Comments on: Figuring Out Your Way to Startup Success

By: Tristan Kromer

Tristan Kromer — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:46:24 +0000

Great insight Sean,

You might enjoy “Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation” by Frans Johansson.

He has some specific points about how known financial incentives can actually reduce innovation. He suggests that innovators expect a fair slice of the pie after providing creative solutions, but knowing exactly what those rewards are in financial terms can destroy that motivation.

I suspect that it’s a bit related to the gambling gene phenomenon which makes us more likely to pursue unpredictable rewards.

Cheers,
Tristan

By: Ed Zimmerman

Ed Zimmerman — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:51:16 +0000

Great post. Noted designer Tom Wujac gave a talk at TED in which he outlined the Marshmallow Challenge: In 18 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. His findings about collaboration include that the poorest performers are recent business school grads (they all jockey for leadership) and among the best are recent kindergarten grads — they don’t. When he heightened the stakes by offering a $10K prize for the tallest structure, people couldn’t complete a tower — they, like the business school folks, looked for the best plan and then had to suffer when the aha moment (adding the marshmallow at the top) resulted in an “Oh No” moment. This finding is consistent with your post’s conclusion that adding financial incentives don’t enhance creativity, they likely impair it. The Kindergarteners, in contrast, iterated repeatedly and had many more ‘aha moments’ This is a powerful way to consider collaboration, team management, and the iterative process of project management. What are some of the most effective ways you’ve seen entrepreneurs get their teams to collaborate, build teams or otherwise find ways to turn marshmallow plantings into aha moments?
I know that when recruiters have called on my in the past I’ve reflected on what things made me most like my current job — the money was on the lower level of the Maslowian pyramid for me. Relationships with those with whom I worked and the culture were always critical. Ensuring that you can consistently maintain that hospitable cutlure is really important in fueling an environment in which creativity can thrive.
Ed

By: Daniel Debow

Daniel Debow — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:47:13 +0000

Absolutely right on. Too many people think a “fun” culture means Xboxes, free drinks and fooze-ball. That’s a mistake. I think that for creative people – esp. developers and product people – it is intrinsically fun to simply build something awesome, even in a less than “fun” space. The main reward is people loving your awesome creation because you’ve solved their problem. I’ve found that even talking about the money can be de-motivating because it makes the problem solving feel less pure, more instrumental, less meaningful. Nothing is more fun or sustaining in the tough times than a simple email from a user saying “I love your product, thanks!”. When the team lives for that, you’ve got a great team.

By: King Sidharth

King Sidharth — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:31:35 +0000

I cannot agree more. Weren’t fun and passion exact same reason to get started in the first place? How can you loose sight of your goal?

The problem is, people see things and stats as goals when really it is just emotions.

By: Sean Murphy

Sean Murphy — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:43:37 +0000

Change is painful and most startup require ongoing self-improvement efforts on the part of the founders. We did some work with cancer research teams, and while they are not motivated by money they are motivated by a strong desire to make an impact on people’s lives.

I don’t think it’s “fun” that unlocks innovation but a need to solve the customer problem you have set before yourself, coupled with a willingness to look at existing challenges from different points of view.

See also Dave Snowden’s “Culture and Innovation” at http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/2006/10/culture_and_innovation.php
where he argues that that there are three necessary, but not sufficient conditions for innovation to take place:

1. Starvation of familiar resource, forcing you to find new approaches, doing things in a different way;
2. Pressure that forces you to engage in the problem;
3. Perspective Shift to allow different patterns and ideas to be brought into play.

Snowden continue: “Creativity is just one way, and not necessarily the most effective to achieve perspective shift…creativity is not a cause of innovation, but a property of innovation processes, its something that you can use as evidence of innovation, but not to create it.”

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 02:43:20 +0000

Great points. I’d also put it this way: if you can’t have fun working with the people on your team, probably either your focus is wrong or you have the wrong team.

By: Reanna

Reanna — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 02:29:51 +0000

The thing with teams and making sure you are getting the most out of them is to make sure that you are utilizing the proper people in the proper places. I’ve worked many places where I had to be on a team and some of these places would do a shuffle of members of the team on different tasks as to make sure everyone was efficient in every aspect of the task. These teams seemed to be much less productive than the teams I was on where the person best at the job was assigned the job.

By: Matt Brezina

Matt Brezina — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:11:23 +0000

Hey sean – nice post.

I think it takes 3 things to build companies: the ability to identify big markets, money, and the ability to build a team.

I think your post really gets to the heart of this 3rd ingredient (which incidentally, i think is the most difficult). You and your cofounder will probably get along better. Your employees will be happy and more productive. And the team will be more focused on customer needs.

However, this all can’t happen in the absence of the first 2 ingredients. Otherwise the world would be full of music startups that are really fun, but don’t solve monetizable problems and can’t pay their employees

By: Diederik Sjardijn

Diederik Sjardijn — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:06:11 +0000

Yea I notice the exact same things in my startups. A lot of pressure or the absence of someone to shelter the team from pressure causes very bad performance.. nice read! whish everyone realized this!

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:15:59 +0000

Thanks Fred. Just because “team” is a cliche response doesn’t mean that it’s not an appropriate response. I appreciate your comments.