Eames, the famous furniture designer:

“He never worried much (as many designers do) about ‘what the public wants,’ or ‘what the public will accept,’ because he had a profound belief in the public, and the conviction that if they didn’t want or wouldn’t accept the furniture which he was designing for their use, the fault lay in his designs, not in the public."

I think this more humble statement strikes the right balance between design and the customer.

Jeff Bussgang, a well known VC in Boston, has some thoughts from his blog "Seeing Both Sides" on the same theme here.

The quote came from Curiosity Counts.

Pinterest and Prezi

There has been a lot of recent improvement in the design of user interface, inspired in part by leading examples for the iPad, such as Flipboard. Flipboard was named iPad app of the year in 2010. Such highly visual, simple interfaces have now been captured in websites and the general media. Fuse Project's website is a good example, Ferrari has a great site and this rendering of the NYT is my favorite. Two new businesses following this trend are Pinterest and Prezi.

Pinterest is a relatively new site that allows one to tell stories in pictures. The company has reportedly just raised capital through a venture round lead by Andreessen Horowitz. What is more noteworthy is that their user statistics are reported to mirror Facebook in the early stage.

Prezi is a cloud-based alternative to Powerpoint. That is the simple explanation. The more complex explanation would be mind mapping meets Flipboard meets Powerpoint. For the presentation of complex ideas Prezi may be the answer. Now I just have to figure out how to use it. 

Related articles

• Ushering in a new era of presentation development with Prezi (mnprblog.com)
• Exclusive: Pinterest Closes A New $27M Round With Andreessen Horowitz Valuing Start-Up At $200M (allthingsd.com)
• Reel: An Alternative to Slideshare and Prezi (nytimes.com)
• Meet Pinterest: A Private Social Pinboard That Collects Your Online Memories (mashable.com)

Steve Jobs Best Quote

Image via Wikipedia

The eulogies and stories about Steve Jobs have been plentiful. The calibre of people writing about Jobs is perhaps unequaled in history, in part thanks to the Internet and the collaboration it has spawned. An aspiring entrepreneur could probably learn 90% of the key lessons from a careful reading of these articles. Someone should publish a collection of the best articles.

One of the best lessons, not surprisingly, is a quote from Jobs himself. In writing about Edwin H. Land, the founder of Polaroid, who Jobs described as his hero, he said:

“Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that.”

The recognition of the role of art, or perhaps more precisely design, in combination with science or technology, is the key to understanding the great contribution of both Land and Jobs. The ability to create an organization that reflected this approach was perhaps Jobs real gift.

I found the quote in this NYT story. A Bloomberg TV story on Jobs through Business Insider is here, which features Eric Schmidt and Marc Andreessen.

Posts on design will continue.

You Need to Think about Video

Some recent analysis shows that I access Internet content through an iPad 70% of the time, 10% through a smart phone (BB) and 20% through a Mac Book. I am probably not representative of the user universe but I am sure other people have my problem. Too many website videos do not run on my iPad or BB. I do not even like videos and I am very annoyed when a new product demo video does not run on one of my devices (the only videos I watch). Would website developers please use Vimeo, YouTube or another web-based alternative. Imagine how annoying it is to people that enjoy a wide range of videos when their device cannot run the video. The more subtle point here is that web-based messaging of all types needs to be hardware platform and software independent. On a similar note, post formatting will improve as soon as Typepad comes out with a better way to produce stories on the iPad.

Frank Gehry and Design

Frank Gehry Image via Wikipedia

Recently I began reading an excellent blog, UX Magazine, that talks about design, web design and user interface. The posts are comparable in quality to Frog Design, the best blog on design that I have found so far. My fascination with design as a means to better understand entrepreneurship and innovation is briefly explained here and a quick search of SF shows 40 posts on design. 

A recent UX Magazine post discusses Frank Gehry, arguably the greatest architect of modern times. In the article they describe Gehry as follows:

"Over and over again you see this persistent iterative discipline within his works. In his exhaustive explorations of new materials and his highly collaborative critiques, each step in the process reveals new strengths and weaknesses that can be added to, taken away, or left alone—a continuous cycle of exploration, critique, and iteration that constantly challenges the interpretation of the product."

"Ultimately, iteration is one’s ability to know what to throw away and what to keep in order to move closer to one’s goal."

This last quote particularly caught my attention. This is a re-statement of one of my favorite approaches to innovation--relax the assumption. In the "relax the assumption" approach to problem solving one identifies a key assumption and then relaxes that assumption. For example, software applications resident on PCs. Relax the assumption about the app resident on the computer and you might get cloud computing, software-as-a-service, video distribution, browser-based applications, etc. More on this method is here.

Now that I can cite Frank Gehry for "relax the assumption" I feel even better about this concept.

The UX article goes into Gehry's design methodology in much greater detail and discusses three principles in all his work. Well worth reading if you design anything or are interested in how world class thinkers approach problems. Remember, as Marvin Minsky says, when you see a great idea understand the process that produced the idea.

Design as the Paradigm of Entrepreneurship

When I began teaching entrepreneurship I struggled with how to teach the development of the product idea and the value proposition for the customer. I got much insight from reading what great designers had to say. Eventually I became a student of the design process and produced many posts here on SF about design.

My thinking has continued to evolve and now in the first lecture in my entrepreneurship course I draw the distinction between entrepreneurship, a finance course and design. In a finance course, one learns theories and, if lucky, the practical application of the theory, but there is no tangible product that the student takes away. In both entrepreneurship and design the development process leads to a tangible result. In the case of design, a new product, and in entrepreneurship a new business model.

In this MITX video Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab, shares my view on design as the model for entrepreneurship but takes it a step further. Nicholas believes that designs skills are integral to business success. Nicholas also has some other interesting views, including that the neuroscience of the brain is the new media.

Related articles

• Teaching Entrepreneurship (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)
• Innovation--What is it? (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)
• Design for business Impact: How design triggers transformation (Frog Design)

Toys in Technology Design

The XO laptop Image via Wikipedia

 

When the XO laptop was launched by One Laptop per Child, Steve Jobs reportedly called it a "toy". What did you expect for children Steve? There are now 2 million XOs in the hands of children around the world and quite a few adults also use the XO on a daily basis.

The notion of technology "toys" intrigues me and there have been several good posts on the subject recently. The GarlicSlim blog has a post entitled Technology principle: The toy will win. In this post the writer defines a toy as

"a technological product which is simple and fun to use, and which may be criticized by some people as being weak and not suitable for serious work".

He cites the iPod as an outstanding example of a toy. Another example of toys cited is the micro-computer in the computer era dominated by IBM mainframes. To explain the success of a 'toys" approach, the author cites two reasons:

1. Toys do not lose sight of the fact that the product must serve the user
2. Toys focus on the user experience and "fun"

Another post on the subject of toys comes from Jon Kolko's recent talk at TED London. Jon is a designer with Frog Design in London. As is typical of the Frog designers, Kolko provides the intellectual or conceptual basis to understand toys..and their success as products. Kolko believes that personality plays a big role in creativity and states:

The most successful designs have the ability to “turn everything on its head,” while also being playful, humorous, and risky. 

That sounds like another definition of a toy to me.

The iPad is another Apple "toy" in the good sense of the word. Maybe he learned from OLPC :) I have never heard Jobs discuss toys. Does anybody have a link to Jobs on toys. Leave it in the comments.

My new book, Billion Dollar Company: An entrepreneur's guide to business models for high growth companies, is available on Amazon. Learn the fourth strategy Michael Porter should have included, how to determine if a market opportunity is large enough to interest venture capitalists and how product differentiation is more than just a feature set. Book website.