Jay Haynes

Apple, Likert and Outcomes

The research we are conducting is going to ultimately be tested and quantified with a Likert scale to measure both importance and satisfaction.  The goal is to then apply Ulwick's opportunity algorithm (importance + max(importance-satisfaction, 0) to the results in order to quantify the opportunities, i.e. to find the under-served outcomes.

So I was interested to see a new Likert scale from Apple recently.  It looks like it is designed to forces users into one of three choices: agree, neutral or disagree and to give the scale more granularity.  It's also interesting to note that Apple seems to have innovated the design by placing the neutral option in the middle with more space.

For our outcome driven research, the key is the percentage of respondents who rate the outcome "very" or "extremely" (the right side of the scale).  So perhaps Apple's UI would improve the accuracy of the results.  It's certainly worth testing.

Seed Stage Pitch

I pitched a VC I know well today. They are a Series A investor, so I knew I had a few hurdles to overcome. I pitched two things in the meeting: 1. our hypothesis about why there is an opportunity and 2. our approach to uncovering the problem and creating a solution.

I organized the deck much differently than I have in the past. A typical pitch, mentions the solution upfront, soon after the problem/opportunity. But I realized that as a seed stage investment, what I was really pitching was the process of using outcome-driven research to define our solution.

The benefit of outcome-driven research is that it quantifies what an unmet customer need is (what the problem is) in a very specific, measurable and actionable way. So it dawned on me during the meeting - shouldn't every portfolio company be able to quantify its customers' unmet needs? Even portfolio companies that have a shipping product should go through this process, unless the product is a runaway success. In most cases the product is probably failing or at least not meeting expectations, and the company is basically running down a series of "blind alleys" until they find light at the end of one.

I realized that most venture-backed companies really iterate the "fuzzy front end" of the product development process, when what they should be doing is taking the "fuzzy" out of the front end altogether - at the seed stage, the early stage and the late stage.

Outcome Driven Innovation

We are in the middle of our first outcome-driven research project, so I thought I would post about our progress.

I am teaching this methodology at the Presidio School of Management, so I will also post my thoughts about teaching outcomes.

I was first introduced to all of this by a fellow professor, and as I have explored it in more detail over the past 6 months, I have been very impressed by its power.

$500 million!

Wired.com.

Semel, a former Hollywood exec, was brought in to turn Yahoo into a global media company back in 2001. He floundered for years while Yahoo's market share shrank and Google grew into a formidable competitor. Semel has also been blamed for missing the chance to buy Google back in 2002, after he reportedly balked a the $3 billion asking price. Despite his failed leadership, Semel drew a salary that was as high as $72 million in 2006, and reportedly netted more than $430 million in total compensation from 2002-2007.