Open Source Technology

As a techpreneur, you always have questions to answer. It can all feel pretty overwhelming, but luckily, there’s a fantastic resource you can use to solve an abundance of entrepreneurial problems: open-source technology.

It all began in the '90s when there was a big push to create operating systems to make using new computer technology more efficient. Companies saw the value in these operating systems and acquired creators such as Linux to write the code.

Then, when the code was written, databases were created to store the information that was relevant to the company. Finally, the era of applications that execute functions within an operating system began, which brings us to open-source software.

Open-source software allows you to customize applications to suit your business’s needs. Companies can take a developer’s open-source environment and build on top of existing platforms to create a customized solution at a relatively low cost.

Gauging open-source software. With 80% of companies in non-technical segments adopting open-source software, it’s pretty clear that it can be leveraged to benefit your business. However, as with any new technology, you should always understand the pros and cons of utilizing it before making any decisions.

A big advantage of open-source software is that it reduces supplier risk. But with open-source software, your customers know that your product and community will endure.

What’s more, open-source software saves you money because many are entirely free.

Not only is open-source software free, but it’s also readily available. This may seem like a good thing, but remember the code is available to everyone, your competitors included. Economically, however, it’s still a better choice, and it’s just as effective as the licensed software that costs an arm and a leg.

Lastly, like anything in business, you need the right people. If you’re going to leverage open-source software, you need team members who really know how to use it and understand your business’s needs. If you don’t have the right people to customize and build on open-source tech, you’ll simply be moving in circles.

Which path will you choose? After you’ve looked at the pros and cons, you have to decide how you’re going to leverage this great resource -- and don’t be afraid to get creative.

1. Open-source tech can be used to help you execute what you already do and assist your preset processes to become more efficient as a whole. Think of it like using an HR or customer-relationship management system to better manage the company structure you already have in place.

2. You can also use open-source tech as a foundation for building your own apps or creating a new product. This allows you to make money off of existing tech by using open source as a key ingredient with which to build a software model. A word of caution, though: Using open source as a business model only works if you keep building and adapting the tech.

Whether you use open source as an enabler or a business model, it’s a gift. Use open source to differentiate your business or simply to get your business up and running quickly from a relatively advanced stage.

Disruptive Technology Requires a Change-Centric Culture

Organizations face a constant barrage of change, whether they’re grappling with shape-shifting technology, avalanches of data, or the relentless demands of global integration. It’s no wonder that this constant fire drill makes it difficult for even the most forward-thinking companies to manage the constant pace of change, let alone think strategically about it.

Yet, being able to anticipate and make the most of these disruptions is what distinguishes market leaders from followers. How do organizations compete--and even thrive--in a world where the business of business keeps shifting? How do you make change work, when the work keeps changing?

We learned that the organizations that make the most of disruption are embracing three critical building blocks:

1. LEAD AT ALL LEVELS

Why do most companies struggle to manage change successfully? Because they don’t cultivate a change-centric culture.

Change has to start at the top, and it needs to include the entire organization.

Whether it is top or middle management, change must become a personal responsibility. Change-leadership activities and skill building need to be included in personal goals.

Companies that harness disruption also consistently engage employees communication channels and collaborate.

Finally, they recruit emerging internal leaders. These new leaders, with their collaborative networks, can have thousands of followers internally, giving them more influence over employees than many top managers.

2. MAKE CHANGE MATTER

It’s crucial to create a clear vision of the importance of change within an organization. Yet, 87% organizations say not enough focus is put on change management in critical projects. And most invest only 5% or less of total budgets in change management activities.

Study respondents point to five barriers that create a discrepancy between the financial resources allocated and those needed, ranging from a lack of understanding of the benefits of change management to little understanding of how change management roles relate to one another.

It is critical that top managers establish the right organizational context by making change a priority. They must create this vision, reinforce the benefits, and inject change management into the corporate culture.

3. BUILD THE MUSCLE

The accelerating pace of disruption is accompanied by difficulties to keep up with shortage of resources, process changes, and IT. It's the job of change professionals to manage and direct highly skilled, enterprise-wide resources to mitigate these risks.

But the demand for change capabilities is outpacing the efforts by organizations to address it. Most companies report that the average amount of in-house change management experience is six years or less. Companies need to attract, retain, and develop change professionals and build up internal knowledge and skills. They can’t wait to address these needs by reinventing activities and roles on a project-by-project basis.

Change leaders know this. They’re formalizing change expertise and systematically building enterprise-wide change capabilities.

Disruption today is a constant. Despite the fact that many companies have solid know-how in making change work, they haven’t gotten better at actively managing it. By understanding the gap between themselves and change leaders, they can start to close it.

Set Brilyuhnt Goals

It’s a commonly accepted sentiment that setting goals will lead you to success.

Many of us believe life will be better by reaching those goals, so we make our plans, put our nose to the grindstone, and work our butts off until we’re there.

Many high achievers I’ve worked with over the years reach their goals, but they end up missing their lives in the process--and not in a trivial “I’m-working-too-hard-to-have-friends” kind of way.

No, they reach their goals and discover they were the wrong goals and the wrong path to get there. No one taught them how to set goals that would give them the life and the career they wanted.

Here’s how to set the right goals for the life you actually want:

1. STOP SETTING GOALS FOR THE WRONG REASON

The first step to setting goals that will bring you an awesome life is to stop setting goals that won't.

Most goals are about a destination. “I want a million dollars.” “I want enlightenment.” “I want a truck.” If you tend to set your goals based on the destination, and don’t consider the journey, try switching it around.

2. CHOOSE A GOAL TO CREATE A JOURNEY

Instead of setting life goals, think about setting a life direction. Figure out the things that would create a fun, meaningful, compelling journey.

Ask yourself:

1. How do I want to spend my time?
2. What daily activities make me want to leap out of bed?
3. What do I want to learn?
4. Who do I want to hang out with? Talk with? Collaborate with?

Now set your goal. Choose one that will create the journey you just designed.

In fact, the specific goal you set is almost arbitrary--it’s simply setting a direction so the pursuit itself gives you the life that you want. With the right journey, it won’t even matter if you reach your goal.

For example, Chris, a mid-career finance executive, had an original life goal of making a small fortune. That goal led to an education in securities and securities law, a life of financial analysis on Wall Street, and a community of financial professionals. Despite the money, Chris feels like life is slipping by in a gray fog.

Any number of goals could send Chris on a different journey. Here are his answers to the above questions:

1. How do I want to spend my time? “Helping people.”
2. What activities make me want to leap out of bed? “Problem solving, using my body, and public speaking.”
3. What do I want to learn? “History, anthropology, and urban design.”
4. Who do I want to hang out with? ”Creative, ambitious, motivated people who expose me to new ways of thinking and challenge my assumptions.”

Many possible goals can bring about this journey for Chris. He could help an immigrant neighborhood plan annual events to preserve its cultural identity; work on designing his city’s response plan for weather emergencies; or champion a real estate development in a historic section of town.

These goals are wildly different from one another, but what they all share is that the journey to reach them will motivate the activities, learning, and community that Chris really wants out of life.

3. IF THE GOAL DOESN’T WORK, CHANGE IT

As you can see, the goal is really just a way of making sure we take a meaningful journey. Some journeys are so much fun, people stay on them forever. My friends that work in the tennis industry often say, “Why would I retire? What I do isn’t work; it’s pure fun!”

But if your job involves staring at a screen and filing TPS reports, you may not share that sentiment. As much press as persistence gets, keep in mind that you can always change your direction. Your goal is there to shape your life in a way that delights you, not enslaves you. If the pursuit of the goal is draining your life, then why keep it?

We adopt goals for one reason and one reason only: to change our lives. Rather than adopting a goal you hope will change your life once you reach it, do it the other way around. Choose the journey that for you would be awesome--the activities, personal growth, and friends. Then choose a goal that acts as a compass to give you that life as part of the journey.

And if you ever feel your direction needs changing, change goals. Because it’s not about where you end up, it’s about the life you live on the way. Your life is too precious to settle for less than extraordinary

HCI

Computers that understand and react to subtle cues about human emotion are coming. And when they do, advertising and marketing might be some of the early adopters.

The term for this technology is "affective computing" and it involves reading, interpreting, and even simulating emotion, for the purpose of interacting with and sometimes influencing human behavior. Essentially, affective computing uses pattern recognition algorithms to identify an individual’s emotional state from visual and audible cues. Such technology can distinguish whether a person is happy, sad, angry, indifferent, and so on--even if they try to disguise it. These techniques aren’t limited to faces and voices, but can also be applied to traits such as gait and posture. Because this could provide immediate, accurate information about the viewer’s response, it has powerful potential as a feedback mechanism.

Since an enormous amount of people’s communication is nonverbal, it makes sense that we’d want to tap into this to improve how computers work with us. For instance, in a recent North Carolina State University study, a computer program used video cameras to study student expressions, then indicate those students who were experiencing difficulty with the course. These technologies can draw from a wide range of visual and audible cues, many of which are undetectable by a human observer. Combined with the strengths of machine learning, these programs can already routinely outperform us.

Affective computing’s potential uses are myriad. A system that can read and respond to human behavior in fractions of a second has obvious applications in surveillance and law enforcement, though not all of these are necessarily respectful of civil liberties. Behavioral therapy programs could benefit from its feedback. Social networks will have the ability to share still another layer of information about their users. But perhaps the fields with the most commercial potential are those of marketing and advertising.

The ability to influence public interest and response to products, services and candidates has long been of keen interest to marketers. Up to now though, the tools used have been less than rigorous, making ad and marketing campaigns as much of an art as they are a science. But what if marketing and advertising were able to interact with their customer base on a one-on-one basis, instantly self-modifying on the fly based on immediate nonverbal feedback? Combined with other technologies such as augmented reality and Big Data, unprecedented interactiveness would be achieved and marketing’s impact could go through the roof.

So how might this work? Imagine a typical shopping district in a typical city. A fashion-conscious 20-something walks along casually window shopping. She’s wearing a pair of stylish glasses that have video display capability a la Google Glass. They’re set to translucent, augmented reality mode, allowing her to see price comparisons overlaid onto the different clothing items she’s interested in. This all takes place automatically, with the processing occurring through her smart phone.

As our shopper nears one particular store, exterior shop cameras detect her approach. Software services identify her age, gender, and demographic. Because she subscribes to a number of coupon services, one of which the store participates in, they have the ability to send offers directly to her. Another series of software services assesses her clothing style based on what she’s currently wearing, gauges her height, weight and dress size, then immediately renders a 3-D avatar that looks amazingly like our shopper. The avatar is dressed and kitted out with a jacket that’s been the shop’s biggest seller this season. The rotatable image is sent to the shopper along with the price, suggested accessories and a 20% off coupon while she’s still 30 feet from the store.

The shopper isn’t particularly interested since she already has a very similar jacket at home. Had she made her recent purchases public via her social network, the store could have already known this; however she chose to opt-out. The services are able to assess her response based on the camera feed. Changes in her expression, gait, and posture are fed to an algorithm that calculates an 83.4% likelihood she already has a similar jacket, so at least they’re on the right track, stylistically speaking. Because her skirt is identified as being from last year’s line, she’s sent an offer for a more current style. This is calculated to have a 90.2% chance of drawing her inside. The offer is successful and our shopper enters the store, where she soon makes a purchase.

The exact implementation of these technologies will take time to work out. In the next five years, the impact of affective computing on advertising will become increasingly evident, though it won’t fully mature for probably a decade. Because of the way the different elements interact, it’s probable that a diverse ecosystem of services and devices will be developed to take advantage of this new approach to advertising. Indeed it seems likely most such stores will eventually need to subscribe to some, if not all of the available services in order to remain competitive. In the meantime, savvy shoppers will see it as the best way to find exactly what they want at an attractive price. All because of increased interconnectedness, communication, and the changing relationship between businesses and consumers. It’s the kind of technology you could fall in love with.

Founding companies is a blast

The most successful companies are the ones that are most effective at learning. Likewise for founders. Strong founders tend to be great learners. The other day a friend told me an inspiring story about watching Mark Zuckerberg grow as a leader while Facebook exploded; he described a  man who was constantly learning, constantly refining and iterating on his leadership style and studying the effects of the moves he made at the helm. This is in some ways the essence of company making: a crucible of perpetual, high-paced learning and improvement. For the curious-minded--those humans who thrive off attaining and applying knowledge--entrepreneurship is awesome.

Building a Culture Of Growth

A company is one of the most remarkable institutions for human growth. This is, interestingly, one of the least discussed aspects of companies and capitalism. Working at a company can be--and should be--an incredible growth experience.

In fact, I think one of the most important jobs of the founder is to create a culture in which each of your employees is having a life-enriching, perhaps even life-transforming, experience. This boosts morale, supports creativity, ensures retention, and increases productivity. It's also better for the world.

You'll Never Be Bored

Being a founder is not boring. And most founders hate boredom. There are 100 things happening at once. You are constantly shifting from context to context: from design review to strategy planning to recruitment to fundraising to managing leaders. You need to be skilled at the big and the small, the human and the technical, the sale and the rigor, the drive and the execution. You won’t sleep much. Your to-do list is absolutely insurmountable. If you find this fun, well, then it’s fun.

Friendship

The bonds forged with your team members in the fires of company making are strong and long-lasting. There's a togetherness, a pride, and a no-nonsense mutual understanding that makes founder friendships glow. When things are hard--and the path to success is inevitably hard--mediating challenges with another person can be exponentially more challenging than doing so alone. But if you can communicate well and stay open, if you can be honest and thoughtful, if you can avoid blame--then your relationship will flourish in the founding environment.

A Window

One of my favorite parts of running a company is the view it gives you into what's happening on Earth. I think this is particularly true for Internet company founders right now, since the Internet is among the most impactful human inventions since, I don’t know, math. This knowledge of what's happening is a gift. It's a perspective that carries with it, I believe, a responsibility to stay humble and still figure out how to use your time and resources to genuinely move the lever for humanity.

Overcome Fear

Being a founder is an amazing opportunity to overcome fear--particularly the fear of failure. If you are a founder and are afraid of failing, it will be debilitating. You simply must find a way to overcome this fear. There are many stories that can lie behind the fear of failure: Perhaps you harbor some inner notion that perfection is required to attain worthiness, perhaps familial pressures or concerns about social status drive your fear, perhaps you are attached to material well-being, etc., etc., etc. As a founder, you must come to know what you fear and why. And, ideally, you will come to realize that the fear of failure is both deeply forgivable and always fundamentally delusional. All fear is.

Getting To Know Yourself

Building on my last point, founding a company is an incredible way of getting to know oneself. Meditation is a profound tool for self-investigation. Starting a company is about as good.

Both activities--meditating and company making--provide you with a radical mirror. In both cases you don't have to look at yourself. You can float through. But maintaining ignorance almost takes more work than seeing things clearly. Your strengths, your weaknesses--they are staring you in the face all day, every day when you are creating a company. And, if you are willing to look at yourself honestly--with both self-acceptance and also an indefatigable drive to grow--then this is a true boon.

Creating Value And Knowing It

The purpose of a company is to create value. And in modernity that value is determined very simply by whether other companies or humans will buy what you're making. This simplicity is so honest. The result is that when you are creating something of value you feel that it's deeply real. There are so few places where value and meaning take on such an indisputable air. I like that. I think founders tend to like that. It's the feeling: I made this from nothing and I know that other people think it's worth something.

Founder As Career Path

Some people decide to become engineers. Some teachers. Some founders. And yet, we know much more about what it’s like to be a teacher than we know about what it’s like to be a founder.

On the one hand, being a founder is a very public experience; we know a lot about founders in the same way we know a lot about celebrities. And yet, on the other hand--in a strange dichotomy--we know very little about founders, these private men and women who create and run our most influential institutions. We haven’t yet quite learned to see the founder as a human.

And we haven’t quite started thinking about the role of founder as a job, like other jobs, with its challenges and its boons. We should, though. Doing so would help existing founders and founders-to-be. And this, in turn, will help our companies, which I--along with many other founders--hope will help people everywhere.