Pretotyping Goes to Stanford

I can't wait for our full-day, hands-on, pretotyping workshop at Stanford tomorrow.

The official title/subtitle is: Pretotyping @ Work – Innovate like a startup, go to market like a grownup.

We have a full house of participants from many great companies, and a ton of new material and exercises.

Hopefully this workshop is the first of many!

Here's a link to the brochure.

I'll add photos and feedback later this week – after the event.

Alberto

Pretotipar Esto: Pretotyping goes international

Over the past few months, I've seen an increase in articles and blogs about pretotyping written in languages other than English – especially in Spanish, German and Italian. On top of that, about half the emails I get are from countries other than the US.


This is very gratifying and a strong signal that pretotyping itself is "the right it" or "el esto correcto" – as you'd say in Spanish.

But the biggest and most pleasant surprise happened a couple of weeks ago when a gentleman named Julián Domínguez Laperal, sent me a very nice email with an attachment that contained a full and high-quality English-to-Spanish translation of my booklet Pretotype It.

While Pretotype It is not a long book, it's still 70+ pages, and translating it must have been quite a commitment on Julian's part.

You can download a PDF of Julian's translation  from here.


Thank you Julian!


Alberto

Pretotyping Goes to Stanford

Last month, I was invited to give my seminar on pretotyping at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The organizers of the event were kind enough to film my presentation, and I've edited it to combine the video with the slides.

The live presentation complements the Pretotype It book and expands on some of the ideas.  So, it's probably worth your time even you've already read the book.

Here's the YouTube link, http://youtu.be/t4AqxNekecY, and below is the convenient embedded video.



Enjoy and share it!

Thanks,

Alberto

Productyping, the evil twin of pretotyping

In the Pretotype It book, I describe productyping as follows:

Productyping is the evil twin of pretotyping.  If pretotyping can be summarized as: “make sure you are building the right it before you build it right,” productyping can be summarized as: “build it right even if you are not sure you are building the right it.”

Here are some signs that you might be productyping instead of pretotyping:

• You add non-critical features and embellishments that no user has requested.
• You worry about scalability when you don't even have 100 (or 10) users.
• You spend too much time to tweaking the UI: This line should be 3 pixels instead of 2.
• ...

And here's the grandaddy of them all:

• You prematurely design and develop a general solution instead of addressing specific needs, problems and requests of your existing users in a timely manner.

This XKCD comic really hits the spot on this last point:

Alberto

Pretotyping the "Lean Innovation and Pretotyping Workshop" at Google

A couple of weeks ago I ran a pilot of our new, hands-on, Lean Innovation and Pretotyping Workshop at Google.

I designed this workshop for teams working together on specific projects.  I am experimenting with the ideal number of "students", but since the workshop is meant to be hands-on and interactive I expect that we'll get the best results with 10-20 people per workshop.

After an introduction to the Pretotyping Manifesto, we looked at several examples of pretotyping in different industries, and then we set of to design and develop pretotypes specifically for the team's needs (I call this pretostorming.)

All attendees received a hard-copy of Pretotype It (of course) but also a copy of Eric Ries' excellent The Lean Startup.

Here's a photo from the workshop with the attendees showing off their schwag:

A couple of people had working pretotypes within 24 hours and the feedback from attendees has been very positive. Here's one quote from the team lead: "You are going to love this workshop!  Completely energized the team -- ideas became reality only hours/days after the conclusion."

Based on the success of the pilot workshop, I've already been invited to conduct 5 more in the next 2-3 weeks and plan a lot more over the next few months.

Alberto

"Pretotype It" book is done and ready for download

I've just finished writing and editing the first pretotype edition of "Pretotype It."

As you might expect, it's a pretotype book (a pretobook? a Minimum Viable Book?) with some rough edges.  But it has enough meat to be worth your while, and the initial reviews from my colleagues at Google have been positive.

Here's the cover:

You can download the full PDF from Google Docs (note: this link has been updated to the Second Pretotype Edition and I've removed the Scribd link since they've started charging for downloading the PDF.)

Let me know if you have problems downloading it, I might hit some quota maximum (says he optimistically.)

You should be able to read the entire book in well less than an hour.  

Let me know what you think of it, and feel free to send me your pretotype stories, I plan to add several "case studies" and examples from other people in the new edition.

Thanks, 

Alberto

The Law of Failure and the Pretotyping Effect

The Law of Failure states:

X% of all new Y will fail

Where X% is a disheartening large percentage (say, 80-90% or more) and Y is some new thing (an app, a company, a restaurant, a novel, a non-profit organization, a genetically modified artichoke, etc.)

You've probably heard variations on the Law of Failure many times:

• 90% of all mobile apps don’t make any money
• 4 start-ups out of 5 lose money for the investors
• 73% of new restaurants close within one year
• ...

Most new products, services, companies, book, etc., do not succeed; primarily because they are not the right 'it' – and there's not much that you can do about such lost causes.

Pretotyping does not improve the odds of failure, nor does it help you avoid failure. Heck, it doesn't even try.  Quite the contrary, pretotyping seeks failure and uses the Law of Failure to its advantage – the same way good accountants use tax laws and Lady Gaga uses paparazzi.

Once you start practicing pretotyping – and if you practice it well – you will fail many more times than before ... but with a VERY BIG difference.

The following image compares what happens with and without pretotyping, assuming the same investment of time, money and effort.  I call it The Pretotyping Effect:

As the image shows, if you are afraid of failure, pretotyping is not for you.  Pretotyping is not a way to avoid failure; it actually accelerates the rate of failure and dramatically increases the number of failures.  But they are all fast failures, which leave you plenty of time to keep trying new ideas so you can increase your odds of finding the right 'it.'

Alberto Savoia