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WHY BUSINESS PLANS ARE NOT ENOUGH – The ABC’s OF IT

It is like the alphabet without the “A”; in today’s business, the capital “A” is most often missing.

As obvious as it sounds, all businesses start with an idea – the “a.”  The entrepreneur takes the idea and translates it into a business immediately or builds the strategy for it inside a business plan. The capital is raised, the business launches, then in time, it either fails or succeeds. It is a process: It starts with the “a” – an idea; next comes the “B” – the business plan; then hopefully, the “C” – capital. Business is truly about the ABC’s. But more often than not, that process is flawed; and the use of the small “a” within this paragraph is not a typo.

The flaw is in the little “a” versus the big “A.”  Financing is important. Executive talent is important. Marketing is important. But the single most important element impacting success is found in the level of perfection of the idea itself.  From a Concept Modeling™ perspective, the small “a” is an “idea,” the big “A” represents a perfected idea.

Occasionally, entrepreneurs have the “perfected idea” from the get-go – they have the big “A.” It stems from instinct, experience or sometimes luck. They still need the means – capital and opportunity – but given that, they can reach a significant market share or even create a new market harnessing their intuitive vision. But most ideas do not start that way– and it is extremely risky. Most ideas need work. And the truth is, it is hard to tell the difference.

Almost by definition, entrepreneurs know their idea or at least they know what they want, so they jump into the business or the business plan. The rationale for the latter is either that they know enough about their idea to write the business plan or they use the process of writing a business plan as a way to develop their idea.

Investors prefer to see a business plan because it forces the entrepreneur to plan out how the company will make the money to pay them back with a profit. When it comes to ideas, investors may ask tough questions, they may probe the entrepreneur’s vision based on their presentations, but there is no definitive, independent tool for evaluating ideas. Most of the time, it is the marketplace itself, which serves as the final voice in the evaluation of ideas. The idea takes off and starts to generate solid revenues, or it cries for readjustment; it develops a limited market, rockets to the top of the market or it fails.

The problem is that today most people use a business plan as a way to flesh out ideas when the true strength of a business plan is in building strategy, not in perfecting ideas. In an economy where there is no money to waste, we need to look at tightening the idea first.

Engineers don’t build better cars through business plans. Technology is not perfected by a CTO creating spreadsheets on revenue forecasts. Great stories for films are not made using targeted demographics or competitive analysis. Success in business comes from ideas that are perfected.

But how do you perfect ideas?  You must analyze them then model them. This is not easy to do since ideas are not tangible. You can’t take them apart as you might with a car in your garage. You can’t lay out the pieces on the garage floor — with the carburetor over here and the muffler over there — then pick them up and study them easily.

Still, this is “a” must. It is the first “A” in the ABC’s of Business Success.  Keep in mind that “A” does not stand for ancillary ideas. It is too easy (and it happens a lot) for  a CEO or an executive to get lost in ideas that are not part of the core concept of the product or service. If you are developing an idea for a business, you need to analyze the core of your idea and focus on getting that perfected, first. You must take your primary idea and analyze or model it, which why our brand of service is called Concept Modeling™. The core concept must be modeled.

The true revolutions and innovations in business, the true market winners, originate from products and services that tackle the core ideas of that product or service.

                                                                                                            Copyright 2009, Winston Perez 

James Bond and Quantum of Less

I waited a while to write about this but there is a reason: The concept problem with the latest Bond pic is only showing up now.

November 2008 seems a long time ago. Do you remember? Better still, do you rememberQuantum of Solace? Right there, with your silent, perhaps uncertain answer, you touch upon the conceptual problem within that James un-Bond film.

In Casino Royale, they updated Bond. In Quantum of Solace, they changed the concept of James Bond. A few more movies like Quantum and the franchise will be in deeper trouble than James was when he was being poisoned in Casino. 

Of course with a little Bond magic, you can recover the franchise’s dominance; but why take that risk?

If you ask enough movie goers if they liked Quantum, you may find another hint of the problem. Many of the people I asked didn’t say they liked the movie, they said they love Bond. There is a difference. That difference spells trouble.

So I have a new question: Have you seen Quantum of Solace again and on purpose, and not just because it was on cable? The significance of that question lies in this follow-up: How many times have you seen Live and Let Die? Or Goldfinger? You know a film is a true Bond movie if you want to see it again and again and again. It doesn’t matter why you want to; if it is just for the Bond girls, a chase scene or Bond himself; you just have to like seeing it again.Solace? Once is enough. Oh yeah, I have seen The World is Not Enough several times.

Bond is off concept. Quantum of Solace is a lot less Bond. Well made. Well written even. But it was not Bond.

I can guess how the conceptual problem with Bond happened. Casino Royale was a strong update of the Bond concept. In that film they updated the character by stripping down Bond. It worked well, Casino Royale is great, but with that success they gave into the temptation to strip it down even more for Quantum of Solace.

Conceptually speaking, there is a difference between updating something and changing it. With the former, you keep your audience and bring in new fans. With the latter, you allow for competitors, like the Bourne Identity franchise, to take in your audience. Yes, fans can like two franchises, but again why do that? Who are the top brands likely to invest in five years from now? Before Solace that wasn’t even a question.

Did you notice that there are no gadgets in Quantum of Solace? Better still, a half a year later, do you remember the villain in Solace? Do you remember Goldfinger or Oddjob? Still? After all these years?

Not having super villains is not just a story structure problem, for Bond it is a conceptual one. The concept of Bond has always included the super villain. Imagine Bond going after convenient store robbers. Drop that twinkie!

Still the Un-Bonding of Bond started in Casino with what everyone does remember: that horrific torture scene.

Look, we all love James. We love the action. We love the girls. We love the gadgets. But most of all, we love ourselves.

We all want to be Bond. But the truth is, conceptually speaking, we want Bond to be us too. And that is the point.

One of the primary concepts of Bond is that it is a fantasy. That means he can’t get tortured for “real.” Why? The character purpose of him getting beaten up is to show us how tough he can be. Why? The deeper purpose is to show us how tough we could be.

It is a subtle but critical difference. We want to be tough, but none of us want to be tortured to the breaking point. By “real,” I mean to the breaking point. There is a difference between the pounding that Bond can brush off because he is tough and the kind of torture that changes his character forever. The concept of war wounds that don’t go away is relevant here.

If the film makers can shift that, they can shift the rest of him. In Solace they shifted Bond too far.

Casino, I could see over and over. Solace? I am not sure I want to, and that is the problem. Keep in mind that with Bond we always know the ending. We don’t see it for the story. When we are talking about Bond and a dominant franchise, Quantum turns out to be a little less.

© Winston Perez, 2009

Back from Writing; What a Concept

Writing. What a concept. I have been away writing and modeling some new ideas for the past months. Please excuse my absence.

But it is interesting that concept drives writing too. Without a clear, focused and layered concept, writing becomes just structure. Stories and experience become just events. It is concept that connects what you write with the audience. It is what links the story or experience to their own lives. Events are always unique; they can be similar, but they are always unique. Though there can be hundreds of weddings in any one week, each is unique. Yet the concept of "love ever after" is a shared concept. The meaning behind events is what we share.
That is what concept captures.

In writing something, your readers don't necessarily read what is behind your words; they feel what's behind them. It is intuitive.

Communication doesn't just exist at one level. We look. We read. We hear. But we also feel. We intuit meaning. And it is there that concept is found.

Copyright, Winston Perez, 2009

Sole of an Idea: What's a sneaker?

True story.

“What’s a sneaker?” I said. It sounded obvious⎯ in fact, a bit too obvious. That’s the question I asked when I was handed a new sneaker by the CEO of this one company. A bit indignant, he retorted, “What do you mean, what’s a sneaker? Hm.”

Cut to later that night at dinner: Quite a bit more indignant, that same CEO leaned across the table, over his spicy calamari appetizer, looked me in the eye and said (I am paraphrasing here) “I have been doing this for 15-plus years. I know my business. I know what a sneaker is.”

There was this long pause. Finally, he continued, “We’re going to do this… this thing you do, Concept Modeling™, because of your reputation. But if you feed me back what I just fed you today, well… Hm! (pause) I know my business.”

Calmly I said, “I understand.” I watched him as he bit into his spicy calamari.

The fact is, he didn’t know. None of us know. If we did, we would have created Nike.

The “sneaker” has changed over the years. To be more accurate, I should say that the concept of a sneaker has changed. At one time sneakers were just for sports. Now they are fashion. Think of it this way: The idea of a sneaker hasn’t changed, it is still a type of shoe, but the concept behind it has changed.

Sometimes, if you change the concept behind an idea, you change the idea ⎯ sometimes forever. Yes, I know it sounds obvious. Hm!

True story.

(Its from some Concept Modeling™ work I did in 2006. Of course, some names/terms have been changed to protect, well me. Hm!)

IDEA DEVELOPMENT: THE CONCEPT OF IDEA, PART II

Recently someone mentioned to me that a eureka moment is that instant when two ideas come together. The fact is, that is not true. Or rather, that is only one type of eureka moment. A eureka moment can be the moment we put two ideas together or it can be the moment we discover another idea buried deep within the original idea; it feels as if the new idea had suddenly POPPED to the surface.  In other words, it can be a moment of discovery rather than invention or creation.  

Most often it is actually not about an idea but a concept. You can think of some concepts as the defining elements or ideas buried inside any idea; they are the elements that further define and refine that idea. As an analogy, think of the idea as the human body, but a concept within that idea as the blood system or nervous system. It is one idea but it still has a lot of concepts contained within it. Discovery of those concepts is critical to idea development. 

As another example, you could think of the idea of a fish. There are concepts associated with the idea of a fish that help define it, such as underwater breathing or swimming. In the discovery of new species, it is their characteristics that impact the categorization of them; you can think of most characteristics as concepts. In a recent posting by David Pescovitz on  www.boingboing.net, he talks of a new species that uses its fins like legs. This is a relevant example: Gills, fins and legs are body parts but they are also concepts, and as such, impact the idea of a fish. What a eureka moment it must have been when this new species was discovered.

But here is the caveat and the point of this posting: What I just wrote about in those last paragraphs is still not accurate until I include the fact that a eureka moment is also an experience. That changes everything. You feel them. You experience them. And we love it. We love it because in that moment, we can feel as if someone has just injected us with a liquid rush of heart stopping excitement.

So think about the last eureka moment you had. Think about what new idea came out of it. But also think about how it felt. Think about how it seemed to physically come at you like a sharp blue-green wave gliding toward you off a tropical beach -- how excited you got and how instantaneously the whole thing came together and crashed into you. Then change your thinking and realize that we all experience that same eureka moment in a very similar way, even though they can be about very different ideas. It’s amazing.

An idea is one thing. The concept of idea? Well, we should think about it, enjoy it, but most of all, change our thinking around it. A eureka moment is a part of the concept of idea. Long live that eureka rush.

Copyright, Winston Perez, 2009

IDEA DEVELOPMENT: THE CONCEPT OF IDEA

I have never wanted to write or talk about this work.

It was a little advantage, a strategic methodology in the work that I do and, O.K., I didn’t want other consultants stealing it. I guess I have grown up a little —but just a little.

So this is it: There was a moment in my life that changed the way I think forever. This blog, the coming updated website, my upcoming book are all products of that 1989 incident — what I call my super massive eureka moment. 

When you have a eureka moment, your mind shifts a little and you see something in a new light. Often times, this involves very obvious things. You stare and think, you turn your head to one side and think some more; you stare and feel something rising up before your very eyes as if you were blowing up a wad of pink, sugary-sweet chewing gum when suddenly it POPS! You think “Oh my God!” and suddenly the thing you thought you knew takes on a different meaning. You just hit upon your unique idea.

I call my moment back in 1989 a super massive eureka moment because I not only hit upon an idea, but also hit upon the concept of idea. The latter is the fact that ideas exist--AND that they have a nature that makes them unique.

We all have ideas but do we really know what ideas are, themselves? The next time you come up with an idea, stop a moment, put the idea aside, and think about what an idea is itself. By simply doing that exercise you can change the way you think.

I’ll talk about that and the eureka moment in my next blog. Copyright 2009, Winston Perez