While some advocate the use of special tools to increase creativity, I find them to scratch the surface of how innovation truly happens. Forcing yourself to “come up with big ideas” creates lackluster goals focused on creating as many ideas as possible (it’s all about quantity instead of quality.) In my attempt to research this subject, I decided to pick up the Innovator’s DNA. This book is optimistic, advocating that the many of the world’s leading innovators have advanced behavioral skills. Put simply, they have learned to be innovative.

Connecting Unrelated Dots

Great ideas are born when individuals “connect the dots.” Oftentimes, these dots have no significance to the average person, and aren’t related to each other at all (or so it seems.) Innovators spend large amounts of time trying to “think different.” While the average person may find this to be a burdensome process, after time it can be an invigorating experience!

Imagine this scenario. I am the CEO of a tech company who decides to start building a model RC plane as a hobby. While working on this project, I find out that the wings of the RC plane are built with a specific material that is very light, yet extremely flexible. It just so happens that this is a problem my company was trying to solve with a new product feature. In this story, working in another industry (RC Planes) led me to discover a feature that could be applied to my industry (technology).

These scenarios are constantly happening – once again, thinking differently is all about connecting unrelated dots. The next steps are behavioral changes that can increase number of opportunities to “connect the dots.”

Ask Questions

Similar to Steve Blank’s model of “getting out the building,” asking thought provoking questions can lead to big ideas. It’s also an important step because it exposes an individual to the inner workings of a specific process or product (osmosis?.) Innovators tend to challenge the status quo, and they aren’t concerned about “asking the wrong question.” The questions they ask stem from a desire to fully understand the “how and why.”

Observation

Innovators spend time observing the world around them. I’ve heard of many corporate executives who sit for hours and hours, watching customers interact with specific products or services. These observations spark new ideas, and lead to new ways of doing business.

Networking

I have made it my goal to network the right way – by investing in relationships instead of passing out dozens of business cards over the course of an evening. Quality trumps quantity, and developing a network of people who you can trust is extremely important. It’s also critical to draw from a variety of interests. As someone who loves business, art is not a passion of mine, yet that doesn’t mean I should avoid networking with them. On the contrary, I should seek relationships with individuals with different backgrounds – it leads to bigger and better ideas.

Constant Experimentation

Lastly, innovators are constantly experimenting and testing assumptions. Fueled by the desire to learn, these people aren’t afraid to try new things, and yes, that means failure is part of the equation. Obviously certain individuals are more “hands-on” than others, but that doesn’t eliminate the need to experiment. From my limited amount of experience, experimentation is by far the most enjoyable – it’s tangible!

Disclaimer #2: I like marketing, and my opinion is strictly based on what I know about new technologies, not politics.

The Art of the Start

The elections in November are already heating up, with the Maine US Senate race being one the most exciting to watch. With many candidates facing off in the primaries in a few months, it’s important to begin generating awareness. Websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts are all popping up for the various candidates, yet I’m beginning to worry that the people behind these platforms are clueless about how the technology actually works. I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but this is starting to get depressing. I’m going to analyze the top three contenders at the moment (according to recent polling.) Those campaigns are: Angus King, Cynthia Dill, and Charles Summers.

Angus King…Or King Angus?

Parody accounts are funny….right?

Nope.

Parody accounts typically will attract a following, but in the overall scope of a campaign, I doubt they have little influence over the way someone votes. Well…..at least if you don’t attempt to shut it down, and generate numerous articles in the paper about it.

Next, I may be getting a little nit-picky, but this may be one of the worst tweets I have ever seen. (HOW ABOUT A LINK?)

It took me ten minutes to find his Facebook page (there were at least 2 other “Angus King” pages.) Now, I would be willing to cut him some slack, until I found the official campaign page, and was instantly greeted by a press release.

Nice copy/paste job right there #####################. Lastly, to top it off, there’s nothing like a little self-promotion via unnecessary #hashtagging.

I did find a bright spot. The website is pretty easy to navigate, and they are already uploading videos to a Youtube channel (hint: change the video titles and descriptions for added SEO.)

Charlie Summers

Charlie Summers has a Facebook page up and running, yet it took a while to find his website. Can someone please update his information section with the website URL on his Facebook page? I saw the earlier post with a link to the website, but as time progresses, fewer and fewer people will see it.

Friends…it’s important to get the little things right. Another perfect example is the correct use of meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are used by search engines to index content. Put simply, these little tags are important when it comes to persuading visitors to visit your website.

Compare this with President Obamas…

See the difference? Obama’s campaign has correctly used these little tags, encouraging people to visit the website. I can’t say the same for Mr. Summers.

Also, one last pet peeve of mine. Can someone please get rid of this pixelated image on the website?

 Cynthia Dill

Out of the three candidates, the Dill campaign has been campaigning longer than the rest. She has more Facebook fans, her website ranks well for “Cynthia Dill for Senate.” Overall, her campaign has the fewest errors, but once again. It’s the little things that matter.

Time after time, I see Facebook pages with this issue. Facebook pages are nearly worthless unless they have a customized URL.

The reason why this is an issue, is because until it’s changed (i.e. – Facebook.com/DillforSenate), your page cannot be effectively marketed offline. Direct Mail pieces will be less effective, and users are forced to search to find the page, instead of instantly locating it via a custom URL. To change the url, simply visit this link.

To be honest, I’m not impressed with the look and feel of the website, but I’m surprised there are very few “calls to action.” I’ve visited numerous campaign sites, and it’s very important to have “contribute” “newsletter signup” and other important buttons in prominent locations. Sure, I noticed those links in the menu of the website, but it’s very important to have those ON THE HOMEPAGE. The Angus King does a decent job (shown below).

Please don’t see this as an arrogant blog post, my goal is to point out how small modifications are IMPORTANT. Most of these problems I found are very simple to change.

P.S. – if you want, I could dig deeper and examine sitemaps, website loading times, and the extreme “nitty gritty” features. 

Fortunately, I have a brother who has the same passion, yet has complementary skills (Boooya!). Last year we won some money for a whitewater rafting video startup, and this year we are focused on aerial photography & videography. We are current finalists in the UMaine Business Challenge, with the winner walking home with 5k in cash. It’s just enough for us to scale our operations from a prototype, to a fully operational business. We are working with some extremely innovative technology, so there’s a huge opportunity in the market right now.

I’ve been reading up on some of the content Steve Blank has been pumping out over the past few years, as well as The Lean Startup, and Running Lean, and I’ve been blown away. The content in these books is absolutely incredible, and I’ve learned how horrible my assumptions and plans for building a company are. I’ll do a quick recap..

Getting Outside of the Building

I don’t have problems thinking up ideas that I think would be successful. The problem is that customers don’t care what I think. If my product or service isn’t solving a problem, it’s completely useless.

Put simply, I’ve been creating things that I want to use. I’ve been relying on where I believe the market opportunity is.

The Startup Owner’s Manual puts it perfectly:

On Day One, the startup is a faith-based enterprise built on its founders’ vision and a notable absence of facts. The founders’ job is to translate this vision and these hypothesis into facts.

Instead, I should be “getting outside of the building” and talking with potential customers, seeking to find pain points, and looking for where the opportunity lies. This doesn’t mean simply sending out a survey, but instead, engaging in dialogue.

Remember:

a survey can only validate an assumption. If you really want to understand your target market, you must TALK TO THEM.

Startups = Constant Failure

Humans have a fear of failure. We want to get things right the first time – I’m the same way.

My fear of failure ties closely with my belief that my assumptions about what people want are 100% accurate. It’s a pride issue. 

It’s okay to be wrong! How you learn from your assumptions is the important part. That’s why it’s important to learn from mistakes, and adapt the business model to reflect those changes.

When something isn’t working, successful founders orient themselves to the new facts, decide what needs fixing, and act decisively.

Customer Discovery/Validation

While it’s extremely important to do your homework and find the pain points that customers experience, it’s also important to validate that you have a product that they would be willing to use. That’s where the importance of having a prototype comes into play. It’s important to show them what you have created, even if it still is a work in progress.

Don’t stress over the small details, and don’t focus on your energy on adding every feature that customers ask for. The purpose of the prototype is to highlight the value proposition – don’t cloud it out by adding all those cool extras and add-ons.

Next, what’s a product without paying customers?

This is where Customer Validation is so important. “Customers” will be willing to use your product, but not willing to pay for it. If that’s the case, perhaps you should refine your price point, or seek to find a market where customers will actually pay. Customer Validation puts quite a bit of stress on your business model, so expect resistance and remember to adapt quickly.

 In a single-sided market (one where the user is the payer), a steady stream of customer purchases validates the concept far more solidly than lots of polite words.

This is only the beginning of my learnings, I’ll keep you posted as I continue to learn. I’ll be posting a future update where I break down how we are using these methods with Aerialfly.

Wrong.

Brands are constantly trying to create a personality – something that relates to customers on a human level. Put simply, these brands want to be your bff, but Facebook wants them to be your bffl.

“Like My Page!”

I’ll be honest. In the past, I would suggest setting up a default landing tab for visitors, but there’s no need for that with the addition of the cover photo. I’ve seen the growth of horrendous looking tabs, built around the push marketing methods of the past.

The purpose of these tabs was to drive leads, fans, and the continual spamming of your friends’ news feeds with “special offers.” I may be the only one, but it seems like brands were focusing more on these tabs then actually creating worthwhile posts that users WANTED to interact with.

To the social media “gurus” whose only value proposition was the addition of tabs, have fun suckering money out of your clients. You my friend, are going to have an absolute nightmare driving leads (using tabs) for clients with the latest changes.

Private Conversation

Like our conversations in real life, our discussion with friends depends on different situations (public vs. private). Facebook apparently recognized that many community managers need the ability to respond to inquiries in private. I’ve seen so many comments by individuals on brand pages, with a response like this:

“Hi _______. Thanks for contacting us about your concerns. Please email us at customerrelations@brand.com and we’ll get it straightened out as soon as possible.”

Now it will look something like this:

 

Hi ________, we just sent you a message. We’ll get things straightened out as soon as possible.”

This is an awesome addition; customer service can now be handled easily without the addition of some cheesy third-party app.

Cover Photo

The new cover photo will be the first impression for users unfamiliar with certain brands. I view this photo as a great opportunity to communicate the mission of the organization in a graphically appealing way. Many of my friends have awesome cover photos, now it’s the businesses turn to impress. Take a look at the Boston Celtics cover photo below.

Milestones

Milestones make me grin. It’s so cool to see a vintage photograph of a 1964 Ford Mustang. It allows users to connect with the brand on a more personal level. Companies have stories too, and milestones enable brands to showcase the timeline of the company history.

Welcome to Innovation

While I feel bad for all the social media marketers who just lost 50% of their business (actually I don’t feel sorry), I am extremely happy that the playing field is level once again. No longer are landing tabs the focus – it’s back to what really matters. The content. If you publish quality updates, people will connect with you. It’s that simple.

Also, in light of all these changes, it’s important for businesses to know that innovation is what Facebook does. If you have a problem with the changes, simply take an hour and read a how-to guide. Be ready for constant change, it’s why Facebook is destroying the competition.

Lastly, these changes create the potential to tell stories. Whether it’s a simple status update, the addition of a major milestone, or an awesome cover photo, Timeline is where it’s at.

First and foremost, I believe social media is extremely important. On a scale of 1-10, I would give it a 9. Contrary to what some might think, this is NOT going away, in fact, it’s a new way of communication. I’ve also seen this overwhelming need to jump on the social media bandwagon, and it doesn’t even matter who ends up managing it.

Next, there has been a rise of social media “managers” and “experts” with little or no business acumen. Quite honestly – this is pathetic and you as a small business are paying way too much money to have Facebook “junkies” create scheduled posts.

So before all the social media experts get mad, let me explain why small businesses should never outsource social media.

You Care More

Let me first start by saying that there’s many people who are passionate, dedicated, and very successful at managing others social media channels. But let’s get real, you as the owner care the most about your business, not someone else. You are the heart and soul; you are the person that customers see on a daily basis. Your personality and service has created your brand. So why are you having someone else managing what is being said online?

I’ve worked with small businesses on their social media presence, but I’ve never managed the daily/weekly posting that should happen on these pages. Why? The truth is, I am not your brand. I am merely someone who you have hired to help you understand the role of social media in your business activities. I will help you with strategy. I will teach you the “dos” and “don’ts”, but I will never manage what you should be doing yourself.

Minimal Time Investment

In all honesty, managing your social media presence should take about ten minutes a day. It should look something like this:

1. Check for updates (notifications)
2. Create a post to connect with your current fans/followers
3. Monitor Conversation (1x/day)
4. Rinse and repeat

Intangible Opportunities

As a small business owner, you have certain experiences on a daily basis that are unique. These should be posted online and used as an opportunity to build your brand. If you have someone else managing your social media, they will not see these events, leading to missed opportunities.

Let’s say you were the person to send an email (or call) your social media “expert” to make these off-the-cuff posts. In reality, you just spent as much time reaching out, as you would creating a post!

Building Fanbase Excuse

Social media experts will throw a lot of numbers and statistics at you, with the intention to earn your business by explaining something you are clueless about. For example, they will say, “I can increase your number of likes.” I’ve seen many of these same people buying “likes” through shady third-party dealers. If you have 1000 fans, and 750 of them are located in India, is that really helping your business in Boston, MA?

From my experience, the only way to increase fans is:

1. Incentives (Coupons, Contests, etc)
2. Creative Content
3. Caring about your Customers

“Management” vs. Consulting

This part is the real kicker. I truly believe there is a role for social media consultants. These people are hired to oversee the strategic development of your social media efforts. They guide you as you navigate your way, teaching you how to post, increase engagement, and get off on the right foot. These contracts will typically last anywhere from a few weeks to a month. As a small business owner, this is a good idea. At the end of the contract, you should understand the basics, and be able to manage your own brand online.

What’s not a good idea is spending $200-$600 dollars a month outsourcing. Put simply, it’s a waste of money. This is what I call “social media management.”

If you are a larger business, management may be a good option, especially if people are interacting with your page on an hourly basis. From my perspective, avoid reoccurring bills at all costs.

Additional Advice

This is not a rant against social media experts, but instead my goal is to help small business owners realize that they can “do” social media, without a huge investment of money or time.

Lastly, if you own a small business, try reaching out to fellow owners. Many of them understand social media and they would probably give you free advice. It’s just a thought

Business Owner? How are you managing your social media presence? By yourself? Or are you hiring someone? Let me know in the comments below.

You see, I truly want to have tight control over my finances (who doesn’t), yet there are so many different traps that await. If I don’t use my card, I’ll be charged. If I overdraw, I’ll be charged. It’s a maze, and I have no loyalty to Bank of America at all.

Banking is a necessary evil, yet why aren’t there companies out there that try to simplify banking? It’s been something I’ve thought about for a while. I think startups are hesitant to challenge “the big guns” because there are countless laws and regulations – where is the freedom to innovate? Also, why can’t 99% of banking be done online? All I need is an ATM for cash, and that’s only 2x/month.

Hello Simple

Meet Simple (formerly Banksimple).

Simple is a new way to bank. Utilizing technology and user-friendly design, Simple seems to be an answer to my desperation with banking. Simple hasn’t launched yet, but they do have some beta users at the moment. There’s not a lot of information on what the backend is like, but this video gives a decent explanation of what they have been working on.

What about Laws & Regulations?

From my perspective, Simple is like the middle-man between a bank and the consumer. They don’t replace a bank, but a partner bank is still necessary in order to “stash the cash.” This is what their website says:

“Simple is not a bank. Simple replaces your bank. We give you the services and support you need to manage, understand, and automate your everyday spending and saving. Meanwhile, your cash is deposited with our bank partners in FDIC-insured products.

Through Simple, you can deposit checks using your smartphone, set up direct deposit, earn interest, pay bills, transfer money, make purchases with your Simple Visa® card, withdraw cash from over 40,000 ATMs, and more. We offer beautifully-designed web and mobile apps, no surprise fees, and real customer service.”

Why didn’t I think of this?

How does Simple make Money?

Simple makes money in two ways. The first is interest margin, which is split between the partner bank and Simple. Next, they make money off interchange, which is revenue earned from the purchases made with the bank’s card. This is also split with the partnering bank.

Since Simple doesn’t have physical locations, it enables them to have much lower overhead, and no hidden fees are the result.

What about Cashing Checks?

Once again, technology changes everything. According to the website:

Have a check? Just take a photo of it with your smartphone and the check will be deposited by our bank partner into your account. Piece of cake. Of course, you can also mail in a check or money order. In the future, we may offer desktop scanning of checks as well.

Extra Awesomeness

Simple also has (what appears to be), an extremely user-friendly app. Also, if you didn’t get a chance to watch the video, Simple has an intuitive way of searching back through past transactions (which are geo-targeted). You can also setup goals and set aside money for upcoming expenditures (something I still haven’t found out how to do with Bank of America’s online banking).

A Perfect Storm

Over the past few years, banking has caused quite a bit of controversy; from the housing market bubble to Occupy Wall Street, banking must change. Simple has over 90,000 people waiting in line, and I see this company exploding in 2012. There’s never been a more opportune time to disrupt banking, and Simple will do just that!

Can someone give me a beta-invite? PLEASE?

Over the past few years, higher education has become more and more expensive. Student debt has passed credit card debt at nearly 1 trillion dollars. Students attend school with the expectation of a good paying job, and when it doesn’t happen, they protest and camp out for months at a time. College has become more outdated, while technology and the internet are offering the world at our fingertips. Something needs to change, and it’s gonna be higher education.

Let me explain why higher education is going to be pummeled over the next decade.

Accessibility of Information

Let’s say the year was 1980, and I had a research project that was due. I would go to the library, sift through books for hours, and hopefully find information that was I could include in my essay. If I couldn’t find anything, I would visit another library and do the same thing again. Now, we have the internet. Search engines enable us to find relevant content in less than a second.

What’s my point?

Learning no longer has geographical limitations. Billions of books are available to us, all we need to do is search. No one is hoarding information, instead it is accessible and easy to find. While this change is less than twenty years old, it sets the stage for the rest of my post.

Quality Teaching

Universities like Harvard, MIT, and Princeton have some of the best professors in the world. They are top-notch, and in the past have only been available to students at these schools. Now, options like MIT OpenCourseware, Yale Courses, Stanford, and Harvard Open Learning are available, all for the low price of FREE. I have access to some of the best teachers in the world; all I need to do is show initiative.

Startups are trying to break into the education market. Companies like Udemy, Khan Academy, and Skillshare are all taught by “teachers” offering content for little or no cost. To be honest, I no longer think students can “blame it on the professor.” I understand that a professor can inhibit learning, but once again, students can learn everything they need to online.

Over the past few months, Sebastian Thrun has stopped teaching at Stanford, and has instead started Udacity. He recently finished up teaching his first class (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) which had over 160,000 students.

Pace

I think one of the major complaints with education today is that overachieving students are forced to slow down with the pace of the class. While many teachers enable these students to work on other projects, technology has a better solution. Software driven learning has the ability to tailer certain questions to reinforce learning. For college classes, I have used the McGraw-Hill Connect program, and it works decent. Much more should be done, yet I’ve seen great results for the classes I have taken with this program.

Video technology has also allowed students the ability to rewind, and replay lectures. In class I have the tendency to lag behind – it takes time for me to understand concepts. As a result, I can become bewildered. With online education, I have control over how fast or slow I learn.

Lastly, I believe fear plays a significant role. Many students will not ask crucial questions simply because they are scared. As a result, they can miss important concepts and fall behind very quickly, especially when each topic builds on another.

The End Result?

I think these changes are giving the power of learning back to the student. Quality instruction is readily available, all that is required is motivation.

Trust me, technology should not replace human interaction. Classrooms are important for developing social skills, yet I think we will see considerable movement towards “distance learning.” This is exciting; I am able to learn anything/everything I want from the middle of the woods in Maine!

Why do I need to go to Harvard to learn?

Traditional Indexation

In the “good-ol-days” of the internet, publishers would create a new page, and sit and wait for Google crawlers to find and index it. This was a process that required extensive amounts of patience, and sometimes certain pages wouldn’t even be found! Fortunately, we no longer have to deal with this heartache, and we moved onto XML Sitemaps.

XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps are an easy way to organize the content on your website into xml code. For example, I have used the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, and the sitemap is easily accessible, with links to all the pages/posts that I have published. This means, when Google bots come to find the content on my website, it’s all available in one central location, and makes crawling easy. Wait, it gets better…

Google Webmaster Tools

If you haven’t already submitted the site to Google Webmaster Tools, I highly suggest doing so. To be honest, any information provided to Google is beneficial for indexation. In addition, website owners have access to important metrics like keyword placement and external domains linking to the site. You can also tell Google where your sitemap is located. When working on a new website, I always setup Google Webmaster Tools as quickly as possible.

SubPubHubbub

Quite possibly one of the strangest names on the interwebs, SubPubHubbub pushes your content (no crawling needed) to a central hub, which is then distributed to RSS readers like Google Reader, Feedburner, and Friendfeed. This is actually my first post using SubPubHubbub, so I’m excited to see how quickly this post is indexed. For WordPress users, there’s an easy plugin you can quickly setup.

Twitter & Google+

For those of you who didn’t know, Facebook posts are not indexed in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages.) On the contrary, tweets and Google+ posts can be indexed, which gives your page a better chance of ranking. While this method isn’t guaranteed, considerations are taken to these posts, and I’ve personally seen faster indexing after posting my content.

If you are interested in learning more, I highly suggest checking out this SEOmoz post about the SERP potential of these social media channels.

Ping-O-Matic

If your website is built on WordPress, don’t worry about this last option. WordPress sites automatically have Ping-O-Matic installed. Put simply, this service “pings” search engines and notifies them to crawl the pages requested. It’s a great tool, but I advise users to be cautious, simply because if you “ping” too much, it may tip search engines for spam.

In conclusion, it’s worth the effort to make sure your pages are indexed as quickly as possibly by search engines. Take the time, and make sure to use any/all of these tools!

I’ve been working on switching content from one domain to another. I’ve been going back through old websites I’ve designed, trying to make these updates. It’s pretty tedious, but I’m trying to maximize “link juice” to my new website. Link building is a huge priority, and I’ve been thinking of ways to receive links from valuable top level domains (.edu, .gov).

I was sitting in class today, and we needed to create a simple two-page html website, with some links, photos, and paragraphs. It’s something I learned a long time ago, so I was done within a few minutes. We were instructed to upload it to space on a UMaine server.

EUREKA!

This is a amazing link building opportunity. I first started by searching to see if Google bots had picked up other pages on the website. For example, I found my teacher’s personal space (shown below).

I opened up the mozbar (if you don’t have it, you NEED it), and it turns out Maine.edu has a domain authority of 75/100.

Great! So Google bots are picking up the website. Next, I decided to create my content and upload it via ftp. I added links to my social media profiles, as well as a brief description of what I do. I tried to “tie” all of the different profiles I have across the web, in order to create a sense of unity. To see the content I uploaded, visit my Maine Business School page.

Since I hate waiting, I then decided to submit the URL for Google crawlers. I’m not sure how long this will take, but the more information I give Google, the better results I will achieve when link building.

What’s the point of this article? As a college student, there are numerous opportunities to strengthen your online presence. The moral of the story? Always be attentive…even when link building.

Today, instead of counting ceiling tiles, I began to think how lean startup techniques could be applied to a traditional classroom setting. Granted, education is an industry that is extremely resistant to change, but there are ways that teachers can incorporate some of these principals with little resistance from school administration.

Traditional Education

Typically, a professor will lecture for a few weeks, which is then followed by an exam. After grading the exams, the professor is then able to see how well the students performed. If the majority of students performed poorly, the professor is to largely to blame. In the lean startup, it’s extremely important to have a continuous feedback loop. This is called the Build-Measure-Learn loop, and it’s illustrated below.

In education, a professor will build a curriculum for the class. Over the course of the semester, he/she will seek to measure progress by assigning homework, tests, and projects. At the end of the course, the professor will learn if the curriculum/teaching worked or not.

Traditional education offers a few opportunities to modify (or pivot) from the traditional education “process.”

How can this process be sped up exponentially?

How can teachers quickly learn and adapt their curriculum to serve students better?

The Clicker

I’ve only used a clicker for a few lecture classes. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how a clicker works, it’s very simple. The teacher asks questions, and the students respond with the device. The teacher is then able to see how the students answered. Every professor that I had who used the clicker typically asked questions at the end of the class.

This works and provides valuable feedback, yet professors can speed up their learning by using this system multiple times during class. Professors present many different concepts throughout a one-hour class, so it’s critical to “chunk” the class into multiple sections (or learning topics). This accelerates the feedback loop exponentially, enabling the professor to pivot many times throughout the class!

Validated Learning

Education is centered around the final grade. If a student receives an “A”, education would deem that the student has “learned” what is necessary for the class. I find it fascinating how certain students struggle throughout the whole class, while others have no trouble at all. Students shouldn’t be as worried about the final grade, and instead focus on how much they learn throughout the duration of the course (validated learning).

In the real world, this concept plagues many businesses. Generating income ASAP is the main priority, even if it means sacrificing long term financial success. Likewise, I think professors are focused on a student’s short-term performance, instead of long-term success.

The Minimum Viable Product

I think the minimum viable product (MVP) of education is still uncharted territory. Startups are trying to tap into this multi-billion dollar behemoth, yet resistance is strong, and the system is hesitant to change. In my opinion, the success of these startups will be determined by how quickly companies can tailor education on an individual basis.

What are your thoughts? How can teachers use Lean Startup principles to serve students?