Technologists think, “Build it, and they will come.” But they’re building plenty of cool stuff, and consumers aren’t coming.

Techies are often so taken and smitten by their own technology that they fail to understand why and how it may not sell. Just because a technolgy is logically coherent and technically brilliant doesn’t mean it would sell. And sale is where the first ‘potential for value’ gets created, whether or not a technologist likes to admit it.

Most people will not switch to something new unless the perceived benefits far outweigh the perceived pain in switching. Pip Coburn, the author of “The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn“, calls this the Change Function, and understanding this gives an insight into what’s likely to sell and what’s not.

Click here to read an article by Pip Coburn on the Change Function that appeared in May issue of Fast Company.

A good question to ask all those ’seat-of-the-pants’ managers and decision makers: How would you like it if you found that your medical practitioner didn’t look at the evidence and engaged in a similar ‘gut-feel’ decision making in matters concerning your health?

Prior to research by the French physician Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis in 1830, doctors believed that removing a few pints of a person’s blood would help cure all sorts of ailments. Lewis conducted clinical trials that helped convince physicians to abandon bloodletting based on actual clinical evidence. Lewis became the “Father of Epidemiology” and led the medical profession towards evidence-based identification and treatment of diseases.

Managers frequently base their business decisions on hope, fear, dearly held ideologies, what others are doing, and what they have done in the past – in short, on lots of things other than evidence.

In a Stanford Social Innovation Reviews article, Jeffery Pfeffer and Robert Sutton make the case for an Evidence-based Management Movement. Like evidence-based medicine, evidence-based management can help managers figure out what works and what doesn’t, identify the dangerous half-truths that constitute so much of what passes for wisdom, and reject the total nonsense that too often passes for sound advice.

Seven Rules for Appraising Business Ideas:

• Make sure the cause came before the effect
• Remember that correlation does not mean causation
• Don’t rely on success (and failure) stories: People have terrible memories and after identifying winners and losers, people selectively remember information that reflects these different outcomes.
• Be suspicious of gurus and breakthroughs.
• Take a dispassionate approach to ideologies and theories: Learning is difficult when people are driven by ideology rather than evidence.
• Treat old ideas as if they are old ideas
• Admit uncertainties and drawbacks

You can read the full article on Guy Kawasaki’s blog here.

You may also want to read the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management where the authors use hard evidence to debunk many of the modern management practices.

(From Guy Kawasaki’s blog.)

Even though IT is usually one of the most important departments (strategically) in an organization, the transparency and accountability is sorely lacking. Have you ever wondered why IT departments are still run as a Cost Center in a world where far more intangible things are easily priced? It’s definitely not because you cannot price IT services. Just that life would become a little tougher for the pseudo-technologists if accountability was brought into IT. I still remember the stares I got when I naively suggested a few years back that we could increase productivity by considering our department (IT) as a Profit Center through notional pricing of services for internal customers. That would have exposed the con, and the idea was immediately killed.

And it is painfully mind-numbing to operate in such a group. And yet, it is the fundamental responsibility of every technologist to comprehend the important function he/she plays and to know what it takes to do his/her job well.

This is something that has bothered me for years now. Right until I came across this blog post just two days back that was putting down in words the same thing many a technologist have always believed in…

The only point of IT is to improve physical operations by providing efficiencies and reducing logical operations by providing automation…
The best business solution is not always the best technology solution. The burden is on you, the technologist, to make the best system the business will use.

I find myself getting strangely addicted to this new-born blog (just 10 days old) because of the absolute clarity of thought, and the raw manner in which it is delivered.

I shall not attempt to explain the post for fear of diluting it. To understand and appreciate for yourself the manifesto that a technologist should live and operate by, please go ahead and read
Things Everyone in IT Should Know…or, The Technologist Manifesto

I’ll be happy if it strikes a chord and rings a bell. And it might be a good idea to drop a comment for dratz (the blogger) if you find yourself nodding your head in agreement.

I have had a tough time explaining this. And it’s a pleasant surprise to see today that the guys at 37signals.com do get it.

Times have changed. All other people’s money gets you these days is into debt. And that’s not a great place to start anything from. You don’t need money for hardware — hardware is cheap. You don’t need money for software — software is free. You don’t need money for marketing — there are a variety of ways get your message out online to a huge audience for next to free. Money doesn’t buy you time and money doesn’t buy you passion (and passion is something you need a boatload of).

Four months back when I quit GE to bootstrap a startup, some people thought I had lost it completely. Luckily there were a lot many more who offerred their (extremely valuable) advice, and wished me luck. Some of them offerred their personal money, and some others have regularly kept checking to put me in touch with some VC they know. Every time I have been grateful to them for this, and have politely declined the offer.

No, I am not a filthy rich bugger. Neither am I a zen-master well on his way to nirvana. I just have had this simple rule of not taking extra money when I simply don’t have the need for it.

That also explains why all those Citibank sales agents have never managed to sell a cross-sell offer they made to me. I simply don’t need that sexy car, that elegant apartment, and those so-hip-they-hurt designer jackets. (By the way, do you think I should do them a favor by letting them know that I became immune to all those ‘incredible offers’ a long time back when I was employed with Citi? )

Do read on to see
Why is Less a Competitive Advantage?

But the playing field is changing. As in other fields of human endeavour, the tools are getting better and cheaper, thus removing the first barrier to entry: Access to professional tools.

A few years back I wouldn’t have dreamed of writing a blog about doing comprehensive analytics using entirely free open source software. This blog will introduce you to both the tools and the craft, and show you how to simplify your analytics process and drive productivity in the analytics value-chain. Stuff your BI vendor is’nt seen talking about.

Seth is right. The bar’s getting a lot higher, because access to professional tools is a lot easier. Read Seth Godin’s Blog: Tools vs. Craftsmen.