Vision, Values, and Ideas: The Case of Going After Big Challenges

Vision and Ideas

Vision, Values, and Ideas: The Case for Going After Big ChallengesAlex LightmanFounder InstituteJanuary 12, 2015

What do you want?What is important to you?Most people want you to ask this question.Everyones favorite radio station is WIIFM. Whats In It For Me?Part of the fun and challenge of being a great entrepreneurship is playing a game:articulating what you want, and then attracting and enrolling other people to want that also, and getting them to pay you to get it.

What Do I Want?A world in which anyone can buy, sell, borrow, loan, and swap with anyone else, and can meet, collaborate with, and accomplish projects, from anywhere on earth, online.A world in which people can live their lives, eat, their food, travel, and work entirely fueled with clean renewable energy.A world in which people can eat fresh, healthy food within hours of the food being picked.

How Do I Make This Happen?Chairman of Witkit collaboration softwareChairman of Everblaze solar PV innovationAdvisory board and first outside investor in Natural Machines 3D food printingChairman of Global Innovation Network for Entrepreneurship and Technology (GINET) commercialization of university technology

VisionVision is highly focused and selective glimpse of a future world that is different because of you and what your company accomplished.Vision is a guilty pleasure.A great vision is a paradox. Its egotistical and solipsistic the world remade the way you want it to be remade. Its also very benevolent and selfless you are going to dedicate your life to changing the world.

Where Vision Fits InVision how the future will change after youMission Accomplishment your company is focused on relentlesslyStrategy Your choice between low cost or high service/customization. Tactics Projects, partnerships, funding choices. Includes Must-Win Battles.Operations Plan your work and work your plan

Ways To Convey Your VisionVideos (watch all the Sandwich videos)TV (watch all the Natural Machines news)Books (Brave New Unwired World, Reconciliation)Models (get a 3D printer, check out evrTree)Facebook groupKickstarter (includes video plus prizes)Fashion showConferences and summitsPlacement in TV shows, movies, games

Facebook Groups: Unfair AdvantageBitcoin and the Internet of Money (read and copy the policies, if you wish) 5,428 membersSolar and the Internet of EnergySTEAMPuffsET3Everblaze3D Printing and the Internet of Things and Food

Where Good Ideas Come FromThis is the title of a very good book, by Steven Johnson, subtitle, A Natural History of Innovation.Good ideas come from having lots and lots of ideas and keeping track of them. A great way to get lots of ideas is to make a daily habit of filling notebooks with mini-analyses every day: Observation. Diagnosis. Prognosis. Prescription.

Sifting Through IdeasIf you do the four step mini-analyses 1 to 6x a day of Observation, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Prescription habitually, you will come up with thousands of new ideas. There are three primary ways to try these out and see if there is merit are:Get together with trusted friends and discussthen do the same with adversaries.Put the ideas out on social media in specialty groups. Delete after you test, if you wish.Publish the ideas and/or speak, and be open.

But Its NOT Just About Ideas!The title of this section used to be Vision, Values, and Leadership. And it still should.Values make a big difference, and are a great way to both generate ideas, and to filter them.You can prove this to yourself by learning about or recalling great business rivalries and articulating the differences in values, and results.

Values Make A Difference - 13D food printing has three leading entrants. XYZ printers, ChefJet from 3D Systems and Foodini from Natural MachinesSpent hours with all three companies and their marketing managers.XYZ and ChefJet examples were 100% candy, chocolate, cookies, and wedding cakes. 100%!Natural Machines examples are 100% about eating free healthy food with fewer preservatives. A world with XYZ and ChefJet is even more obese.A world filled with Foodini is more healthy.So I as of today I am one of the first three investors in NM.

3DSystems ChefJet Sugar Skulls

Natural Machines Foodinihttp://www.naturalmachines.com

Values Make A Difference - 2Solar photovoltaics is a big industry and growing 100% a year, with many companies installing PV and manufacturers copying the same designs.Existing solar is roof-mounted and ground-mounted. Out of sight, out of mind.Everblaze is a company that has already created six new innovative designs that will take solar into new places, including evrTrees, which will put solar in the middle of cities, where people can see, touch, recharge, get shade, and converse adjacent to solar, and use photons. My value of wanting people to SEE solar and interact with it, led to the creation of the evrTree, through the team. My value of helping farmers led to the creation of the evrPivot.

evrTree dream in progress

Values Make A Difference - 3I have invested thousands of hours into Facebook. If the hours invested by users into Facebook were paid at minimum wage, this would come to over $500,000,000,000.FB is valued at over $200 billion because FB packages your information and sells you.My values are PRIVACY, security, and collaboration, and the five freedoms from The Science of Liberty, which informs the approach of Witkit as the first encrypted collaboration SaaS platform.

Think Resume, Wiki and Bio.Make sure that you have a great resume, a great Wikipedia entry, and a great bio. Its better to live your life in such a way that other people write these about you; if only you know, then you are pushing vs. attracting.Be part of organizations that are worth talks that TED, TEDx, BIL, and other groups want.Seek to win awards.

Think CrowdsourcingA successful funding, whether from friends and family, VCs, or crowd-funding, is a right of passage. Be a credible expert and leader of a community. Create a focused community on Facebook or other social media. Have good admin policies. Do a simple Kickstarter for $25,000 to $500,000 to build your mailing list, name recognition, and reputation for delivering by succeeding.

Go After Meaningful Hard ProblemsTransition away from polluting fuelsTransition toward clean fuels Reducing violenceReducing obesity and overweightIncreasing peace, love, relationshipsIncreasing collaborationIncreasing safety, security, privacy

My contact informationAlex [email protected] free to friend or follow me on Witkit. If youd like to know more about Witkit, Natural Machines, or Everblaze, lets talk.