KaosPilots–A school for the unconventional

Ever wonder what school would be like with little to no tests? Introducing KaosPilots, an alternative business school in Denmark where they take an action oriented approach to education. Each student works on 15 projects that go toward their portfolio over the course of 3 years and these projects are for real clients with real money, real consequences and real budgets. Instead of tests, clients and team-leaders evaluate the students – for the KaosPilots learning is recognized by the hands on approach. And unlike most schools very few lectures are actually given by the staff; instead, industry professionals are invited to speak on their experience and knowledge. At KaosPilots lectures are not meant to be the primary source of education but rather are meant to supply theory to supplement students’ hands on learning.

So how it works:

KaosPilots is an extremely small school with only fifteen staff including administration and team leaders (they use team-leaders instead of teachers to guide students through their projects, some are past KaosPilots some are recruited from the outside). Because the school’s so small only 35-40 students are accepted every year (Yikes!! Can you say exclusive). The students are broken into teams where each team is headed by 1-2 team leaders.

The purpose of the school is to get students to think out of the box, KaosPilots graduate with an ability to approach many situations differently and enter into a variety of jobs. Ever hear of the two-step process? Step 1 - learn a little about a lot, Step 2 – start to specify. Well this is virtually what they have mastered!

Where as students studying in an engineering school will likely end up becoming engineers. KaosPilots have a variety of skills which allows them the plasticity needed to be successful across many different positions. KaosPilots is in my opinion, speaking to the life essence of entrepreneurs - To think out of the box,  to improvise, to approach every situation differently.

Why KaosPilots ? I’ll let my friend tell you.

There are 4 main academic disciplines: (taken from the website)

Creative Project Design
The massive rate of change that challenges most organizations today seems to be accelerating rather than being a momentary condition. This means that nearly every task we meet in our professional lives is new; different from what has been done before, and as such demands a new approach. Because of this tendency ‘project’ is increasingly chosen as the organizational model in business life and in society in general. The KaosPilots believe that in order to accommodate this culture we need to practice the way we approach our work, the way we think when dealing with projects. The students at the school are trained in dynamic project management, project economy, handling change, and designing projects and events.

Creative Process Design
In a society, which is increasingly based on knowledge industries, each organization’s value and raison d'etre depends strongly on it’s capability of utilizing knowledge generated by others, and understanding how to incorporate this knowledge with internal competencies to achieve concrete results. This is achieved through processes, internal and external, which enable the employees of a company to develop new and useful solutions. Therefore students at the KaosPilot school have to develop an academic understanding of the human processes that drive a project forwards – learning processes, creative processes, change processes, team building and how to work with these through process consultation.

Creative Business Design
The 21st century is the century of the entrepreneur and the creative social innovator. It is therefore vital that students are not only trained to be able to read the cultural, social, and economic trends in society, but also that they can use this knowledge to identify new promising and socially responsible business concepts. Based on these concepts new businesses can be designed, using the skills taught during the program, including entrepreneurship, business economy, social awareness and sustainability, arts and business, corporate identity and branding, and PR and marketing.

Creative Leadership Design
Leadership is ultimately a question of what kind of world we want to live in and figuring out how we go about making our dreams into reality. Societies in the new millennium are depending on empowered people – people who can stand alone, and stand together with others. The students do not just learn about leadership, they are trained in becoming leaders for themselves and others. Value-based leadership starts with personal leadership, with the self. The focus lies on developing a leadership style that allows the student to help others to become leaders in their own right.

The 3 worldly focuses are: (taken from the website)

Sustainability
And the question we have to ask ourselves in our work is: How can we develop the ability of the students to think and design sustainability in all dimensions of their work, ecological, economical and social?
Because if we as civilization, society, companies and individuals do not in an active and purposeful way pursue and contribute to the reestablishment of a sustainable balance in nature, the present global warming will make the planet inhabitable for our children, grandchildren and generations to come.
So the challenge for the KaosPilots is to create a new consciousness on the individual level (the student), in companies and in society, so that the future will be met with a clear and empathetic respect towards the well being of coming generations, other organisms and species, the planet as such and the new technology we bring into the world.

Cultural diversity
What we should work on is: How can we develop the student’s understanding of cultural diverse systems and societies? How to lead in cultural diversity? And how to create value of cultural diversity?

Because if we do not learn to live together in a peaceful way with many cultures underneath the same roof, the present cultural and religious front-lines will only become more and more fundamentalist and violent. This prediction is not least based on the fact that in particular the fundamentalist forces – both within the Muslim and Christian world –manage to set the agenda during these days, weeks and months. Thereby rendering moderate forces on all sides increasingly passive and invisible.

Until the day we realize that “feelings are facts” for most of us, we will not be able to –in a purposeful, bright and nuanced way –create a sustainable, respectful and thereby conflict resolving dialogue between the involved cultural and religious parties of a conflict situation. And it matters not whether it happens in your neighborhood, between nations or between global value systems.

Social innovation
And the question is: How can we develop the student’s creativity towards new ways of cooperating between the different sectors in society? And how can we develop a new sense of community and ”re-negotiate” the contract between individual and society.  Because if we cannot re-establish the interaction between on one side the increasing individualization of society and on the other side the necessity of a well-functioning community built on solidarity we loose the opportunity that exists right now to create the next generation of the Scandinavian welfare system.  Which would also imply a discussion of the relationship, the dynamics and the division of roles between the public, private and nonprofit sector.

The three focus areas Sustainability, Cultural diversity and Social innovation will be the lenses the KaosPilots see through in their daily work in the classroom, in the creation of projects and in the formation of new relationships with people, organizations and networks around the globe. They will determine the direction in which we are heading and they express our idea of how we can be the best education for the world!

Rrrrrol up the rim to win!

For all the Canadians you will recognize the iconic Tim Horton’s advertising campaign. We recognize it because it is such a successful campaign. It was first started in 1986, and since inception it has weaved itself into the hearts of Canadians. We ask ourselves - Why buy a coffee anywhere else when rolling up the rim could win us a sweet prize?

 

Why has Tim Horton’s campaign been so successful?

1) It brings out the competitive nature of people. We like to win. Here is a man who has dedicated his blog to his roll up the rim statistics.

2) It’s catchy. We remember, RRrrrrrrrroll up the rim to win.

3) Because they spend money on it. Total approximate retail value of all prizes is $57,135,015 CDN. Hidden among over 280 million cups!  I’ve been trying to find out statistics how much their sales go up during this promo, but no luck yet. 

4)The focus of Roll up to is reward loyal customers. Loyal customers are a businesses most important lifeline. Make them happy, make them believe what you believe and they will spread the word for you.

5) They bring it back every year. All of Canada now recognizes Tim Horton’s Roll Up the Rim marketing campaign.

Is there a way a business could bounce off of their massively successful campaign? I think there is; by creating a marketing campaign asking people to bring in the cups where they haven’t won and allowing them to enter to win a prize with the purchase of a coffee/ and or other product (whatever type of business you offer).

As entrepreneurs we should always be asking ourselves – what can we learn from massively successful campaigns: such as Tim Hortons Roll up the Rim to Win. And how and if we can use them to spread our companies influence and create our own customer base.

Learning is Risky

This is one of my favourite passages from Self Renewal: The Individual and Innovative Society. I thought I would share it.

“As we mature we progressively narrow the scope and variety of our lives. Of all the interest we might pursue, we settle on a few. Of all the people with whom we might associate, we select a small number. We become caught in a web of fixed relationships. We develop set ways of doing things.

As the years go by we view our familiar surroundings with less and less freshness of perception. We no longer look with a wakeful perceiving eye at the faces of people we see every day, nor at any other features of our everyday world.

It is not unusual to find that major changes in life- a marriage, a move to a new city, a change of jobs, or a national emergency- break the patterns of our lives and reveal to us quite suddenly how much we had been imprisoned by the comfortable web we had woven around ourselves.

One of the reasons why mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less. Learning is a risky business, and they do not like failure. In infancy, when the child is learning at a truly phenomenal rate- a rate he or she will never again achieve- he or she is also experiencing a shattering number of failures. Watch [any child]. See the innumerable things he or she tries and fails. And see how little the failures discourage him or her.

With each year that passes [the child] will be less blithe about failure. By adolescence the willingness of young people to risk failure has diminished greatly. And all too often parents push them further along that road by instilling fear, by punishing failure, or by making success seem too precious.

By middle age most of us carry around in our heads a tremendous catalogue of things we have no intention of trying again because we tried them once and failed- or tried them once and did less well than our self-esteem demanded.

Curious Business–FrogBox + Exclusive Interview

Founder Doug Burgoyne of FrogBox walked into the Dragons’s Den Janurary 26th and walked out with $200,000 and two of the dragons; Jim and Brett.

FrogBox is a moving company with an environmentally friendly conscious. They supply plastic moving boxes at the same cost as cardboard boxes and eliminate the fear of having to worry about valuables breaking. Plastic sustainable? Well when each FrogBox can be used over 400 times vs a cardboard box that can be used on average twice, you start to see the picture. In Vancouver over 450,000 cardboard boxes are used every month for moving and upwards of 1 million boxes in Seattle. That’s a lot of boxes. And it’s great for everyone say’s Doug “ [even] My Harley Davison driving beer swallowing uncle doesn’t get scared away”  For those wanting to see more environmental sustainability you will be happy to know that 1% of all gross revenues goes to improving frog habitat.

In a business that is known for it’s bad reputation Doug wanted to find a business model that took a bad industry and redefined its reputation, well he looked no further than Vancouver startup Brian Scudamore and 1-800 Got Junk. He tried to understand as much as possible about Brian’s successful transformation and recreate it in FrogBox. Answer? Scalable Franchising.

Doug is inspired by people like Brian Scudamore and Chip Wilson, people who have a dream and ability to create an incredible industry out of nothing. Doug’s dream is of eliminating cardboard boxes and making himself a lot of money in one foul swoop. When people think moving boxes he wants them to think FrogBox. How is he going to do this? Franchising. Before Dragon’s Den aired FrogBox had 1,100 franchise requests, and he wasn’t even ready to franchise. Now he plans to open 10 locations this year and has a 5 year plan that he hopes will make people associate moving with FrogBox.

To find out more about Doug, listen to my exclusive interview below.
I know how and why your business is innovative but I want to know why you as a person chose to be an entrepreneur. What was the lure of entrepreneurship and when did this love affair start? 

1.41

How did you get started with FrogBox?

2.20

How often do you think franchises should blog and twitter?  

0.53

How did you come up with the name FrogBox?

1.50

FrogBox seems to be a lifestyle movement that just happens to be green.

0.44

What is your companies vision and how quickly have people been to adopt that vision as their own? 

1.05

Why did you choose to go pitch to the dragons?

1.01

How did you know when it was right to leave your job, to drop everything and do this? 

1.14

Has been leaving your job to pursue FrogBox been the most difficult point? 

0.31

Have you been afraid so far?

0.33

How can we find the right partners to start a business with?

1.54

What has made the great companies great? What keeps them staying great?

0.57

How has your curiosity driven you to where you are? What are you most curious about?  

2.11

Doug’s must reads: Seth Godin – Purple Cow, E-Myth – Michael Gerber “It’s like he’s inside my head, and knows exactly what i’m thinking”
I hope you enjoyed the interview. If you have any other questions you would like me to ask in future interviews, post them below.

Customer Turnover

For those of you who listened to Simon Sinek speak from my last post  “Make me Believe” (and if you haven’t I strongly suggest you do, it’s one of the best presentations I’ve listened to) you would of heard about the Law of Diffusion of Innovation. Sinek said

“I love to ask businesses, what is your conversion, and they respond proudly 10%. Well you can trip over 10%. There’s always 10% who will just “get it”, in fact, that’s how we describe them.”

The Law of Diffusion of Innovation is broken down into 5 categories.

1. Innovators 2.5% – These are the inventers, the ground-breakers, the risk-takers, the creative and curious entrepreneurs and thinkers that by nature are meant to change the world.

2. Early Adopters 13.5%  - These are the emotionally driven consumers. The people that will buy out of belief for a product, the trend setters.

3. Early Majority 34% – These people will not buy a product until someone else has already purchased and tried it out – (the early adopters)

4. Late Majority 34% – These are the sceptics. They will not believe or purchase into a product until the vast majority accepts it. 

5. Laggards 16% – These people usually have no choice but the accept the product. Out of tradition or ignorance. In the words of Sinek, “the only reason these people buy touch-tone phones is that you cannot buy rotary phones anymore.”

So what does this mean? It means that in order for new innovative businesses to achieve mass market success they need to cater to the early adopters and innovators. They need to influence the “trend setters” so the early majority adopts the new products. As a new business you want to cross the chasm, the “tipping point” as Malcolm Gladwell puts it. And in order for this point to be reached there needs to be a  customer conversion rate of around 15-18%. You want market penetration into that early/late majority. 

How can you do this? Well it’s no easy task.

But you can start by.

1) Simplify. There’s always people that “get it” but you want the people who aren’t so adept to understand it. You don’t want them to avoid something because of its complexity. And if it’s some type of new technology you need to still create enough complexity and opportunity for those who “get it”. For example, the IPhone is simple but also complex and full of opportunities for those who can program.

2) Belief is infectious. You want to get those early adopters to believe in your product so strongly that they spread the word for you. How do you do this? Answer the why question.

3) Advertise. People love the word free, and using it properly can net more sales and attract more customers than stand alone discounts. 

4) Treat your regulars, your loyal customers the best. Loyalty goes far. Treat them well and they will spread the word for you.

Make me believe

 

“People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it” Simon Sinek

Ever hear someone say “When you buy an apple computer your buying into a new lifestyle” For Apple they never say it’s about the money and they never say we can bring you a new lifestyle changing product at a considerable price. Rather they make us believe. They make us believe in what they believe. They tell us they’re different, for people who like to challenge the staus quo, people who are innovators, people who are at the forefront of style.

Apple’s mission statement and vision is “Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.”

The statement is clear, they are not saying they are the best but that they will be committed in trying to create the best experience through new innovative applications. They want to create an experience, they want people to believe in innovation and challenge the status quo.

Here is the introduction of the first Apple Macintosh, We’re being made to believe, and I get shivers down my spine when I watch this.

Apple is able to inspire us while other companies are not. Why? Sinek says and I agree with him, “they know what they do and why they do it”, “people believe what they believe.”

On August 28th, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous I have a dream speech. Yes he was a great orator but the 260,000 people that attended his talk showed up for themselves, for what they believed. They took King’s dream and made it their own.

Great leaders make you believe in what they believe. Who have a vision of why the status quo needs to change. How can you share you vision from the inside out?

Be Better than Yesterday.

I was listening to an Interview with James Caan a very successful British Entrepreneur who  said, “Because I have consistently and continually been investing in myself, because I want to learn more, I want to be better than I was yesterday and if I don’t do that for me who else will do that?” I had an Aha!! moment.

We all want to be better than we were yesterday, and while not all of us can afford to enter the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School evolution is still within our grasp.

Staying at the forefront of learning, exposing yourself to new theories and opportunities, and consistently re-evaluating and evolving your business is a necessity to the success of any and every business. Investing time and money into yourself gives you as the man behind the business more credibility, more knowledge. We live in a world of opportunity but very often that opportunity is only available to those with the credibility and credibility develops slowly, but overtime, once momentum starts picking up – nothing can stop a man with an idea.

So the question is what are you doing to become better than you were yesterday? I believe this is an important question, one we can all think about.

Below is the entire interview with James Caan.