Archive for June, 2008

The World’s Largest Mall Offers a Lesson

southchinamall.jpgSouth China Mall is the world’s largest shopping mall, according to this article in The National.

At over 7 million square feet, it is double the size of the gargantuan Mall of America in the United States. It has an amusement park including a roller coaster; an indoor rain forest; and Las Vegas-style replicas of famous places, including a Venice canal and the Arc de Triomphe.

But it has one big problem: it’s nearly empty.

South China Mall is designed to have 1,500 stores. Unfortunately, only a handful are currently occupied.

The developers expected 100,000 visitors a day. Instead they get 10,000, if that.

Opened in 2005, it was once hailed in the New York Times for exemplifying China’s new consumer middle-class.

Then something went terribly wrong. What went wrong is that the shoppers never materialized.

Recently a number of articles and blog posts have been written about the deserted South China Mall. Various points have been made about conspicuous consumption and building projects in China.

But what the South China Mall signifies to me is the glaring lack of advance planning before constructing it — and the failure to understand your market.

Bloomberg reports that the citizens in the nearby city Dongguan, the area of China where the South China Mall is located, are mainly factory workers. They’re factory workers who have come recently from nearby farms. They may be young women living in a company dorm, making a few hundred dollars a month, of which they save whatever they can, and send the rest home to help their parents. It’s hardly the newly affluent middle class that a mall like the South China Mall is designed to attract. Many of the nearby workers can’t afford anything in the mall, except perhaps a fast food meal. Or to sit near the fountain.

Yet, spurred by China’s building craze and a desire to be the “world’s largest” the mall was built. The market for the mall was underestimated or perhaps not considered at all.

The mall builders may be great at building, but not so good at strategic market planning. It’s amazing how otherwise smart people, commanding millions of dollars, can make basic mistakes on such a colossal scale.

In a way, it’s heartening … makes me feel good. Not that I am one to gloat over others’ mistakes (I’ve made too many mistakes of my own). But if businesses with hundreds of millions of dollars and a lot of smart people can make mistakes, then I won’t be so hard on myself in my own small business.

There’s a lesson here for any startup or small business planning a new product launch or expansion. And that lesson, very simply, is: make sure there’s demand for the business. Make sure there are customers ready to buy what you plan to sell. Make sure they can afford what you are selling, at the price you set.

Do your homework. In the case of a startup or new business line, that means conduct research and estimate your market honestly.

I am going to burn the above image into my brain. Whenever I think of launching a new product or a new business, I will remember the vacant South China Mall … 3 years after opening, empty with paint peeling and escalators closed off for lack of rented storefronts and visitors. I don’t want any business of mine to be like that mall.

(Credit to The National for the image - go here for more photographs).

Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

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admin on June 30th 2008 in 112

Take 48!

Earlier today I wrote a post about a new policy we’re implementing at my business. I thought readers here might enjoy the post, so here it is in its entirety:

—–

In the past few years, the weekend has taken on a new meaning for me. In short, it’s now defined by work. The weekend is when I catch up on work I can’t get done during the week, in particular work that requires long form thinking, the kind of thinking that powers drafting considered memos and strategy documents, even posting to this or other blogs.

It’s also a time to clear emails and burnish out the odd To Do item that never quite Got Done during the week.

So lately I’ve been working about three to five hours a day on Saturday, and even more on Sunday, where I work a couple hours in the early morning, and then a shift of four hours or more at night. I check my mail constantly, either while at my desk or on my Blackberry while with my family.

In an odd and most likely not very healthy way, the weekends have become two more workdays, albeit workdays that have a slower pace and breaks here and there for French Toast making, family hikes, and date nights with my wife.

And guess what? It’s not working out very well. Turns out that constantly having your mind in work mode can ruin a good session of French toasting. And getting an email bearing potentially bad news while on a date with your wife can really mess with your ability to be the gentleman she deserves you to be.

So Chas, Jason and I’ve decided to do something about it. We don’t know if it’s going to work, but it is off to a good start. Working together, we’ve created a weekend program we call “Take 48.” The rules are simple, really. The three senior leaders of the company - the CEO, the COO, and the Publisher/CRO - have agreed to not send a single email to any member of the FM team from 6 PM on Friday to 6 PM Sunday. It’s hard for us to do - we’re used to managing by email, and particularly used to getting “caught up” in the weekend down time.

But there’s nothing in the rules saying we can’t DO email over the weekend, just that we can’t SEND it during the weekend. If the servers blow up in Chicago, well, someone can pick up the phone, after all.

We tried it out last weekend, and by golly, it really worked. Emails from senior staff usually creates orders of magnitudes more email from other staff members, and it folds into itself. But last weekend, it felt as if FM, as an institution, was taking time to breathe, to contemplate, to relax and feed itself. Maybe even take a nice hike on Mt. Tam.

Here’s to more of that, not only at FM, but in every organization running hard at a Very Big Goal.

I’m not saying that we need to stop working hard, even if it means working on the weekend. But perhaps weekends should be sacred when it comes to intruding in the lives of others. Do your work, if you must, but when it comes to asking others to do your work with you, try to Take 48.

Source: John Battelle of SearchBlog

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admin on June 27th 2008 in 116

Measure Output, Not Input

resultsWe often assume that the number of hours spent at work are an indication of one’s effort, interest, and accomplishment. However, in reality, the greatest ideas and the execution of these ideas happen in spurts. The best ideas often do not require a lengthy conception, and the most productive days are seldom the longest. But still, managers instinctually measure employees with an eye on the clock. Working hours remain rigid, and morale suffers when the rules fail to support the ultimate goal: a productive creative workplace. What working conditions are ideal for maximum creativity and productivity?

TRUST
It is no secret that a lot of time in the typical corporate job is wasted - look no further than the success of comedy shows like “The Office.” We like to make fun of bureaucracy because we see it around us every day. Managers create rules and norms not in the pursuit of efficiency, but rather out of distrust. According to a recent study by AOL and Salary.com, full-time employees work a total of three days a week, wasting the other two.

A productive creative team must embrace transparency, and there must be a fundamental trust shared between colleagues. Beyond deadlines, expense accounts, and privacy, every employee must trust that their colleagues want the best for the company, care about the product, and aspire to succeed in their role. For this to happen, everyone must have a sense of shared goals, and shared rewards.

EMPHASIS ON OUTPUT, NOT HOURS OF INPUT!
In our research at Behance, we have found that placing importance on hours and physical presence over action and results leads to a culture of inefficiency (and anxiety). The pressure of being required to sit at your desk until a certain time creates a factory-like culture that ignores a few basic laws of idea generation and human nature: (1) When the brain is tired, it doesn’t work well, (2) Idea generation happens on its own terms, (3) When you feel forced to execute beyond your capacity, you begin to hate what you are doing.

Of course, there is no short-cut for the perspiration required to make ideas happen. But the time required to complete a project successfully must reveal itself rather than be dictated. If you care about your work, you will do what it takes to get it done right. As such, your performance should be measured by your ability to get work done on time and done well. Your decisions about when and how you completed the work should not matter.

RESPECT THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Inefficient hours in the office are better utilized out of the office as creative stimulation. Time spent in the outer world is still productive if it is increasing the rate of idea generation and providing the mental focus required to capture and complete action steps when back in the office.

There is a value to mixing up the workday, working out, grabbing coffee, etc… Managers must start to reconsider the conventional assumption that butts in chairs = productivity.

As such, creatives companies such as Kluster have abandoned the normal societal expectation of work time by “doing work whenever there is work to be done.” Another company, 37 Signals has went as far as implementing a standard four-day work week. Even major corporations such as Best Buy have implemented programs such as ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) which favors performance based on output instead of hours.

By embracing these three values, creative companies and individuals can start changing the ways they traditionally do business to create a productive creative workplace. At the end of the day, measuring success by output and not time may require even more perspiration and hard work. It just may not occur between the hours of nine and five.

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. This article in particular was a collaboration between Scott Belsky and Michael Karnjanaprakorn on the Behance Team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List - a leading creative job board, creates productivity tools, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen. All information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

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admin on June 25th 2008 in 120

High Growth Firms Tend to be Old Fogies, Not Startups

gazelle.jpgIn the eyes of many, “gazelles” are coveted.

Gazelles is the name adopted in the 1980s by researcher David Birch of Cognetics, to describe fast growing companies. According to Inc magazine:

Some years back, David Birch of the research company Cognetics conferred that name on fast-growing companies, thereby distinguishing them from the “mice” on Main Street and the “elephants” on the Fortune 500. The name stuck.

Economic development organizations, non-profit entrepreneurship programs, venture capitalists and other groups jumped on the bandwagon. Gazelles were in. If you wanted to see jobs, economic growth and high investment returns, gazelles were what you had to focus on.

On one level, that’s pretty obvious, right? Fast growing businesses are the ones that are going to bring the biggest returns, presumably add the most jobs, become a larger part of the economy, faster — when compared with slower growing companies.

It’s hard to argue with that.

But one thing that’s always bothered me with the focus on gazelles to the exclusion of slower-growing small businesses, is that it ignores the life cycle of so many smaller companies and startups.

You see, it simply takes time for most businesses to grow.

In my experience a lot of startups are not fast growers immediately out of the gate. Many businesses remain small for years until they reach some critical mass, the business matures and becomes efficient, and growth explodes.

I’ve long contended that it’s much easier to accelerate growth later on when you have more customers, more revenue and more cushion. During the early years of a business, it can be a challenge just to survive each month.

A new study out by the SBA’s Office of Advocacy proves just how much time it takes to get to be a fast growing business. The study, entitled “High-Impact Firms: Gazelles Revisited” (PDF), highlights a group of businesses that they call high impact firms. This study found that high-impact firms, which are high revenue and high employment growth firms, are on average 25 years old!

If high impact firms on average are 25 years old, what do you think those businesses were like before they got there?

They weren’t necessarily high growth out of the gate. They may have been growing slowly, building their businesses a step at a time. Some years they moved forward and some years they went backwards. But overall they were on a forward path. In many cases it just took them a while to grow to that level. (See page 40 of the study for more about what the companies were like in the years before they became fast growing.)

And that brings me to my point: this study is a strong argument in favor of the Small Business Administration and its support of small businesses and startups that are not yet high growth. Adopting a long-term point of view, society should be supporting businesses that eventually may grow to become these gazelle or high impact firms. It would be short-sighted just to focus on those businesses that currently are high growth.

Venture capitalists are not anytime soon going to be investing in startups that take 25 years to become high growth. They can’t afford to wait that long. So I don’t expect VC firms to get excited by businesses that take a long time to get their running legs.

And economic development organizations trying to pump up their local economies may need to see results well before 25 years are up. So I can understand them wanting to focus on companies that will bring jobs more quickly to an area.

But the SBA is in a different boat. As a Federal agency, it can and should be looking out for the long-term. Supporting small businesses in the early years and giving them a good foundation to grow in later years can pay off in those firms becoming high growth later on.

And as a business owner, this study is uplifting, too. If your company is 3 or 5 or even 10 years old, and hasn’t achieved high growth, don’t assume that will never happen. As this study shows, the high growth phase takes time.

Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

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admin on June 23rd 2008 in 124

Every Great Business Is An Argument

alexs.pngOK, so maybe that title is meant to provoke a response, but is that so wrong? This post is about arguments, after all. Or put another way: I’d like to argue that the best businesses are, in essence, arguments.

There are many definitions of the word “argument,” but the one I want to focus on is the one that comes up first when you type define:argument into Google: “A fact or assertion offered as evidence that something is true; (as in) ‘it was a strong argument that his hypothesis was true.’”

In my experience starting businesses, and in my study of other businesses that have succeeded wildly (like Apple, Google, or eBay), every great business is founded in a thesis, a statement of what should be true. It’s then the business’s job to go prove that thesis - in essence, the business becomes the argument that proves the thesis.

Wired, for example, was founded on the thesis that digital technologies were forever changing the face of human society - from culture to politics, business to pleasure. We then made a business out of proving that thesis. Every single issue of Wired, every page of HotWired, every book we published and every deal we did was an argument proving that thesis.

The Industry Standard was founded on the thesis that a new class of entrepreneurs and executives were leveraging the Internet to change the economy as we knew it. We then started a site, a magazine, a conference series, and 14 international editions as arguments in proof of that thesis. (OK, the argument failed after five years, but I do still believe the thesis!)

The Web 2.0 conference series also had a thesis: That the web post-crash (after 2001-2) was radically different than the web of the late 1990s, and that a new breed of company, leader, and philosophy had taken hold across the industry. The Web 2 Summit and its newer Expo businesses, again, are arguments proving that thesis.

And Federated Media, my current business, is founded in a thesis as well: That the economics of content creation and consumption have shifted significantly in the past decade, creating a new class of conversational media in need of a new business model. FM is our argument in proof of that thesis.

Well that’s all well and fine, you may say, but those are all media companies. This thesis/argument stuff won’t scale to other kinds of businesses.

I disagree. Consider a dry cleaning business, for example. One of the most successful new businesses in my neighborhood is a small company called Alex’s Dry Cleaning Valet. This business has a strong thesis: That it’s possible to provide high-end dry cleaning services and also lead the industry in using renewable, green, and sustainable technologies. Put another way, Alex’s thesis is even more simple: Dry cleaning doesn’t have to suck. It doesn’t have to ruin the environment, and you should be able to talk to someone who knows who you are and will respond to whatever issues you have (a broken button, a rush delivery, a question about a bill).

Alex’s is an argument for the thesis that a dry cleaner can be both green and conversational (for more on what I mean by conversational business, see here and here). When I sent an email to their site asking about pricing, I got an answer from Alex himself, and we argued (literally, but in a very nice way) back and forth over whether what he charges was fair for value given. Alex clearly is passionate about his business, his value proposition, and his thesis. And that makes his business a great argument for a thesis I, as a customer, am happy to buy into.

So the question to all of you who run or are thinking of running your own business: What’s your thesis? What differentiates your business from all the others in your market? Once you get that thesis, the rest is pretty easy. Everyone loves a good argument, after all!

Source: John Battelle of SearchBlog

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admin on June 18th 2008 in 128

Stop Focusing On Visionaries!

visionaryThere is a horrid fact in the world of innovation: The vast majority of new products fail, and most new ad campaigns don’t achieve their objectives. The brilliant minds that fuel breakthroughs are also at a disadvantage when it comes to getting ideas adopted by the masses. The root of the problem is the visionary’s tendency to focus on fellow visionaries. Visionaries are most familiar with the needs of visionaries, and thus struggle (or lack the desire) to connect with the masses.

In “Crossing the Chasm,” Geoffrey Moore explores the giant gap between the early adopters of anything new, and the “pragmatists” – those in the majority that are more skeptical, average, and risk-averse. When you consider the creative individuals and teams that develop new ideas, it is easier to understand why there is so little focus on the masses.

Creatives love focusing on what fellow open-minded early-adopting visionaries value. This is especially true in the advertising world, where many of the award winning advertising concepts fail to achieve their commercial objectives. After all, the judges for awards are not average consumers from middle America but rather creative professionals themselves – true visionaries. Some companies, in search of effective advertising campaigns, avoid working with award winning firms in favor of more grounded, commercially focused firms.

When we conceive new ideas and execute them, we must assume a pragmatic lens that grounds our expectations, tastes, and perceptions. The most productive creative professionals and teams in the world have found strategies to avoid falling in the chasm!

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.All information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

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admin on June 18th 2008 in 132

This Blogging Stuff is Harder Than it Looks

Wipe that smile off your face -- this blogging stuff is harder than it looksSo the Associated Press (AP) kicked up a little kerfuffle last week when it started threatening bloggers who quote AP stories. :)

It seems that the AP sent a takedown notice to an independent blog site called the Drudge Retort, demanding that they stop quoting AP stories and linking back to them.

The news media and bloggers are having a field day with it. Things did NOT die down over the weekend. In fact, if anything many people are just winding up to have their say.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch responded to the AP’s actions by noting that the AP is wrong — and banning AP stories. Mathew Ingram, technology writer with Toronto’s Globe and Mail is just one of the chorus of veteran journalists and editors opining that the AP needs to get a clue. Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine goes further and says, “For shame, AP.”

What’s at issue is the interpretation of copyright law and what constitutes “fair use.” If the quoting of the AP articles is fair use, then it’s protected under copyright law. If it isn’t fair use, then it’s not protected.

There’s even a handy 4-part test of what constitutes fair use.

Sounds like an easy issue, right? Just look it up and see what’s fair use, right?

Wish that it were so ….

Not only is the law notoriously open to interpretation, but the AP now wants to make up its own rules. The New York Times reports this morning: “The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs.”

As fascinating as this whole debate is, let me get to the point of my article:

This blogging stuff is harder than it looks, y’all!

Sakes alive! And here you thought there was nuttin’ to it. :)

Instead of sitting in your living room and blogging in your jammies, it turns out that you actually have to know stuff, such as copyright law. Yep. And it’s not just for quoting news articles. Use of images is subject to copyright, so you have to know where to purchase royalty-free images, at places like iStockphoto. Or else be a talented photographer and create your own images.

On top of that, you have to have some basic graphics skills so you can resize and crop images. A little photoshopping never hurt, either.

And you have to know how to write. Oh yes indeed. It actually takes the ability to put some sentences together.

And you have to have something to write about, so you’ve got to know where to find information, too. You either have to be a news journalist or you have to have strong opinions and be a columnist who writes about news that other people dig up.

You have to understand technology, so you can fix little stuff, like when your entire blog gets accidentally deleted or your WiFi access goes down.

You have to be good at promotion and marketing of your blog online. Knowing some social media marketing also helps. After all, it would be helpful if someone other than your mom actually reads your blog.

So, let me see. If you want to be a blogger, you have to be a:

  • copyright lawyer
  • graphics designer
  • Internet enthusiast
  • writer
  • investigative reporter or opinion columnist or both
  • programmer
  • network administrator
  • Internet marketer
  • social media maven

And you’ve got to do all that to even think about making money from a blog — i.e., be an entrepreneur.

Hmmm, think about that before you decide to chuck your existing job and take up blogging as a business. :)

Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

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admin on June 16th 2008 in 136

Break Your Schoolhouse Habits!

schoolOur years of formal schooling created habits that actually set us back when it comes to productivity and pushing ideas forward! While our instinct may be to live life as we were taught, we must consider the contrary. Some of the most productive creative professionals that we interview have a different approach to conventional wisdom.

We were taught to memorize and take copious notes. But…
Memorizing takes up mental space and leads to forgetting. Especially as we start to get senior moments, organizing information in a readily accessible manner is much more important than memorizing facts. Memorizing also consumes our precious energy for creativity. Note taking, another scholarly impulse of ours, has become a vestige skill. Amidst our busy lives, we’re lucky to complete our action steps, yet alone have time to read old notes.

We were taught to “never cut corners,” and to finish everything we start. But…

The reality is that time must be managed according to our true priorities and goals. We were not trained properly. When your gut tells you that you’re going down the wrong path with a project, sometimes the best answer is to ditch it and try again (or not). And, while it was never acceptable to play with friends in the schoolyard instead of doing our homework, we now must weigh time with our families versus time at work. Often times, leaving the office is the right answer.

Our instinct was to work towards the good grade, now it’s the paycheck. But…
Nothing extraordinary is ever achieved through ordinary means. When your mentality has you working toward the next paycheck or the year-end bonus, you are less likely to invest effort in long-term goals. The great achievements that lie years ahead are often compromised for near-term rewards. Sometimes we must short-circuit ourselves and focus on the faint light at the end of the very long tunnel.

Lets keep our old schoolhouse memories as just what they are: memories. A productive, creative life requires independent thinking and reasoning. Be skeptical of the things you do “just because.”

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.All information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

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admin on June 11th 2008 in 140

Business Plans: “Plan as You Go” vs “Traditional”

The Plan as You Go Business PlanIn an interesting discussion thread here at OPEN Forum the moderator asked “do you update your business plan?”

The comments were revealing — one comment in particular. The commenter responded by describing how early on in his business he was advised to create a business plan for investors, but he didn’t want to spend hours on that exercise, stating: “I couldn’t see 40 hours of writing a business plan on assumption (typical entrepreneurs view) when the whole plan could change in a month and then how do you tell the investors the plan you made the deal on has changed?”

However, he says that later on he came to realize he needed planning of sorts in his business as it grew larger, stating:

“I learned when you get bigger you need some sort of plan for your own execution or else you just can get mixed up, simply. Maybe not a full BP by the book but something. I do have my BP in my head but it should be written down like all told me to do. If I did everything right I would modify my written plan once a month. Once a year is not nearly enough and writing it will bring about new ideas yet.”

This commenter hits on two points that resonate with me:

(1) The process of business planning is crucial, because it causes you to think creatively about your business yet stay on track.

(2) Your plan document needs to be flexible enough to incorporate changes regularly. Don’t think of it as some huge printed document (a Business Plan with a capital “B” and a capital “P”) that sits on the shelf for a year. Rather it should be something that evolves and is modified regularly as your business evolves.

That brought to mind the concept of the “plan as you go business plan” that I’ve been discussing recently with Tim Berry. Tim is the founder and President of Palo Alto Software, the creator of the leading business plan software on the market today.

Tim has coined the term “plan as you go business plan” to emphasize the importance of the planning process rather than a static document. He also uses the term to describe the plan document itself as a living breathing thing that changes as the business changes. Tim explained the plan-as-you-go business plan this way in a recent email to me (bolding added by me for emphasis):

“It’s about using planning to manage your business and control your destiny, whether or not you need the big formal business plan document. Take it in pieces, leave it on a computer, share it as needed, so the planning is about what’s supposed to happen, and who does what, when, and how much money goes in and out. It assumes change, regular plan review, and course corrections as required to deal with changing assumptions.

Your business plan will be wrong, because all business plans are wrong, but it’s still vital because it’s the best way to manage change and keep your long-term direction in mind while managing the short-term as well. And a good business plan is never done, because it has to absorb and manage change.

The plan-as-you-go approach is the best way to get the benefits of planning — focus, prioritizing, mustering resources, setting long-term directions and short term tasks and projections, and of course managing change — without getting bogged down in the big “BUSINESS PLAN” as a document. Not everybody needs the big business plan document, but just about everybody stands to benefit from planning the business. Start anywhere today, and get going with it by tomorrow. Don’t do the whole thing until you have a business reason, but in the meantime start managing change by tracking the difference between what happened and what you thought would happen.”

Tim has recently incorporated these ideas into a book called The Plan as You Go Business Plan, coming out this summer. But interestingly, much of the text of the book is available online at PlanAsYouGo.com. And since the site is set up as a blog, you can even comment on the material and communicate with Tim.

As someone who has written numerous business plans in my career, I’m excited by Tim’s approach to business planning.

Why? It is practical — and achievable.

I know in my current business I can’t set aside a week to work on a business plan — I’m too busy keeping my business growing. If I had to hold off on my planning until I wrote a master business plan, it’d never happen. But spend a few hours here and there on planning and tracking performance and adjusting as circumstances change — yes, I can do that.

As Tim says, focus on the planning — not the plan itself. Instead of getting sidetracked creating some huge document that is outdated almost as soon as it’s done, instead develop planning behaviors that become part of running your business every day, every week, every month. That’s the way it should be.

Source: Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

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admin on June 9th 2008 in 144

Seek Stimulation From Randomness

randomSome of the most productive creative minds rely on a periodic self-administered dose of randomness to stay stimulated. Stimulation is not only necessary when developing new ideas, but is also critical when refining solutions to a particular problem. Every brain benefits from new angles that often escape your traditional point of view.

Some creative professionals credit past mistakes as moments of realization. At this year’s TED conference, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi explained that a lot of his ‘design ideas come from mistakes or tricks of the eye.’ Mistakes are illuminating because they are unexpected. But you don’t need to screw up in order to find randomness.

Consider a few strategies for building randomness into everyday work and life:

  • Take advantage of mistakes. When you do make an error, allow yourself to briefly continue down the same path. If only for an alternative perspective (which is sometimes difficult to get), use every mistake as a lens to see things differently.
  • Travel without a map. When we venture beyond our comfort zone, we often over-compensate with extensive planning, maps, and itineraries. Instead, consider traveling somewhere without plans. Behance has interviewed many prolific Creatives that cite getting lost as the best way to find new solutions.
  • Explore projects in unfamiliar creative fields (and if you don’t mind a Behance self-reference): When our team developed the Behance Network, we purposely featured a cross-section of work from different fields. The featured gallery always includes an eclectic set of striking projects from different fields. And if you’re brave, you can take a daily stroll through the most recent gallery that contains unfiltered brand new projects published by creatives around the world.

Behance articles and tips are adapted from the writing and research of Scott Belsky and the Behance team. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network , the Creative Jobs List, and develops knowledge, products, and services that help creative professionals make ideas happen.All information (c) Scott Belsky, Behance LLC

Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

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admin on June 4th 2008 in 148