Bheestie...strange name, good idea

Have you ever dropped your cell phone in the toilet? No? Neither have I.

How about an iPod in a stream while salmon fishing? You haven't? Hmm, well, neither have I.

But, I know others who have. In fact, even close family members of mine have been known to drop my cell phone in the river at the boat dock. No, I'm not bitter if it sounds like I am.

In our family, when misfortune like this strikes, we just open up a gallon sized zipper-locking food storage bag and fill it with a cup or two of uncooked rice. Then, we gently lay to rest our water-sogged electronic device and leave overnight. Voila! It often does the trick.

Well, here's a product that perhaps better solves the pain of the "water in my expensive, yet delicate electronic gadget" problem. As the story goes, two sisters have created Bheestie Bag, a new product that has, in a few short months, already gained the strong recommendation from some early adopters. Karen Wildman and Lisa Holmes created this product in 2009 after experiencing a few too many "accidents" involving liquid and electronics.

According to their marketing materials, the Bheestie uses "powerful water absorbing beads that physically bond with the water, holding it inside of them" to dry out all sorts of electronic devices. The smallish bag is large enough to hold mp3 devices, cell phones, digital cameras, but is not likely to stand up to the dimensions of the recently-announced Apple iPad.

I applaud the sisters for their tenacity as evidenced by their timeline from initial product idea in 2003 to market penetration via REI and online outlets in 2009. Well done, sisters!

Making the Pitch...with a little help from Canaan Partners

I stumbled upon this slide set on "how to make a pitch" from Canaan Partners. In it, they describe the elements of a successful pitch to venture capitalists and other investors. Many, if not all of their concepts, are ones that I espouse and teach on in my course [Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship]. Take a look at it and see if you agree with their recommendations.

Canaan Entrepreneur Pitchbook

View more documents from Canaan Partners.

Another Math Problem...this one's already solved

Question: What do you get when you add:

• longtime (and hungry) musicians, Dan & Jean Ehrlich +
• a desire for healthy snacks +
• catchy and colorful branding and packaging +
• a recent infusion of capital from serial entrepreneur, John Paul DeJoria?

Answer: Rock n Roll Gourmet, maker of "gourmet natural snack foods with rock n roll attitude". While I haven't yet tried any of their products, I was intrigued with the concept and wanted to share it with you.

I'm particularly interested in their strategy that links music with munchies. Their natural-ingredient, low-fat snack products ring of a musical theme with Hippie Chips, Little Wings, Sweet Emotions, and Rock&Pop. Paired with their branding nomenclature is their Bands on Bags program which promotes an artist or band on each snack flavor. For example, pure-voiced artist Mindy Smith is featured on their Woodstock Ranch-flavored Hippie Chips.

Instead of just being another natural ingredients snack food company --which seem to be sprouting up faster than you can say 'organic sea salt'--Rock n Roll Gourmet is betting their unique value proposition on a successful marriage of music with healthy snacks that taste, as they put it, "truly amazing--totally addicting with major munch factor."

P.S. While digging around on their site, I came across the following wording (see screenshot). I suspect that they didn't intend for me (or any other viewer) to find humor in it, but I did and, thus, thought it my duty to share it all with you. Do you see what I see in this?

A Math Problem to Solve

Some of my favorite memories from elementary school were the math problems that were phrased like stories. Here's one from a math book for 2nd graders:

Sue has a dog. Sue earns $2 for walking her neighbors’ dogs. Neighbor Nelly has 2 dogs, while Neighbor Ned has 3 dogs. How many dogs does Sue walk?

So, what's the correct answer? It's a simple question, isn't it?

Many well-intentioned 2nd grade teachers would tell you the correct answer is 5. Do you see the logic of that answer? Neighbor dogs = 2 + 3. Is 6 not a correct answer? Sue's dog counts, doesn't it? How about 4? 3 works for an answer, doesn't it?

My creatively-minded entrepreneurial students and I have fun discussing this simple math problem. I use it to jumpstart our discussion of lateral thinking. Lateral thinking encourages a shift away from the obvious and, by asking questions and challenging assumptions, derives a different solution than what the norm might imply.

Lateral thinking and other creative problem solving techniques are useful not only in the classroom, but also in the "real world". How have you solved a problem by looking at the problem from another angle? I coined the term "spheroidal observation" to describe the act of viewing problems from multiple angles, not just from those that can be observed by rotating around the problem (i.e., 360 degree observation). Turn the problem upside down, look at it from the bottom, the top, turn it inside out, flip it and reverse it...you get the idea.

Next time you have a problem in need of a solution, how about trying some spheroidal observation? Do you dare?

tweetphoto...continues to gain ground on largest competitor

For the regular readers of my blog, you're familiar with tweetphoto, a company founded by one of my former students. In April of this year, Sean Callahan launched this web-based photosharing service and capitalized on the exponential growth of social networking sites like twitter and Facebook. My students and I were fortunate to learn from Sean yesterday as he visited our class and provided insights from his startup experiences thus far.

In the five months since their launch, Sean and his founding partner, Rodney Rumford, have seen their nascent startup zoom from zero to 6.7 million unique users. This fantastic growth has caught the eye of both competitors and organizations looking to learn from their rapid success.

In particular, tweetphoto inked a deal with Kodak in August to develop social networking features into Kodak products. As Sean shared with my class yesterday, this deal has worked out for both companies. Just yesterday, Kodak and tweetphoto launched "30 days. 30 giveaways", a promotional campaign to bring awareness to Kodak's new social networking-rich products.

It doesn't take long to realize that tweetphoto is trending upward and gaining ground on its behemoth competitor, twitpic. Twitpic entered the twitter photo sharing scene early and gained a first mover advantage; however, they've lost a bit of ground recently while tweetphoto has steadily increased activity. Some of this increase may be due to tweetphoto's celebrities tab that highlights the most popular celebrities using the service. Britney Spears currently resides at the top of the list. Are you surprised?

It's incredibly rewarding for me to hear from alums who are taking the business world by storm. Keep up the great work, Sean!

Make Saving Money Fun...spread your wings, my creative students!

Last evening marked the launch of this year's Global Innovation Tournament, a student contest sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation in anticipation of their Global Entrepreneurship Week festivities. Global Entrepreneurship Week will likely be celebrated by more than three million people around the world from November 16-22.

Here's how this unique student contest works:

1. a challenge theme is announced. This year's challenge: Make Saving Money Fun
2. student teams solve the challenge with their own unique spin on the solution
3. teams document and capture their solution via a short video
4. upload video to YouTube for the world to review
5. receive cherished feedback on their solution...maybe even win

What a fantastic learning opportunity for students around the world! I challenged my students to use what they've been learning in our Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship class to solve this case. I'm excited to see what they come up with.

As a little taste of the type of ideas generated by students, watch the video below from the overall winning team in 2008:

Product:repurposed...an exercise in Challenging the Status Quo

Ever since I started teaching the Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship course at CSUSM, I've asked the students to deliver a "Product:repurposed" presentation. Essentially, it amounts to a college version of the popular Kindergarten activity of Show-and-Tell.

I've volunteered in kindergarten classes over the years and have become increasingly convinced that there is real value in extending the Show-and-Tell concept to adult audiences. After all, didn't we learn everything we needed to know in Kindergarten*?

Here's how Show-and-Tell works at the upper-divison level of college. Each student:

1. Brings a product to class
2. Shows us the product--many of which we've experienced personally
3. Reminds us of the intended purpose of the product
4. And, then proposes an entirely new purpose for the product

While it may seem simple on the surface, students regularly share with me that it was much more difficult for them to do this project than they had originally anticipated. Perhaps this is because for the past 20+ years, they haven't been regularly encouraged to challenge the status quo?

After all, much of their educational lives have been spent in generating "the right answer", rather than thinking through the possibility of "multiple right answers". Perhaps we teachers focus too much on providing the formulae for right answer generation, and not enough time on the generation of questions that challenge the assumptions embedded in the status quo?

What I hear from CEOs is that their organizations need employees who: are exceptionally passionate about the work they do; utilize creativity to solve problems; and take initiative to get the job done to move the company forward. Provided this is accurate--and I think it is--how then do we encourage students along this path?

I think the answer lies in challenging the students to challenge the status quo. Rather than taking "things" for what they are, students can and should take "things" for what they could be. It's the power of the possibility that comes from wondering and tinkering.

This skill of seeing things for what they can be is not lost on all. In fact, I witnessed this skill among my students yesterday. They delivered interesting show-and-tells and they helped all of us appreciate what can be among the what is.

The picture at the top is an avocado seed, spinning. One of my students--Vlad is his name--created a spinning top from two ordinary things: an avocado seed and a toothpick. He went on to describe how this spinning top could be used to encourage children to eat avocados for their valuable health benefits. All in all, it was a great presentation and was reflective of the shift in mindset that we're creating in our class.

Aside: While writing this blog entry, I was reminded of a blog that I frequent regularly. If you haven't discovered the Afrigadget blog, I recommend it highly. The creator of the site, Erik Hersman, grew up in Africa and quickly recognized the latent ingenuity within the African people. I'm regularly impressed with the stories that are shared on the blog and the challenging shift in mindset that it provides to a western-born person like me. Truly, I can't say enough about the blog and the good work that the blog's contributors do in bringing the ingenuity of this part of the world to others.

Have I convinced you of any of the following?

• There's value in challenging the status quo.
• There's value in having adults do Show-and-Tell.
• The power of possibility comes from wondering and tinkering.

Try repurposing one of your products today. What else could it be used for?

*If you don't get the sarcasm embedded in this comment, you might want to do a search on "everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten".